Software for manufacturers
Built for the floor, not the boardroom
Most factory software fails for the same reason: it was designed around the report management wanted, not the job the operator has to finish. If entering data slows a worker down, the data stops being accurate within a month and the reports become fiction. We start at the machine and work upward.
- Works on a shared tablet with gloves on and patchy signal
- Urdu labels where the operator needs them
- Runs alongside your existing accounting software
The problem
Three gaps that quietly decide your margin
Every factory we have walked through has at least two of these. They rarely cause a crisis. They just make every month slightly worse than it should have been.
The floor runs on registers and group chats
Production status lives in a supervisor’s notebook and a phone message. Ask where order 4471 has reached and somebody has to walk over and look. By the time the answer arrives it has already changed.
Stock on paper is not stock in the store
The ledger says there are 400 metres. The store has 260. Purchasing orders against the ledger, production plans against the ledger, and the difference surfaces at the worst moment, usually mid run.
You learn the real cost after it shipped
Material, labour, wastage and rework get added up weeks later, if at all. Some orders turn out to have lost money and nobody can say which decision caused it, so the same quote goes out again next month.
What you receive
Modules that map to how your factory already works
Production planning and job cards
Orders broken into stages with a job card per stage, assigned to a machine and a team, with a due date. The supervisor updates status from a tablet at the station. Management sees the board without asking anyone.
Inventory and store management
Raw material, work in progress and finished goods, with issue and return against a job card, reorder levels, batch and lot tracking where you need traceability, and a physical count process that reconciles rather than overwrites.
Quality control
Inspection at the stages that matter, pass, rework or reject with a reason code, and rejection reports by machine, shift, operator and supplier. Patterns in the reason codes are usually where the money is.
Maintenance and downtime
Preventive schedules per machine, breakdown logging with cause and duration, and spare parts consumption. Downtime stops being an anecdote and becomes a number you can put next to a repair quote.
Costing per order
Material issued, labour hours, wastage and rework attached to the specific order, so the margin is visible while the job is still running and not a surprise at month end.
Management dashboards
Output against plan, order status, stock position, rejection trend and machine availability. Built to be read on a phone in two minutes, because that is when the owner actually looks at it.
How it runs
We start on the floor, not in a requirements document
Walk the floor, week 1
We follow one order from purchase order to dispatch and write down every register, every signature and every phone call that moves it along. This usually surfaces two or three steps that exist only because they always have.
Map and agree, weeks 2 and 3
The process as it is, the process as it should be, and the gap between them written down and signed off by the people who do the work. Where we propose changing a habit, we say why, and you can refuse.
Build in phases
One department at a time, usually stores first, because accurate stock makes everything after it easier. Each phase goes live and is used for real before the next one starts.
Run parallel, then switch
For a few weeks the registers continue alongside the system so differences get caught while both records exist. Training happens at the station, in the language the operator uses, not in a conference room.
Worth knowing
What separates the factory systems that survive from the ones that get abandoned
We have been called in to replace abandoned systems often enough to see the pattern.
Start with one department
Computerising the whole factory at once means a long build, a big switchover, and an enormous amount of change landing on people in the same week. One department, working properly, buys the goodwill for the next.
The operator decides whether it works
If a screen takes ninety seconds when the register took ten, the register comes back, and it will come back quietly. Data entry on the floor has to be faster than what it replaces, which usually means fewer fields, bigger buttons and barcodes.
Fix the process before you print barcodes
Scanners and label printers are cheap and they are not the hard part. If items are not consistently coded and the store has no fixed locations, hardware just makes the wrong data arrive faster.
An ERP is a commitment, not a purchase
Somebody inside the company has to own it after we hand over, with time set aside for the job. Where that person is not named before the project starts, the system drifts out of date within a year regardless of how well it was built.
Questions
What manufacturers ask before starting
How much does a manufacturing system cost?
A single module such as stores or production tracking typically runs 400,000 to 900,000 PKR. A connected system covering planning, inventory, quality and costing is usually 1,500,000 to 4,000,000 PKR, driven by the number of processes rather than the number of users.
Does it work if the internet drops on the floor?
Yes. Floor screens keep accepting entries while the connection is down and sync when it returns. In most plants we also put the server on site, so production never depends on an external link.
Can it connect to our accounting software?
In most cases yes. Where a supported integration exists we use it, and where it does not we agree a scheduled export so finance is not entering the same figures twice. This gets decided during the mapping phase, not after the build.
How long does it take?
A first module is usually live in eight to twelve weeks. A full rollout across departments takes six to twelve months, and it should, because each phase needs to survive real production before the next one starts.
Do you train our staff?
Yes, at the station rather than in a classroom, and we stay through the first weeks of parallel running. We also train two people inside your company to handle day to day changes, so small adjustments do not require calling us.
Start here
Tell us what your floor cannot answer today
Where an order has reached, what stock is actually in the store, or what a completed job really cost. Whichever of those is hardest to answer is where we would start, and we will tell you what that phase involves before you commit to anything.