Teaching the ERP Each Product’s Route Through the Factory

Teaching the ERP Each Product’s Route Through the Factory

How undocumented shop-floor knowledge became a manufacturing ERP workflow that anyone can read.

Introduction

Manufacturing a concrete product is never a single-step process, and the route is not the same for every product. A compound wall panel is cast in a mould, left to set, de-moulded, bundled, moved to the curing yard, cured for days and then transferred to storage racks. A paver is pressed, cured and shifted to racks, while a shot-blasted paver takes an extra step through the shot-blasting machine before becoming a finished sellable item.

Every one of these stages is a physical material movement between real factory locations, and the manufacturing ERP system must record each movement accurately.

Problem Statement

1. Product routes existed only in people’s memory.

For every product and every machine, someone had to remember the correct stock entry type, source warehouse, target warehouse, unit of measure and batch logic. That knowledge was held by a few experienced staff members and in spreadsheets that quickly became outdated.

2. Work slowed down when key staff were unavailable.

If the people who knew the routing logic were absent, production entries either stopped or were entered incorrectly.

3. Wrong warehouse entry created major inventory issues.

When material moved from or to the wrong warehouse, stock became inaccurate. This caused negative stock, blocked future transactions and made inventory management and product costing unreliable.

4. One product route was modelled incorrectly.

In one product family, the warehouse used by the sales team was being reduced by later production steps. As a result, stock appeared negative even though physical stock was available in the yard. The issue was with the route design, not with user effort.

5. Adding a machine or process step required development work.

Whenever a new machine, working area or routing step was introduced, it required code changes instead of a simple configuration update.

Solution Implemented

a. Every production operation was defined once as configuration.

Thirvusoft created an SGP Operation setup for each stage of each item group. This made the product route visible inside the ERP, easy to understand and editable without needing a developer.

b. Warehouse mapping was defined per workstation and working area.

Source and target warehouses were configured for each workstation because actual material movement differs across machines and areas. The ERP now follows defined rules instead of relying on memory.

c. Raw material source was clearly specified.

Each operation defines whether raw materials should be taken from the item’s BOM or from the actual quantity recorded for that production run. This improves production costing accuracy.

d. Unit conversion was built into the routing setup.

Production may be recorded in pieces, square feet, running feet or cubic metres, while stock may be maintained in another unit. This UOM conversion is now part of the configuration rather than a manual calculation.

e. Batch handling was included, even for complex cases.

The solution supports one production run creating multiple finished batches and also supports products that must retain their original batch identity after reprocessing, such as shot-blasted pavers.

f. The incorrect routing sequence was corrected at the model level.

The item group with wrong warehouse flow was remapped so that the warehouse used for sales became the final stage in the route. This fixed the root cause instead of masking the symptom.

Outcomes & Benefits

✓ Each product’s route through the factory is now clearly defined inside the ERP for manufacturing.

✓ Shop-floor knowledge that once depended on experienced staff is now available to authorised users inside the system.

✓ Recording production no longer requires users to remember warehouse logic or stock movement rules.

✓ New staff can start using the process faster because the route is already built into the ERP workflow.

✓ Adding a new machine, working area or production step is now a configuration change, not a development task.

✓ Costly inventory mistakes caused by wrong warehouse entries are greatly reduced.

✓ Every stock entry can be previewed before submission, improving control and accuracy.

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