Manufacturing Guides
Plain-English explanations of manufacturing concepts, operations, and software. Written for shop owners, not consultants.
Concepts
Understand the fundamentals
What is MRP?
Material Requirements Planning (MRP) is a system that calculates what materials you need, how much you need, and when you need them — based on your op...
What is ERP for Manufacturing?
ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning, but don't let the name intimidate you. For a manufacturing shop, ERP just means "one system that connects...
What is a Bill of Materials?
A Bill of Materials (BOM) is a complete list of everything needed to make a product — raw materials, components, sub-assemblies, hardware, and consuma...
Operations
Run your shop better
Job Shop Scheduling
Job shop scheduling is the art of assigning the right jobs to the right machines at the right time — while juggling rush orders, machine breakdowns, o...
Manufacturing Job Costing
Job costing is knowing what a job actually costs to produce — not what you quoted, but what you spent in labor, materials, and overhead. It's the diff...
Shop Floor Tracking
Shop floor tracking means knowing what's happening on your production floor in real-time — which operators are working on which jobs, how long operati...
Manufacturing Quoting & Estimating
Quoting is where margin is made or lost. An accurate quote wins work at a profitable price. An inaccurate quote either loses the job (too high) or win...
Quality Management for Job Shops
Quality management in a job shop isn't just about making good parts — it's about proving you make good parts. If you serve aerospace, defense, or medi...
Inventory Management for Manufacturers
Inventory management for a job shop isn't about warehousing thousands of SKUs. It's about knowing what raw material you have, what's committed to open...
Purchase Order Management
Purchase order management is the bridge between knowing what you need (MRP) and having it on the shelf (inventory). For job shops, purchasing is often...
Calculating Manufacturing Margins
Margin is the percentage of revenue that's profit. Markup is the percentage you add on top of cost. They're related but different, and confusing them ...
Manufacturing Traceability & Lot Tracking
Traceability is the ability to trace a finished part back through every step of its creation — which raw material lot it came from, which operations w...
First Article Inspection
First Article Inspection (FAI) is a formal verification that a new production process produces parts that meet all drawing and specification requireme...
Manufacturing Travelers
A manufacturing traveler (also called a job traveler, shop traveler, or router) is the document that follows a job through the shop floor. It tells ea...
Buying Guide
Choose the right tools
Replacing Spreadsheets with Manufacturing Software
Every manufacturing shop starts with spreadsheets. They're free, flexible, and everyone knows how to use them. But at some point — usually around 10-1...
What to Look for in a Manufacturing ERP
Choosing an ERP is one of the biggest technology decisions a manufacturing shop makes. Get it right and your shop runs smoother for years. Get it wron...
CNC Shop Management Software
CNC machine shops have specific needs that generic business software doesn't address. You need to track setup and run times per machine, manage toolin...
Cloud vs On-Premise ERP
The biggest architectural decision when choosing manufacturing ERP is cloud vs on-premise. On-premise means the software runs on your servers in your ...