Odoo In Manufacturing: Pricing, Modules, & Use Cases In Australia

How does Odoo for manufacturing help transform business operations?

Manufacturers constantly face various challenges from demand forecasting, inventory management, and production planning, to quality control and cost analysis. These challenges significantly affect manufacturing productivity, profitability, and reputation. This is where Odoo manufacturing apps play a huge role as robust and integrated solutions that can streamline the entire process, optimise resources, and inform better decisions.

Let’s dive in and explore Odoo for Australia, and how its manufacturing apps support various local businesses.

Why Odoo For Manufacturing In Australia?

Manufacturers are harnessing technological advances to cope with production bottlenecks while maintaining competitiveness in the market. Odoo for Manufacturing - a popular open-source ERP system, is gaining prominence among Australian businesses. Odoo stands out because of its cost-effectiveness, high scalability, and an expanding feature set tailored to the local market.

Read more:

• Updates from Odoo’s R&D team about Odoo 18
• New features and updates in Odoo 17

Ready-made features for Australian Manufacturing success

Odoo provides more than just a standard ERP system. Recently, Odoo has added more localised functions that are intended to simplify Australian business processes, including:

• Payroll Management - Complying with Australian labour laws. Not only does it manage salary structures and contracts, but Odoo also creates compliant paystubs that integrate seamlessly with the accounting module.
• Local Shipping - Streamlined supply chain with local carriers. Odoo connects well with well-known Australian carriers such as Starshipit, Australia Post, DHL, Startrack, etc. This will help users ensure correct cost estimations and timely deliveries.
• Taxations - Simplified Australian tax regulations. Odoo makes compliance easier with built-in features like automated BAS reports, the generation of customer statements with remittance guidance, and Peppol support.
• Bank Integration - Optimised financial reconciliation. Users can import bank statements via OFX files to eliminate manual work and ensure accurate bank account balances.
• Localised Experience - Friendly interface for the Australian market. Odoo integrates local terms such as GST and BAS reports, installs "English (AU)" automatically in Aussie databases, and follows AU date formats for your EOFY procedures. This clears up any uncertainty and encourages your Australian workforce.
• Trusted by Australian Businesses -  Many Australian manufacturers choose Odoo to transform their operations. You can read case studies from successful Australian Odoo projects to gain more insights into the platform's capabilities.

Odoo is dedicated to the Australian market in ways that go beyond its applications. Odoo.com and Odoo.sh also provide exclusive server options in Sydney that give Australian manufacturers better data protection and lower latency.

Watch now for more details about Odoo's latest updates on Australian features:

Introducing Odoo For Manufacturing Businesses

1. An overview

Odoo is an open-source Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system that integrates key business functions via its core business modules. Specifically, for manufacturing, Odoo consists of built-in modules designed specifically to cover all aspects of production from design to delivery. These specialised modules include Odoo Material Requirements Planning (MRP), Maintenance, Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), Quality, Shop Floor, and other helpful ones like Inventory and Purchase.

How does Odoo align with your specific workflows? As an Official Odoo Partner in Australia, we have extensive years of experience and records of successful Odoo projects for Aussie businesses. Talk to our local experts to analyse your processes, identify areas for improvement, and develop custom Odoo solutions that work for your operations.

2. Pricing breakdown

Odoo has two main editions:

• Odoo Community - Free forever with limited features: This includes almost all essential modules for manufacturers including MRP, Purchase, Maintenance, and Inventory.

• Odoo Enterprise - 3 Different levels of pricing for different business needs: The higher the pricing plan you choose, the more features and support you will receive.

Under the Free plan, you can use 1 module for free with unlimited users. One exception to note is that you can use several modules for free. If you choose a module that requires integration with others, you also get these required modules for free. 

For example, the Manufacturing module (MRP) and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) go together, so you can use these two with this free plan. In a nutshell, Odoo lets you start with any module, and regardless of its dependencies, the usage will always be free for unlimited users.

With the Paid plans, you can use many apps for a single fee. Their pricing primarily depends on two key criteria: the number of paying users & customisation capabilities. Learn more details in Odoo Pricing & Features - A Guide For Beginners.

8 Essential Odoo Modules For Manufacturing Businesses

1. Material Requirements Planning (MRP)

Cost control and production planning are difficult tasks that are often filled with errors and inefficiencies. Odoo MRP offers an extensive toolkit that helps optimise resource allocation, improve production processes, and get real-time cost data. This results in less waste, better scheduling, and more profitability, as manufacturers can:

• Gain a comprehensive view of the entire planning process and easily adjust the manufacturing schedule with accessible resources;
• Monitor the availability of items in the warehouse and production timelines with precision;
• Use the MRP Scheduler to plan your work at each work center, based on their OEE and capacity;
• Track the cost of each manufacturing order based on the cost of the components and the cost of your operations (labour or material);
• Integrate Odoo MRP with the Accounting module to record and manage financial transactions of the production process;
• Manage production orders for products or BOMs in real-time and assign them to different work centres or production lines;
• Manage routings for products or BOMs and define the sequence and duration of each production operation or activity;
• Use barcodes to enhance the efficiency of the manufacturing processes.

2. Maintenance

Equipment in the production process needs to be in good condition and working order to ensure the quality and efficiency of the products. Its failure can result in downtime, waste, defects, accidents, etc., which can affect the overall productivity of the manufacturing business. Odoo MRP integrates with the Maintenance module that reduces downtime, allowing manufacturers to:

• Define equipment, categories, serial numbers, locations, etc., and track their status and performance;
• Create preventive and predictive maintenance plans and schedules for equipment based on time intervals;
• Create work orders for maintenance and assign them to technicians;
• Analyse maintenance performance with key metrics such as downtime, costs, quality, etc.

3. Product Lifecycle Management (PLM)

Engineering changes can be driven by various factors such as customer feedback, market demand, technological innovation, quality issues, cost reduction, and others. These adjustments can affect manufacturers in many ways such as increased product quality and customer satisfaction, or reduced production costs.

Odoo offers the Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) module to manage these engineering changes. It helps manufacturers to:

• Easily compare differences between versions to track changes;
• Monitor changes with a great Kanban process for Engineering Change Orders (ECOs);
• Keep tabs on product versions and ECOs along with their respective documents;
• Consolidate different ECOs linked to the same Bills of Materials (BOMs);
• Store plans and worksheets on BóM and routings for convenient access.

4. Quality

Quality has a significant impact on customer satisfaction and loyalty. Poor quality can result in defects, rework, scrap, returns, or complaints that affect the reputation and customers’ trust in the manufacturing business. Odoo enables manufacturers to ensure the quality of their products with its Quality module that:

• Allows manufacturers to define their quality standards, procedures, policies, etc., and create quality control points at different stages of the production process;
• Perform quality checks and record the results and actions;
• Report and track any quality issues that occur during the production process and take corrective and preventive actions;
• Analyse the quality performance and trends with reports and dashboards.

5. Shop Floor

Consider a factory floor where staff activities and the work order status are not visible in real-time. This can result in delays, inefficiencies, and communication hurdles. Fortunately, the Shop Floor module is installed alongside the MRP and it is built to bridge those gaps. The module helps teams to obtain real-time work order data, monitor progress, and record time spent on jobs easily. This promotes transparency, teamwork, and the ability to make smarter decisions.

6. Other Powerful Modules Of Odoo In Manufacturing

• Inventory: The Odoo Inventory module offers robust features for warehouse and inventory management functionalities. It helps manufacturers automate key procedures, optimise warehouse operations, and keep track of stock levels in real-time. 

Learn more: Odoo Inventory 101 - Pricing, Features & Use Cases.

• Purchase: From tracking agreements and quotations to creating purchase orders, Odoo Purchase simplifies the entire purchasing procedure. It allows manufacturers to track purchase tenders, automate reorder points, and effectively follow up on unfulfilled orders.

• Internet of Things (IoT box - currently 45.00 AUD/month/box): The Odoo IoT box connects any hardware to the Odoo software. You can orchestrate operators' and machines' work instructions in your manufacturing process all in one interface. The devices can be connected through USB, serial ports, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, HDMI, and more. In case you need help with the IoT integration, please explore our Odoo IoT integration service.

Odoo Manufacturing In Action: How Australian Manufacturers Succeeded

1. Foremost timber manufacturer in Australia

This is the success story of our client, a well-known Australian manufacturer with a priority on plywood, laminated panels, and fabricated components. With the growth of their company, their old system could no longer keep up with their changing requirements, especially when it came to handling intricate timber products and multi-tiered manufacturing procedures. 

To overcome these obstacles, the business switched to Odoo 16 and gained access to powerful features of the manufacturing modules:

• Versatility in Unit of Measure (UOM): We developed custom Odoo 16's UOM features to help them improve inventory control and manage distinctive timber products more precisely and efficiently.
• Multi-layer manufacturing automation: We also customised Odooto to automate their process of creating multi-layer Manufacturing Orders (MOs) based on Bills of Materials (BOMs). This way, Odoo simplified the production process, guaranteed effective stock management, and increased visibility into the production phases.
• Batch transfer for global shipping: We tailored Odoo Inventory functionality to simplify their international shipping management. It facilitated the smooth transmission of container and product details to forwarders.

Overall, this Australian timber manufacturer demonstrated their dedication to efficiency and growth by utilising Odoo Manufacturing's features. This allowed them to optimise production operations, improve inventory control, and accelerate global deliveries.

2. Renewable energy leader in Australia

Now let us demonstrate how one of our clients - a well-known Australian supplier of green energy solutions adopted Odoo to streamline their production procedures. Even while the company's current Odoo system was working, it lacked the custom features needed to handle complex workflows when the demand quickly increased.

To overcome manufacturing difficulties, they collaborated with the Havi team to customise their Odoo system and its MRP app. With our dedicated Odoo support, they gained access to significant capabilities like:

• Automated inventory costing: Better cost accounting made sure that inventory expenses were precisely recorded and simplified the financial record processes.
• Inventory forecasting: By proactively warning them of potential supply shortages, Odoo MRP improved their production scheduling and inventory management.
• Production automation: Odoo MRP offers real-time insights and prevents stock concerns by automating updates in accounting based on production phases.

Leveraging these functionalities of Odoo for manufacturing, they have increased the efficiency of their production processes. This enabled them to optimise resource allocation, preserve accurate financial data, and quickly adapt to the increasing demand.

User Reviews On Odoo Manufacturing

To provide you with the most honest comments regarding Odoo manufacturing's capabilities, we have compiled the reviews from verified users on G2:

Overall, the reviews demonstrate Odoo as an affordable, user-friendly ERP with robust customisation possibilities. Nevertheless, there are two main disadvantages, including a long learning curve and limitations for highly specialised companies. If you have complex manufacturing operations to work on, discover how we can help you customise Odoo to your unique requirements.

Explore How Odoo Manufacturing Aligns With Your Business

Odoo for manufacturing stands as a comprehensive solution to address critical manufacturing challenges. Its integrated features streamline operations, enhance collaboration, and optimise production processes. 

With Odoo MRP, Maintenance, Quality, and other powerful modules, businesses can overcome these challenges, achieve operational efficiency, and remain competitive in the modern market. If you want to see Odoo manufacturing in action, please do not hesitate to contact us. Our experts will help you explore how Odoo MRP fits into your business.

Odoo Manufacturing - Frequently Asked Questions

1. What are the benefits of Odoo manufacturing?

Manufacturing operations can achieve cost optimisation and efficiency thanks to Odoo's automation and integration features. Odoo minimises manual labour by automating repetitive procedures and optimising workflows. This enhances resource allocation, boosts productivity, and eventually increases profitability.

2. Why is Odoo so popular?

Odoo is recognised for its adaptability and innovation. This platform provides a lot of benefits for organisations across various industries with its robust app ecosystem and a cost-effective approach for businesses of all sizes.

3. Is Odoo worth it?

Yes, without a doubt. One major advantage of Odoo is the flexibility and scalability it offers for users with the module ecosystem. By providing a wide range of modules at different pricing levels in an open-source nature, it lets users choose the specific modules they require initially, and add more advanced features or customise the system later on.

References:

• Odoo Experience (2023). Odoo 17 for Australia - All the new features and roadmap!
• G2. Odoo MRP
• G2. Odoo Manufacturing Apps