Odoo
One Stop Shop for Manufacturers

Typically, manufacturers utilize more than ten applications for managing their business. But, with each department using a different application, keeping everyone on the same page would be difficult as software integration is expensive, time-consuming, and inefficient. Odoo, a Hong Kong-based company addresses this challenge by offering different applications such as material requirements planning (MRP), quality, maintenance, accounting, procurement, and product lifecycle management (PLM) under one platform, perfectly integrated with each other, allowing different departments to access single source of truth, and fully automate business processes. “Odoo covers all business needs in a one-stop solution: no more interfaces between different software required,” remarks Salvatore Provenzano, APAC Director, Odoo.

Odoo is unlike classic ERP vendors that provide one application to address one specific problem and other application to address other specific problem with zero interactions amongst these applications. With the company’s all-in-one business management software, the manufacturers can flexibly start with one application and gradually add others to cover most of the functionalities that they seek. For instance, clients can add CRM application to manage their customers, and if they face issues with quotation, they can harness an invoicing application. Also, the clients can add accounting applications to manage their billing transactions. All these applications operate together and collaterally to execute the business processes.

Using Odoo’s MRP, the manufacturers can accurately manage materials based on real-time manufacturing measures while the application captures data from equipment. It renders worksheets and sends quality alerts to workers during operations.

The clients can apply rules for make-to-order, minimum stock, or the minimum master stock, besides the master production schedule to automate procurements.

Odoo Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) leverages enterprise social network to facilitate communication across multiple departments. Users can follow what they need, approvals are simple, and discussions on documents are centralized and real time. The application allows attaching documents directly to Bill of Materials (BoMs) while managing multiple versions of documents. The manufacturing department can lodge maintenance requests from their work center control panel, and when maintenance team acts, the related users will be updated instantly.
Users can define quality control plans to initiate quality checks at specific inventory operations and set up in-process, final, and receive inspections based on a quality control plan. Odoo Quality Control allows users to manage and track production part approval process (PPAP) submissions and configure statistical process control (SPC).

Odoo has become the critical element in the manufacturing process as manufacturers can execute the complete product lifecycles that is inclusive of material procurement to equipment maintenance. Offered as software as a service (SaaS) and on-premise, Odoo can be rolled out as a single module at a time.

“Odoo is an open-source alternative to many software packages, and the manufactures will see that the total cost of completing a project would be much cheaper than using the classic ERP solutions,” quips Provenzano. Because of its open-source background, Odoo can leverage thousands of developers and business experts to build hundreds of applications in just a few years.

In an instance, Alta Motors, the electric motorcycle manufacturer, sought a quickly installable ERP system that could manage complex products. After deploying Odoo, the manufacturer could easily control various functionalities that they implemented and also build new ones. Also, Alta Motors, the company with a workforce of 50, had to engage only two employees for managing ERP and MRP. Eventually, Alta Motors could scale up the operations, introduce new products, and expand geographically.

“We are aiming for localization in a lot of countries and localization includes accounting, inflation so all things can be localized specific to the market,” adds Provenzano. The company also plans to build a platform of services that would harbor third-party software and services.