Some of us do not like long blogs. If you are one of them, here is a short answer.
If you are an established business and looking for a fully loaded manufacturing ERP, Odoo and Fishbowl might be your best options. Katana is best suitable if you need Shopify and other e-commerce integrations. And if your business is small and growing, you can try Utilize - which provides simple, mobile-friendly apps that can be customized for your manufacturing teams in just minutes.
If you want an unfiltered and exhaustive list, go here. To know our top 8 picks, continue reading the blog.
Why do you need a manufacturing ERP?
Running a manufacturing business requires managing multiple processes and is a complicated affair. The best businesses grow consistently because they make sure their manufacturing processes are transparent and are tracked at every step. This helps them find solutions to problems like,
- How to optimize the usage of raw materials and reduce wastage?
- How to track the inventory that is manufactured and dispatched?
- How to analyze the performance of your teams and track their daily jobs?
- How to plan your resources so that you do not run out of inventory?
- How to predict future orders and keep up with the demand?
If you are solving similar problems, you would have evaluated different software for your manufacturing teams. A manufacturing ERP (also known as MRP software, shop floor management software, etc) software helps teams track and automate their manufacturing processes. They come with an exhaustive list of features, that will help manage raw materials, human resources, inventory, orders, and any other data in the manufacturing line.
That said, most software in the market might not be suitable for your business. A lot of them are designed for larger enterprises and not for small businesses. Those that are made for small businesses, come with a lot of features and will claim to solve all your problems. This makes finding the right software for your business difficult and complicated.
So we analyzed 30+ manufacturing ERP software and filtered a list of the 7 best software suitable for small businesses, along with their most popular features.
Top 7 manufacturing ERP and their features
Prodsmart
Best manufacturing ERP software with reporting features
ProdSmart is a fully customizable and flexible solution for fabricating and manufacturing processes where you can manage, track, analyze all aspects of operations like orders, workers, materials, machines, maintenance, waste, time, costs deriving real-time insights.
Features
- Powerful Scheduling and MRP
Leverage the real-time and historical data to plan and schedule the operations to meet production targets and balance workload. - Inventory Management
Add product trees, Bill of Material to track operations, raw materials with lot traceability, and manage multiple warehouse spaces. - Workflow Visualization
Improve the production system by creating visual workflows that help in identifying bottlenecks, avoiding loads, and setting priorities. - Generating Production Reports
Create custom parameters to track the production processes, generate real-time reports to understand different aspects of operations.
Pricing
The core solution starts with $600/month with unlimited seats, unlimited operators, and unlimited devices. There are different prices incurred for each additional feature.
Fishbowl
Best MRP software with accounting integrations like Quickbooks, Xero
Unlike other MRP software, FishBowl offers features that are deeply integrated into your accounting software. The software helps simplify processes like manufacturing and inventory, by improving efficiencies and reducing costs.
Features
- Inventory Management
Streamline inventory management by managing multiple warehouses, tracking purchase and manufactured orders through barcode scanning and lot/batch tracking, setting auto re-order points, checking stock-out and stock-in. - Workflow Automation
Create automated workflows for work orders. Manage each step in the manufacturing process, add step-by-step instructions, categorize, prioritize and schedule work orders. - Production stages
Manage the flow of inventory with real-time data. Organize jobs by production stages, calculate waste and yield estimates for each stage. - Seamless Integrations
FishBowl integrates with multiple business solutions like Amazon, QuickBooks, Shopify, Xero, Salesforce, etc to automate crucial business processes and manage multiple operations from a single source.
Pricing
You can try FishBowl with a 14-day trial and schedule a demo for more pricing information. The software starts at $4,395, which gives you permanent ownership.
Katana
Best MRP software with e-commerce integrations like Shopify
Katana MRP is best suitable for e-commerce businesses looking to manage processes end-to-end from procurement, planning to the tracing of finished goods in one visual platform. It is flexible, intuitive to use, provides easy customer onboarding and multiple eCommerce integrations like Shopify.
Features
- Optimized Inventory Management
With Katana, you can have full control over finished products and raw material inventory, automate transactions, and set re-order points. You can track stock-out, stock-in, on-hand inventory in real-time, and use a barcode to receive and count stocks. - Master Planning
Manage production, scheduling, and resources in one place. Get real-time visibility of data to make accurate production decisions, control shop-floor tasks effectively and prioritize production based on resource availability. - Order Management
Ensure on-time purchasing based on material requirements, and know when to buy from your suppliers. You can also manage omnichannel orders by syncing sales orders from multiple channels into a single dashboard. - Custom workflows
Katana’s open API connects with Integromat, Zapier to create custom workflows and streamline the operations.
Pricing
You can try Katana MRP with a 14-day trial. The essential plan starts at $129/month. You can explore the product and schedule a demo call with the sales team.
Odoo
Best open-source manufacturing ERP
Odoo is an open-source solution for every business operation like sales, HR, inventory and manufacturing, marketing, etc. The manufacturing software is a universal solution for supply chain, quality control, maintenance, product lifecycle management (PLM) integrated with multiple business solutions.
Features
- Order Management
With Odoo, you can manage manufacturing orders into assembly lines, use a barcode to speed up manufacturing operations, manage repairs of items. - Scheduling and Planning
Plan and reschedule manufacturing based on the availability of stock and time, organize work orders, and schedule the upcoming work based on OEE and capacity of work center using MRP scheduler. - Inventory Management
Track every stock move from purchase to sales order, optimize inventory by avoiding material shortage using lead time, routes and get real-time reports and data for inventory levels. - Maintenance and Quality
Track mean time between failure (MTBF), mean time to repair (MTTR) for the machines, and plan preventive maintenance scheduling keeps your production line running. Perform quality checks for inventory and parts at different stages of production to ensure the quality of items.
Pricing
You have to only pay for the features you use. The pricing for the manufacturing app starts from $48/month. You can schedule a demo to know more.
Brahmin Solutions
Best manufacturing ERP software with inventory features
Brahmin Solutions is a cloud-based inventory management software designed to manage all business operations in one central location. It helps in warehouse management, multichannel inventory management, batch expiry tracking, and more.
Features
- Inventory Control
Get full visibility of inventory across all channels and warehouses to avoid stock-outs and maintain inventory levels. You can check inventory status anytime for any product, generate inventory location, and re-order reports. - Production Management
Easily manage manufacturing processes with a Bill of materials, create purchase orders to ensure you have the necessary stock to complete your productions. Add labor and overhead charges to your manufacturing processes to get accurate costs for your product. - Manage multichannel inventory
Brahmin Solutions helps you to sell across channels without incurring extra costs due to stock-outs, overstocks. It syncs real-time inventory data from all channels into one single platform and derives data on top of that. - Warehouse Management
Manage stocks across multiple locations and warehouses from one central location. Fulfill orders and receive stocks from a specific warehouse and generate location reports for them.
Pricing
The growth plan starts from $299/month. You can explore the plans and book a demo with the team.
Prodio
Best MRP Software for shop floors with small teams.
Prodio is a go-to solution for small manufacturing businesses providing all features they need to run their day-to-day operations. From production planning to managing inventory, it does everything to automate shop floor operations.
Features
- Production planning
Plan and schedule the tasks for workers along with comments, priority, and attachments. Get a real-time view of the production floor, check tasks’ progress, machine hours. - Order and Inventory Management
Control and manage the orders with one click, viewing the real-time progress of each operation. You can check stock levels at any time to avoid stock-outs and schedule production. - Shop Floor Control
Workers register the start/end of operations, progress, comments. You can also check the detailed consumption of raw materials. - Attendance Tracking
You can check the clock in/out times, breaks of workers to track their productivity. Track the real-time status of workers to see their progress and the tasks they’ve started.
Pricing
The basic plan starts from $49/month. You can start with a 14-day trial and schedule a demo to know more about their pricing and functionalities.
JobBOSS
Best MRP Software for shop floors with large teams.
JobBOSS is the most flexible MRP solution for shop floor management that offers a true ‘job’ flow. It can be implemented on the cloud or on-premise with complete custom solutions for manufacturing processes.
Features
- Scheduling and Planning
Schedulers will get full visibility into the shop floor operation details and respond to customers’ details quickly. Get details of each job, use work centers to their most productive capacity, ensuring the availability of materials and machines required. Effective scheduling help avoid machine bottlenecks, keep employees and jobs on schedule, minimize employee overtime, and cut labor costs. - Material and Inventory Control
You can manage larger inventories or raw materials by controlling the demand and supply of the material. Just-in-time purchasing results in increased profitability and reduced material wastage. Easy tracking of inventory through lot numbers and making smart bulk orders. - What-if scenarios
Create “what-if” planning scenarios to explore the changes and ensure capacity before committing them and deciding the due dates to deliver on time. - Cost Analysis
The robust cost analysis and reporting feature provide information used to analyze the job, part, and overall shop performance while jobs are in process and after they are completed. You can re-quote parts, analyze part costs and profitability trends.
Pricing
JobBOSS comes in different packages offering different features. You can schedule a demo with the team and choose accordingly.
Choosing the best manufacturing software for your business
Good software & automation is a necessity for any manufacturing business to grow. With many manufacturing ERP software in the market, there is no dearth of solutions. In fact, the problem at hand is of abundance.
In order to find the right software, you will have to try some of these products and read reviews on websites like Capterra, and G2. You can also check our framework designed for small businesses to evaluate if an ERP software solution fits your requirements or not.
If you are still stuck and need help in finding a manufacturing ERP for your business, go ahead and book a demo with us. We are building Utilize, a tool to create mobile-friendly apps that can be customized for your manufacturing teams in just minutes.
