From 9-Day Order Cycles to 3 Days — Without Stopping the Furnace Once
A mid-size metal casting foundry connected melt planning, inventory, and dispatch on one ERPNext system and cut unplanned furnace downtime by 40% in the first quarter.
A Foundry Running on Memory, Printed Shift Registers, and Luck
Metal casting leaves no room for guesswork. A furnace that sits idle costs money. A mould that runs short on alloy mid-pour costs more. This foundry had both problems — regularly.
Production planning was done by a senior supervisor whose knowledge lived in his head and in printed registers updated twice a day, at best. When order volumes picked up, the gaps showed immediately. Purchase orders for pig iron, alloys, and sand were raised on estimates with no link between confirmed sales and actual store levels.
Finished castings sat in the yard for days because the logistics team had no visibility into which orders had cleared quality inspection. Customers were calling for updates nobody could confidently give. The foundry was profitable — but leaving significant efficiency on the table.
Diagnosing the Root Cause Before Writing a Line of Code
- Production schedules created manually with no link to confirmed sales, causing recurring overloads on specific furnace shifts
- Raw material purchases based on rough estimates, not BOM-driven calculations — leading to mid-batch shortages
- Quality inspection outcomes recorded on paper and invisible to dispatch until physically handed over
- No heat batch traceability — tracing a quality complaint to source alloy and pour date took days
- Mould and tooling inventory tracked informally, causing delays when items needed for a new job were unavailable
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🏭ManufacturingHeat batch work orders linked to sales orders with live furnace shift capacity view
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📦Inventory ManagementReal-time stock of alloys, consumables, and tooling updated on every transaction
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🛒Purchase ManagementAuto-triggered purchase requisitions from BOM when stock drops below reorder levels
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🔍Quality ManagementInspection checklists linked to each batch; dispatch sees clearance status in real time
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🚚Delivery and DispatchLogistics plans pickups based on live finished goods readiness — no follow-up calls
Live in 14 Weeks. No Furnace Downtime.
The rollout was phased around shift schedules so production ran uninterrupted throughout. Each phase was validated with real batch data before moving forward.
We documented every existing workflow — shift registers, purchase indent formats, inspection checklists, and dispatch logs. Item codes, alloy grades, and BOM structures were mapped before any configuration began.
Item master, supplier records, BOM for each casting type, and opening stock were migrated and validated. Furnace capacity rules, quality inspection steps, and reorder logic were configured to reflect actual foundry practice — not a textbook template.
Real production orders ran through the new system alongside the existing process. This surfaced a sequencing issue in how inspection outcomes linked to dispatch — resolved before full cutover.
All departments moved to ERPNext as the single system of record. Training was delivered shift-by-shift to avoid disrupting production. A 30-day hyper-care period followed with same-day support for any issues raised by floor staff.
Numbers Measured in the First Quarter After Go-Live
We used to discover a material shortage when the furnace was already running. Now the system flags it before we even schedule the batch. That single change paid for the entire project.
Your Foundry Could See Results Like This
We start with a free 30-minute assessment of your current setup. No commitment. No pressure. Just a clear picture of what is possible for your operation.