Odoo for a Metal Fabrication Job Shop: Order Tracking and Nesting

Real client project, name withheld. Delivered at Master Software Solutions; my role is set out below. The client's name and identifying details are left out.

A Canadian precision metal fabrication job shop replaced spreadsheets and separate quoting and planning tools with Odoo, and gained automatic production batching linked to every sales order.

• Industry: Manufacturing: precision metal fabrication
• Location: Canada
• Platform: Odoo
• Odoo implementation
• Manufacturing
• Custom development

The problem

The shop does laser cutting, tube laser cutting, press brake bending and custom fabrication in steel, aluminium and structural sections, with more than a thousand projects behind it. Nobody could quickly answer where an order was, when it would be finished, or whether a delivery date was realistic. That put the business's 99% on-time delivery standard at risk.

The existing process

Orders were tracked in Excel, quotes were produced in separate quoting software, cutting was planned in the laser machines' nesting software, and accounts were kept in QuickBooks. Each tool did its own job, but none of them talked to the others, so checking an order's status meant asking people and opening files.

Business requirements

• Real-time status of every sales order across production stages.
• Quoting, production planning, inventory and delivery in one system.
• Production sequenced by delivery date, so promised dates are protected.
• Cutting work grouped sensibly for laser nesting, without manual sorting.

My role

I delivered this project at Master Software Solutions as consultant, tech lead, project manager and delivery manager: understanding how the shop and office worked and designing the Odoo solution, leading the MSS developers who built the nesting batches and the link to the nesting workflow, planning and running the project, and owning delivery through go-live and support.

The solution

Odoo became the single system for quotations, inventory, production planning, manufacturing and delivery tracking. The key piece of custom development was automatic batching for nesting: orders are grouped into batches and sub-batches by delivery date, product type, material thickness and material type, and each batch stays linked to the sales orders inside it. When a batch moves on, the progress of every order in it is visible immediately.

Key decisions

• Batch by delivery date first, then product type, thickness and material. The date protects the promise to the customer; the other three keep the same material and gauge together for efficient nesting.
• Keep a link from every batch back to its sales orders, so grouping work for production never hides the status of an individual order.
• Bring quoting into Odoo, so an accepted quote flows into production without being typed again.
• Connect to the nesting software rather than replace it. Specialist machine software does its job well; the gap was the information around it.

Odoo modules used

• Sales and quotations
• Manufacturing
• Inventory
• Production planning
• Delivery

Customizations

• Automatic nesting batches and sub-batches, grouped by delivery date, product type, material thickness and material type.
• Batch-to-sales-order links for real-time order tracking through production.

Integrations

• The laser nesting workflow, so batches created in Odoo feed cutting optimisation.

Implementation

End to end: process analysis of the shop floor and office, configuration and custom development, go-live and ongoing support.

Challenges

• Job-shop work means almost every order is different, so the batching rules had to cover a wide mix of parts and materials.
• Moving from several separate tools without losing track of orders already in production.

Results

• Real-time visibility of every order across production stages.
• Production sequenced by delivery date, supporting the 99% on-time delivery standard.
• Less material waste through better-grouped nesting.
• No more manual status checks across spreadsheets and separate tools.