Connect engineering, bills of materials and costing
CAD, ERP and Excel serve different purposes in manufacturing. When geometry, bills of materials and costing are maintained separately, changes need to reach each system reliably. Otherwise, purchasing may work from an outdated revision or costing may use old figures. This page explains what standard Odoo handles, where development is needed and which manufacturing projects we can show as references.
Where it usually breaks
The handovers between engineering, purchasing, production planning and accounting deserve particular attention. We examine how information moves between these teams.
Engineering releases need to reach the ERP. When a new revision is released in CAD, the ERP retains the old bill of materials until it is transferred or updated manually.
Changes also affect open purchase orders. Purchasing needs to identify the order lines affected by a revision. Otherwise, the supplier continues working from the previous order specification.
Variants need a common data source. If variant A is held in the ERP while B and C are maintained in Excel, production planning has to reconcile both sets of records.
Costing needs material, time and overhead data. Manually combining these inputs makes calculations harder to trace. Without actual time records, there is also no reliable basis for comparing estimated and actual costs.
Traceability depends on the underlying records. Tracing a purchased component’s batch requires delivery notes and inspection reports. When these exist only on paper, answering a customer’s query takes more work.
What Odoo Manufacturing does out of the box
Multi-level bills of materials, routings and manufacturing orders are standard Odoo functions. After training, your team can configure the functions marked as standard below.
| Requirement | Standard | Configuration | Development |
|---|---|---|---|
| Multi-level BoMs with variants | yes | attributes and rules per product family | no |
| Routings with work centres, setup and cycle times | yes | work centres and capacities | no |
| Manufacturing order from sales order or reorder point | yes | replenishment rules per product | no |
| Engineering change orders and BoM versions | yes (PLM, Enterprise) | approval stages | no |
| Lots and serial numbers from receipt to delivery | yes | tracking per product category | no |
| Quality checks at receipt and in production | yes (Quality, Enterprise) | control points and tolerances | no |
| Shop floor tablet for operators | yes | work instructions and feedback | no |
| Handover from CAD or PDM into product and BoM | no | yes | |
| Impact of a revision on open purchase orders | no | yes | |
| Costing sheet with your surcharges per job | partly | cost price from BoM and routing | usually yes |
| Inspection reports and labels in the customer's format | no | yes |
We use these standard functions wherever possible so your team can configure day-to-day operations itself. Custom development requires additional technical support.
What usually has to be built
For businesses with in-house engineering, the main development task is the CAD or PDM handover. Further adjustments depend on your processes.
- CAD or PDM link: Odoo has no standard connector to your CAD or PDM system. If a release should create the product and propose the BoM, we build that.
- Impact on open orders: Seeing which purchase lines a revision touches needs a report Odoo does not ship.
- Costing: Odoo calculates cost price from BoM and routing. Your surcharge logic and quote sheet are an adjustment on top.
- Machine data: It can be read in through the Odoo IoT box or an interface. We promise nothing here before talking to your machine supplier.
References from manufacturing
Both customers below run their own production. We do not currently have a published machine-building reference with a CAD integration. Reference conversations can be arranged on request.
Raumschmiede GmbH in Genderkingen, Germany, manufactures its own products and sells them through three brands: Garten und Freizeit, Betten.de and Piolo. Before Odoo, production planning was not connected to sales or the warehouse. Today orders from all three shops arrive in Odoo automatically. Production, warehouse and invoicing work in the same database, with one stock across all brands and locations.
Coopérative Zoyout near Essaouira, Morocco, produces olive and argan oil under the Domaine Villa Maroc brand. Harvest, pressing and bottling are recorded in Odoo. Batches can be traced from harvest to the export customer, and export documentation sits in the same system.
We demonstrate the setup in a test database using your own bills of materials, so you can assess its suitability for your operation.
Where Odoo stops
Odoo is not an MES and does not do finite scheduling with simulation. We state this limit before the quote.
Capacity planning works with work centres and times, not with optimisation runs over setup sequences. Real-time machine states, tool management and shift models with break logic belong in an MES or in a customisation that we price before the quote. Odoo stores drawings as attachments on the product, not as versioned CAD models. If design is your core, the PDM system stays the master and Odoo receives the release.
First step: one assembly, two revisions
Send an assembly in two revisions together with its latest purchase order. We use these in an Odoo test database and show you how the standard software handles the change.
We reply within one business day. After the meeting, you receive an overview classifying requirements as standard, configuration or development. Implementation starts at €22,000 and takes 8 to 16 weeks; the fixed-price quote follows within five business days. All packages are on the pricing page.