Odoo for Manufacturing
Odoo rollouts for manufacturers
Discrete and process plants. Bills of material that match the line, shop floor execution, real cost per unit, and a sequence that does not stop production.
Manufacturing rollouts are decided by data quality, not by module choice. If the bill of material in the system does not match what the line actually builds, every plan, every cost and every stock figure derived from it is wrong. So the work starts with one product family, verified against the shop floor, and expands from there.
Where it hurts today
BOMs drift from reality
Bills of material live in engineering spreadsheets while the line has quietly substituted components for months. Planning against the documented BOM produces shortages nobody predicted.
Planning happens in a weekly meeting
A missing component is discovered on the line rather than in the plan. Rescheduling is manual, and the cost of the disruption is never captured.
Work in progress has no value
Cost per finished unit is reconstructed after the fact and rarely matches the price that was quoted. Loss-making product lines survive because nobody can prove they are loss-making.
Scrap and rework are opinions
Both are recorded on paper if at all, so yield per work centre cannot be compared and the worst station is identified by reputation rather than data.
Maintenance is purely reactive
A machine stops, the job list is reshuffled by hand, and parts are bought at short notice at the worst price available.
The modules that carry the load
Each one is here for a reason specific to manufacturing, not because it appears on a standard module list.
- ๐ญ Odoo Manufacturing (MRP)
Multi-level bills of material, routings and work orders, plus the planning run that turns demand into procurement and production.
- ๐ฆ Odoo Inventory
Component stock with lots and serials, which is what makes traceability from finished unit back to supplier batch possible at all.
- ๐ Odoo Purchase
Procurement driven by the planning run rather than by a buyer reacting to a shortage on the line.
- โ
Odoo Quality
Control points at receipt, in process and at delivery, so non-conformance is a record with a cost rather than a conversation.
- ๐ง Odoo Maintenance
Preventive schedules and meter-based triggers on the same equipment the routings depend on, so downtime is planned around production.
- ๐ผ Odoo Accounting
Standard or average costing with variance visible per order, which is the number that tells you whether the quote was right.
How the rollout runs
- 1 One product family
Item master, units of measure, bill of material and routing for a single family, verified line-side with the operators who build it. This is a walk of the floor, not a workshop.
- 2 Stock and procurement truth
Opening stock, work in progress, reorder logic and supplier lead times. Planning output is only as good as the lead times behind it.
- 3 Shop floor execution and quality
Work orders at the station, scrap and rework capture, quality checks. Operators are trained on the real product before this goes live.
- 4 Costing, maintenance and scale-up
Cost variance reporting, preventive maintenance, then the remaining product families copied from the proven pattern.
What to have ready before kickoff
Projects that slip usually slip here, not in the build. Bring these to the first workshop.
- โ An item master with units of measure decided: purchase unit, stock unit and sales unit, per item.
- โ The bill of material for the lead product family, checked against what the line actually consumes.
- โ A work centre list with capacity and an hourly cost rate finance will stand behind.
- โ Routing steps described the way operators describe them, not the way the process document does.
- โ Opening stock and work in progress valued at a stated cutover date.
- โ A scrap reason list, because reporting yield without reasons is not actionable.
Where it connects
Systems we most often connect on manufacturing projects. The full list is on the integrations page.
Manufacturing (Discrete & Process)
For the feature view of MRP, shop floor, quality and traceability, read the solution page.
Open the Manufacturing (Discrete & Process) solutionQuestions we get asked
Does Odoo suit process manufacturing as well as discrete? +
Both, with different modelling. Discrete work uses multi-level bills of material and serials. Process work leans on batch sizes, yields and by-products. The modelling decision is made in discovery because retrofitting it later is expensive.
Do we need Odoo Enterprise for manufacturing? +
Not always. Community covers core MRP for many plants. Enterprise adds Studio, IoT and MRP II capability that matters most when you have shop floor terminals, connected equipment or complex planning. We size this against the licence cost rather than defaulting to Enterprise.
How do operators use the system if there are no PCs on the floor? +
Shop floor terminals, tablets or barcode scanners at the work centre. The interaction is deliberately small: start, pause, finish, record quantity and scrap. Anything more elaborate does not survive contact with a production shift.
Can we handle subcontracted operations? +
Yes. Components issued to a subcontractor stay visible as your stock at their location, and the returned quantity is received against the operation, so the value is not lost from the books while it is off site.
Will the rollout stop production? +
No, if it is phased. One product family runs in the new system while the rest continue as they are, and the cutover for each family happens at a stock count boundary. Big-bang cutovers in manufacturing are where the horror stories come from.