Discrete manufacturing ERP
Discrete manufacturing ERP manages the production of countable units (parts, assemblies, machines) through bills of materials, routings, work orders and serial or lot identity.
Typical users: job shops, contract manufacturers, OEMs, aerospace and machinery makers.
Key facts
- Work is countable units moving through a routing.
- Bills of materials have several levels and revisions.
- Choose serial, lot or other tracking according to traceability, quality, service and operational requirements, rather than value alone.
- Quality inspection happens per operation and produces nonconformance records.
- Job shops also need quoting: many products start with a customer drawing and a request for quote.
What it covers
| Aspect | In this category |
|---|---|
| Unit of work | Countable units through a routing |
| Bill of materials | Several levels, with revisions |
| Identity | Serial or lot identity according to traceability and service requirements |
| Quality | Inspection per operation, nonconformance records |
| Change | Engineering changes affect open orders |
For job shops and contract manufacturers the product usually covers the whole cycle: quoting from customer drawings, purchasing, scheduling, the shop floor, shipping and invoicing.
Who uses it
| Role | Main work in the product |
|---|---|
| Estimator or sales | Quotes from drawings and requests |
| Planner | Releases jobs, schedules work centres, buys material |
| Operator | Runs operations at a machine and records output |
| Quality | Inspects, records nonconformances |
| Owner or manager | Follows margins, on-time delivery and capacity |
| Customer | In some products, submits requests for quote and approves quotes through a portal |
What makes it hard to design
Revisions. The BOM revision in force has to be shown on every work order.
Status per operation. Job travellers and status per operation keep the floor and the office in step.
Quality inside the routing. Quality steps belong in the routing, so inspection happens at the operation that produced the part.
Customer-supplied material. Material the customer provides is handled as its own case. It is not bought, is costed differently and has to be traceable back to the customer.
Quotes start from drawings, files and emails. Moving requests and approvals into the product replaces email threads and keeps pricing discussions with the record.
Trade-offs
- Recording at operation level gives accurate costing and traceability, and operators pay for it with an extra action at every step. With a coarser structure the floor runs easily, and reports later lack the detail.
- Automatic rescheduling finds better sequences than manual placement, and planners find it hard to trust a plan when nobody can explain why a job moved.
Common mistakes
- An engineering change applied to orders already in progress. Each order needs a fixed, visible revision.
- Status held only at order level
- Quality records in a system separate from production
- Labour recorded in bulk at shift end
Where we’ve worked on this