Industry — Manufacturing & Light Assembly

    MRP and ERP for Australian small-to-mid manufacturers who’ve outgrown spreadsheet BOMs

    If you’re a manufacturer, assembler, or fabricator running BOMs in Excel, work orders on a clipboard, and costing on faith — you’re not alone, and you’re also not safe. We implement Odoo as a full MRP and operational backbone for Australian manufacturers between $1M and $30M turnover. Cin7 Core for lighter assembly and kitting operations. Either way, you stop guessing what a finished good actually costs.

    What we hear from manufacturing operators

    Manufacturing pain is rarely about the production itself. It’s about the connective tissue around it — BOMs, costing, scheduling, and inventory.

    BOMs live in spreadsheetsMulti-level BOMs maintained by one person who knows where the bodies are buried. Version control is “the latest email attachment”.
    Costing is a guessYou quote based on last quarter’s costs. Material prices have moved 8%, labour rates have changed, and your margin assumptions are stale.
    Work orders are paperProduction schedules go to the shop floor on a printed sheet. Updates come back as scribbled notes, then get re-keyed by someone in the office — usually two days late.
    MRP planning is gut feelYou order raw materials based on what you ran out of last time. Half your stock is over-ordered, half is back-ordered, none of it is balanced.
    Quality data is invisibleDefects, rework, scrap — recorded inconsistently if at all. You can’t prove your yield to a customer or yourself.
    Job costing is post-mortemYou only know if a manufacturing job was profitable after the customer pays. Sometimes weeks later. Wrong quotes keep going out in the meantime.

    What we recommend you put in place

    For Australian manufacturers, Odoo is the modern mid-market choice for MRP — properly configured, it covers everything from BOM management through to shop floor data capture, without the six-figure price tag of legacy ERPs.

    MRP & Production
    Odoo Manufacturing: multi-level BOMs with version control, work orders, routings, work centres, MRP run, and shop-floor terminal. Cin7 Core handles lighter assembly and kitting where you don’t need full MRP.
    Costing
    Real cost per finished good: standard cost vs actual, material at current cost, labour at routing rate, overhead allocated. Variance reporting so you spot pricing drift before it eats your margin.
    Inventory & MRP
    Material requirements planning driven by sales forecasts, safety stock, and lead times. Reorder rules that actually trigger correctly. Multi-warehouse visibility.
    Quality & Maintenance
    In-line and final quality checks logged against work orders. Equipment maintenance scheduled against runtime, not memory. Quality data feeds back into supplier scoring.
    Sales & CRM
    Quote-to-cash inside the same system. Quotes built from real BOMs and current costs. CRM and sales pipeline sit alongside production, not in a separate tool.
    Accounting
    Xero or MYOB for the books. Invoices, bills, COGS, and inventory valuations flow across cleanly.
    Custom integrations
    Connections to legacy machines, supplier portals, customer EDI, freight platforms — built with Make.com, Zapier, or custom Python where needed.

    How we deliver this

    Manufacturing implementations have one rule: get the BOMs and routings right, or nothing else works. We spend more time on master data than most consultants do, because it’s where projects fail.

    BOM & routing audit (2–3 weeks)

    We work through your products, components, suppliers, and routings. Clean, structure, version. This is the unglamorous foundation everything else sits on.

    Configure & pilot a product line (4–6 weeks)

    Odoo Manufacturing configured to match your shop. We pilot with one product line first — runs work orders, captures shop-floor data, runs costing — before going wide.

    Roll out remaining lines (3–6 weeks)

    Once the pilot proves the configuration, we roll BOMs and routings for remaining product lines, train operators, and cut over scheduling and MRP planning.

    Optimise (ongoing)

    Once you have clean data, the real value appears: dynamic pricing, supplier scoring, OEE tracking, capacity planning, profit-per-product analysis. Things you couldn’t do without an operational backbone.

    Why Australian manufacturers work with Software4Business: Hanno Winterbach has implemented operational software for Australian SMEs for 25+ years — through MYOB, ABM, Cin7, and Odoo. We know what an honest MRP implementation actually costs, what the legacy desktop ERP vendors are still pitching, and where Odoo is genuinely better than the alternatives. Brisbane-based. You deal directly with the consultant doing the work.

    Common questions from manufacturers

    How does Odoo Manufacturing compare to MYOB Advanced or NetSuite?

    Odoo gives you 80% of the functionality at 30% of the licence cost — and it’s genuinely customisable without enterprise consulting fees. MYOB Advanced (Acumatica) and NetSuite suit larger or more complex businesses with deeper compliance needs. For most Australian manufacturers under 50 staff, Odoo wins on TCO and time-to-value.

    Can Odoo handle multi-level BOMs and phantom components?

    Yes. Multi-level BOMs, phantom (kit) BOMs, BOM variants, and effective-date BOMs are all native. Routings link operations to work centres with setup time, run time, and labour rates.

    What about shop-floor data capture without giving everyone a laptop?

    Odoo provides a tablet-friendly Shop Floor terminal — operators see their work orders, scan in, scan out, log quantities, log scrap, and complete operations. One tablet per work centre is usually enough.

    Do you still implement ABM or MYOB Exo for manufacturers?

    No. We’ve focused down to Cin7 Core and Odoo. ABM and Exo are still capable products but the modern operational stack lives elsewhere now — and the talent pool to maintain legacy desktop ERPs is shrinking.

    How long does an Odoo Manufacturing implementation take?

    For a single-site manufacturer with a clean product range, 12–18 weeks. Multi-site or complex routings push to 20–26 weeks. BOM cleanup is the single biggest variable.

    What does it cost?

    Odoo licensing $50–$100 per user per month depending on modules. Implementation $35K–$80K depending on complexity and BOM scope. Fixed-fee proposal after the BOM audit.

    Talk to a manufacturing software specialist

    15 minutes on Zoom. We’ll listen to where your production data is broken, tell you whether Odoo Manufacturing is the right fit, and what the implementation would actually cost.

    Book a Quick Call Request a 30-min Demo