Manufacturing gets a helping hand with Odoo's MRP app

As part of Odoo 10, there is now a dedicated application specific to manufacturing operations.  With the average manufacturing operation using more than 10 different applications to run their business, data duplication, time loss, poor workflows and a lack of visibility are just some of the things which can impact a manufacturer's bottom line.

Odoo’s new Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP) App is a powerful piece of business management software designed to help manufacturers gain operational efficiencies and reduce areas of stress and friction from within the business.  Here are the top features below:

Master production schedule

The master production schedule is your manufacturing dashboard, it provides you with a bird’s eye view of everything going on in your manufacturing facility and allows you to then drill down into specific manufacturing production runs or orders for more information.  This schedule is particularly useful for production managers, but also for wider management and sales teams as they look to fill empty manufacturing slots, or undertake high-level business planning.

Interactive Gnatt charts allow you to move your production schedules graphically as orders and projects change, they also update the rest of the production pipeline as you go so you don’t have to reorder your entire schedule manually as the situation changes.

Removing paper from the factory floor

You can replace whiteboards and other manual communication methods on your factory floor with computers and tablets which help manage and communicate what your teams should be working on.  No more double handling across scheduling, time sheeting, QC and work instructions (and the inaccuracies that can arise from it).

Your team is also able to work through a predefined and tracked process as they complete production orders.  This means you can rebuild reports and analyse how your people are completing tasks, identify and deal with bottlenecks or other efficiency sinkholes in your processes ideal for those businesses running lean manufacturing processes.

Quality control 

Your QC team and processes can now be more proactive with workers identifying issues as they go and create electronic messages from the factory floor for your QC team.  As these issues are logged electronically, you can now trace them bay back easily to an item as well as tracking them through to resolutions.  At a business level you can use the data to create reports and feedback for your engineering team to make design or supplier changes which address the QC issue.

Engineering change orders 

When you need to make changes to designs or materials, you can capture these at a production level via the engineering change order (ECO) function.  You can move change orders through the process electronically, attaching CAD files, updating BOMs and work instructions as you go, all with an electronic approvals process to give you complete visibility, from engineering to manufacturing.

Barcodes for picking, packing and consuming 

Many businesses struggle with stock management and leakage, where items are not accurately counted, are inadvertently dispatched, and defective components are disposed of without being recorded for QC purposes.  Barcoding ensures that the correct items, in the right quantity, make it to your factory floor, are received into your warehouse, and are dispatched to your customers.

Odoo’s MRP application is a great platform for any manufacturing business looking to generate efficiencies throughout their production process, or simply to reduce the organisational stresses which come from annual data movements, paper-based processes or disconnected software systems.  Your business can use as little or as much of Odoo’s functionality as is needed, start small and then scale up as you grow.

Talk to us today about improving process and visibility within your operation.