Manufacturing2 min read
Manufacturing ERP Guide: BOMs, MRP, Shop Floor and Costing
A practical guide to manufacturing ERP: modelling BOMs and routings, making MRP trustworthy, shop-floor data capture, costing, quality and traceability.
Industry · Manufacturing
ERP for plastics manufacturers running presses and lines around the clock
Plastics production looks simple from the outside — resin goes in, parts come out — but the economics sit in details most generic ERPs ignore: cycle times, cavity counts, mould availability, regrind ratios, colour changeovers and the scrap that every start-up produces.
- M01Manufacturing
- M02Inventory
- M03Purchasing
- M04Sales
- M05Quality
- M06Maintenance
Context
ERP in plastic manufacturing
A good plastics ERP models those details just enough to plan presses realistically and cost parts accurately, without turning every shift into a data-entry exercise.
01Operational challenges
What usually breaks before the ERP project starts
01
Moulds as hidden constraints
A press may be free, but the mould is at the toolmaker or running on another machine, and nobody knew until the job was due.
02
Resin usage nobody reconciles
Material consumption is calculated from theoretical shot weights while start-up scrap, purging and regrind go unrecorded.
03
Changeover-heavy schedules
Colour and material changes scheduled without sequencing, wasting hours of press time and kilos of resin each week.
04
Customer-owned tooling
Moulds owned by customers but stored and maintained in your plant, with shot counts and maintenance obligations tracked on paper.
02Core flows
How the ERP should handle each part of the business
- Sales flow
- Part pricing derives from resin cost, cycle time, cavity count, press rate and packaging. Blanket orders with scheduled releases are common for automotive and appliance customers, and releases feed planning directly.
- Procurement
- Resin and masterbatch purchased against aggregated demand by grade and colour, with supplier lead times and bulk-order breaks. Inserts, packaging and outsourced decoration planned from the BOM.
- Inventory
- Resin tracked by lot in silos, gaylords or bags; regrind recorded as its own stock item with permitted ratios per part. Finished parts held by lot with packaging configuration.
- Warehouse
- Material staged to presses by work order; finished goods palletised by customer packaging specification and labelled for traceability.
- Manufacturing
- Work centres per press with tonnage; moulds treated as required resources so a job can only be scheduled when both press and mould are available. Production reported in shots or good parts, with scrap recorded by reason.
- Accounting
- Part cost includes material, press time, labour, mould amortisation where relevant and scrap allowance. Actual scrap and cycle time variances are visible per production run.
- CRM
- Tooling projects for new parts — quotes, mould build, sampling, PPAP approval — tracked as opportunities with milestones before series production begins.
03Industry workflows
Workflows specific to plastic manufacturing
01
Mould management
Mould records with cavities, compatible presses, location, ownership, shot count and preventive maintenance triggered by shots run.
02
Regrind loop
Sprues and rejects ground and returned as regrind stock, consumed within the ratio each part allows.
03
Colour sequencing
Jobs on each press ordered light to dark and by material family to cut purging time.
04
New part introduction
Sampling runs, first-article inspection and customer approval before the part is released for production.
04 — Reporting
Reports that should come out of the system, not a spreadsheet
- Press utilisation and OEE by machine
- Scrap rate by part, mould and reason
- Resin consumption vs theoretical by job
- Mould shot counts against maintenance intervals
- Customer release schedule vs production plan
- Part margin including actual cycle time
05 — Compliance
Compliance considerations
Automotive suppliers typically work under IATF 16949 with PPAP documentation and lot traceability. Food-contact and medical parts need material certifications and segregation. Recording resin lots against production runs and finished-goods lots is the foundation for answering customer and regulatory queries.
Regulatory requirements vary by jurisdiction. We configure the system to support your obligations; confirm specific rules with your auditor or compliance advisor.
06 — Integrations
Systems the ERP needs to talk to
Press monitoring systems that report cycles and downtime are the highest-value integration, replacing manual counts. EDI with OEM customers for releases and advance shipping notices is often mandatory. Label printers for customer-specific formats and BI tools round out the picture.
07AI opportunities
Where AI is genuinely useful here
Practical uses that sit on top of clean ERP data. None of them replace getting the core transactions right first.
01
Scrap pattern analysis
Surface correlations between scrap spikes and mould, material lot, shift or ambient conditions for engineers to investigate.
02
Release schedule parsing
Read customer release schedules sent as PDFs or spreadsheets and update planned demand.
03
Changeover suggestions
Propose job sequences per press that reduce colour and material changes, for planner approval.
08ERP modules
Modules a typical deployment includes
- M01Manufacturing
- M02Inventory
- M03Purchasing
- M04Sales
- M05Quality
- M06Maintenance
- M07Accounting
- M08Barcode
09Roadmap
Implementation roadmap
- 01
Master data
Parts with cycle times and cavities, moulds with press compatibility, resin and regrind items.
- 02
Core flow live
Orders, purchasing, inventory and production orders with scrap recording.
- 03
Mould and maintenance
Mould availability in scheduling and shot-based preventive maintenance.
- 04
Machine data
Press monitoring integration for automatic cycle and downtime capture.
10Common mistakes
Mistakes we see repeatedly
01
Scheduling presses without moulds
If the mould is not a scheduling constraint, the plan will regularly be impossible.
02
Theoretical material usage only
Backflushing resin at shot weight hides purging and start-up scrap, overstating stock and understating cost.
03
No regrind tracking
Untracked regrind makes resin inventory unreliable and can breach customer material requirements.
04
Skipping customer-owned tooling records
Disputes over mould maintenance and condition are far easier with shot counts and maintenance history in the system.
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FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Can moulds be scheduled as resources?
Yes. A mould can be modelled as a required resource for an operation so planning respects both press and mould availability.
How do we handle family moulds?
Family moulds that produce several parts in one shot can be modelled with co-products or a parent item that splits into components on completion.
Can operators record scrap easily?
A simple tablet interface at each press for good quantity and scrap by reason keeps reporting fast enough for operators to do it every run.
Similar industries
Industries with related workflows
ManufacturingBOMs, routings, MRP, shop-floor control, costing and traceability for discrete and mixed-mode manufacturers.Metal FabricationJob-shop ERP for quoting, nesting-driven material planning, routings, heat numbers and job costing.FurnitureConfigurable products, panel and timber planning, finishes, delivery scheduling and showroom sales.
Next step
Presses busy but margins thin?
We will look at how scrap, changeovers and tooling are tracked today.