Manufacturing is where ERP configuration gets unforgiving. Bills of material, work orders, and costing have to reflect how production actually runs, not how a flowchart says it should.
Plenty of light production operations run well on assemblies and simple work orders without full material requirements planning. MRP earns its complexity when you have real lead time variability, multi-level BOMs, and demand that justifies planning rather than reacting. Turning on MRP for an operation that does not need it creates work without creating clarity. This is the same question our workflow assessment applies to automation: is the complexity actually buying you something.
BOMs drift. The version in the system stops matching what the floor actually builds, scrap factors are optimistic, and substitutions never get recorded. Once the BOM is wrong, your costing is wrong and your planning is wrong. Keeping BOMs current is a process discipline that the system supports but cannot create.
Standard versus average costing is a decision with long consequences for how variances appear and how useful your margin reporting is. It is frequently made quickly during implementation and regretted later.
If you are scheduling production, routing and work center capacity need to be modeled. If you are not, they add overhead for no return. Match the configuration to how you actually plan.
NetSuite implementation and consulting including MRP rollouts, Odoo implementation for lighter manufacturing operations, and SOP documentation so the process survives staff turnover.
Many light production operations do fine with assemblies and work orders. MRP is worth it when lead time variability and multi-level BOMs make planning genuinely hard.
Standard costing gives you variance analysis and suits repeatable production. Average is simpler and suits variable input costs. The decision is hard to reverse cleanly, so make it deliberately.
For lighter operations, often yes, and at a materially lower cost. Complexity, entity structure, and integration requirements decide it. See Odoo vs NetSuite.
With the process for keeping them current, not with the data cleanup. Cleaning up BOMs without fixing the maintenance process means doing it again in a year.
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