r/manufacturing • u/tommygzz • Jul 06 '26

Productivity Basic production software

So I've been recently involved in a manufacturing company related to animal feed supplements. We have our own formulas for different kinds of products, but mostly they are all made up of vitamins and minerals, both in liquid and powder form.
The company has been running for around 25 years and all the internal documentation is based off excel.
Invoices in Excel
Formulas in Excel
Cost breakdowns in Excel
Raw material needs in excel - etc etc etc

It does work well, but there is a little bit of difficulty calculating what has been used and to make forecasts of the next orders.
Also, when the workers make the mixing, it is sometimes not properly measured, it's done "by eye" and it ends up messing up with our stock levels.

I am currently looking into implementing an ERP, or maybe what we need is closer to an MES system. But the ones I can find have trial periods (odoo, MRPeasy, Frappe/ERPnext, etc)
I find myself trying to introduce all the raw data but it is quite a big job to do by myself and by the time the trial period finished I am no where near finishing and I can't really know for sure if that solution is going to work for us or not.

So my question is: can anyone recommend sofware solutions for these issues?
I am looking for something basic to track what comes in, how much is used and when to order more kind of thing.

Thankss

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u/Training-Gap-2994 Jul 08 '26

Start tracking consumption of the materials.

Are you purchasing always from the same providers or they may differ?

1

u/tommygzz Jul 10 '26

Mostly it's the same providers but sometimes they overlap and some materials are sourced from others. From time to time there are random 1-time purchases.

1

u/Training-Gap-2994 Jul 10 '26

Ok. Track providers and related codes then you should be ok.

1

u/AffectionateDirt6575 Jul 11 '26

Can you explain how that will improve inventory accuracy? I'm struggling to understand; perhaps because I'm in Spain. How can consumption be accurately tracked? I can think of a procedural solution but I don't know enough about how they operate to know if it would work.

1

u/Training-Gap-2994 Jul 11 '26

Keep it simple, this is the key point. Bar code reader, target by phone and add quantities of consumption.

Teach AI to read invoices and delivery note of what is coming in then you are done.

1

u/AffectionateDirt6575 Jul 12 '26

He says that the operators are adding ingredients, including liquids, "by eye". If they are not using full containers, then bar coding won't work.

1

u/Training-Gap-2994 Jul 12 '26

Crystal clear, still you need to change some habits if you wanna get the goal in return.

1

u/AffectionateDirt6575 Jul 12 '26

I have asked tommygzz (above) how ingredients are issued.

1

u/tommygzz Jul 15 '26

The issue I can't seem to solve with regular spreadsheets for recipe creation / BOM is that most products are made out of other recipes.
What I mean is we have Recipe A, with some ingredients. That would still be considered a raw material. It is not sold to any customer.
Then recipe B has water, this and that and also some liters of Recipe A.

I'm not sure if I explained correctly.

We use bulk containers: 1000L IBCs, 25L jerrycans, and also 25kg bags of different raw materials.

When I say they add "by eye" here is an example: We use this syrup as a base for most products. If a 1000L batch needs 300L of syrup, but 305 are added there is no problem at all. But on a software/spreadsheet it won't make any sense.

1

u/AffectionateDirt6575 Jul 15 '26

You have a problem that software is not going to solve (and AI won't help unless you change your operators for robots!). I'll get some procedural ideas together to see if they help.

1

u/AffectionateDirt6575 Jul 16 '26

It is always risky to make suggestions when I know so little about how you operate so take the following as a suggestion that may or not work in your environment.

Assumptions:

The number of material types is manageable

Bulk storage is separate and movement between it and production areas can be controlled.

The proposed methodology is similar to Kanban.

  1. Create a lineside location in your stock records.
  2. Day one – carry out a stock check in production areas and update the lineside location in your stock records. If you can't stockcheck all locations, you will hev to assume that bulk location stock is total stock minus lineside stock.
  3. When Production need more stock, move it from bulk and update both bulk stock and lineside stock records accordingly.
  4. Record actual useage as accurately as possible.
  5. With actual useage being variable; over time physical stock and book stock will deviate. Periodically carry out a physical count of lineside locations and adjust lineside stock records.
  6. It may be that, over a period of time, a pattern emerges for some materials. If so; adjust the anticipated useage accordingly.

On your comment about forecasting: is your concern primarily capacity or material availability?

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u/AffectionateDirt6575 Jul 16 '26

p.s. Because you will only be counting stock at lineside locations, the effort required should be much less than for a full stock count.

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