The production plan lives on a whiteboard — and by 10am it's fiction.
The plan gets written before the first shift: run order, machine assignments, what ships today. Then a machine stops, a material delivery comes up short, a rush order lands — and by mid-morning the whiteboard describes a factory that no longer exists. The rest of the day runs on shouting, walking and guesswork, and tomorrow it starts again.
—— Sound familiar?
You know this problem by these symptoms.
The planner spends the first hour of every shift rebuilding yesterday's plan instead of planning the week.
Sales promises delivery dates by phoning the shop floor, because nobody trusts the schedule to know.
One machine goes down and nobody can say which orders slip, so everything gets expedited at once.
The materials for the third job of the day turn out to be short at the moment the line is ready for them, not before.
The only person who knows the real run sequence is the shift supervisor, and the plan leaves the building when they do.
A whiteboard can display a plan, but it cannot connect one — it has no link to stock levels, machine status or incoming orders, so every event on the floor quietly invalidates it without anyone deciding that. The real scheduling then happens in the planner's head, which works until volume, machines and rush orders exceed what one head can re-sequence in real time. None of this is a discipline problem; it is what happens when the schedule and the factory share no connection except a person with a marker pen.
—— The way out
How Odoo closes this gap.
Work orders on a schedule that moves with the floor
Odoo Manufacturing breaks each production order into work orders routed through your work centers, and lays them out on a Gantt planning view against each center's real capacity. When a job overruns or a machine stops, you drag the work order and every dependent operation reschedules with it. The change appears on every screen at once — not just for whoever is standing at the board.
Plan the week with MPS, not the morning with a marker
Odoo's Master Production Schedule sets confirmed orders and forecast demand against material lead times and capacity, then proposes manufacturing and purchase orders at the right moment. Materials arrive before the line needs them, instead of the shortage being discovered when the machine is ready. The morning meeting becomes about exceptions, not about rebuilding the whole plan.
The floor reports back without being asked
The Shop Floor app runs on a tablet at each work center: operators start and close operations and record quantities and scrap on the spot. The schedule reflects real progress as it happens, so the planner reacts during the shift instead of discovering the day at its end. Quality control points trigger checks at the exact operation that needs them, with the result logged on the record instead of a paper form.
Breakdowns stop ambushing the schedule
The Odoo Maintenance app ties each machine to its work center. Preventive maintenance is booked into the same calendar the schedule uses, so planned downtime appears on the Gantt from the start; when a machine fails, the floor raises a maintenance request on the spot and the work center is blocked in the system. Rescheduling around the failure starts immediately — not after the news has walked around the building.
—— How we run it
The transition, managed properly.
One pilot line before the whole floor
We switch on scheduling for a single line or group of work centers first, and run it alongside the whiteboard until the Gantt and the floor agree for consecutive weeks. Every phase has a fixed written scope and price agreed before it starts.
Routings captured on the floor, not in a meeting room
We walk the process with your supervisors and build the BOMs, routings and work-center capacities from how jobs actually move — including the sequencing rules that today live only in the planner's head. Nothing goes live on an assumed process.
Training at the machines, on live orders
Operators learn the tablet and scanning steps at their own stations, on orders that are actually running, in Thai or English. The consultant who scoped the project stays with you through go-live.
—— FAQ
Questions teams ask about this problem.
Our routings and BOMs are not written down anywhere. Can we still start?
Yes — that is the normal starting point, not an exception. Capturing them is the first task of scoping: we walk the floor with your supervisors and turn what is on the whiteboard and in people's heads into documented BOMs and routings. You review and correct them before anything is scheduled against them.
Can the supervisor still change the plan when something breaks?
Yes — dragging a work order on the Gantt view is the override, and it takes seconds. The difference from the whiteboard is what happens next: dependent operations shift with it, material reservations follow, and sales sees the new completion date without phoning the floor.
Do we need a computer at every machine?
No — most floors start with one shared tablet per work center running the Shop Floor app, plus barcode scanners where they genuinely help. Operator steps are deliberately short: start, complete, record the quantity. If a station really cannot host a screen, its operations can be confirmed at the next station along.
Does this need Odoo Enterprise, and what does it cost?
Honestly: basic manufacturing orders run on Community, whose licence is $0, but work-order scheduling, MPS, the Shop Floor app and Quality are Enterprise features. Enterprise is billed to you by Odoo directly and we never mark it up. Our implementation work is a fixed written price per phase, agreed before that phase starts.
Let's find out whether Odoo actually fits your business.
A short call, an honest answer. If it isn't the right system for you, we'll say so.