Best ERP Software

ERP for manufacturing enables companies including automotive manufacturers, aerospace and defence, food and consumer products manufacturers and more to centralise data and business processes into one ERP platform to support faster transfer of data between departments and decision making.

ERP software for manufacturing typically includes modules for sales, production, quality management, accounting and financials and often warehouse management, stock and procurement.

We see manufacturers of all sizes and in multiple industries using ERP software, ranging from startups to small businesses (SMB) and small and medium enterprises (SME) through to large multinationals with hundreds of thousands of employees. 

Although almost all manufacturers will or intend to implement ERP software at some point in their journey, many manufacturers will use different ERP software or adopt different IT strategies according to their needs.

Some larger manufacturing companies choose to run large single instance ERP systems that manage multiple brands, legal entities and business units in one suite. Other, more federated manufacturers may choose to run multiple ERP solutions within their group.

There are many ERP solutions for manufacturers available and each is designed for companies in different industries and manufacturing sub-sectors and to suit companies of different sizes. 

The best possible manufacturing ERP software on the market may not be cost effective for your business and may do more to hinder than help you. We therefore recommend evaluating multiple potential manufacturing ERP solutions to work out which one suits you best. You can check our recommended manufacturing ERP solutions for businesses of different sizes above or use our ERP comparison tool to find ERP solutions based on your industry, business size or choice of deployment.

There are dozens of ERP systems available for small business manufacturers. Some of the most popular ERP software for SMB manufacturers is SAP Business One, Odoo, NetSuite, Acumatica, Infor CloudSuite Industrial, SAP Business ByDesign and Syspro.

Process manufacturing ERP software has different needs to discrete manufacturing software. In particular, the yield management and measurement capabilities need to be geared towards your particular use case.

Some of the best process manufacturing ERP software solutions are supplied by vendors such as SAP, Infor & Microsoft. Check our solution briefs above to find out more.

Discrete manufacturing ERP software meets the needs of manufacturers in the automotive, high tech and other discrete industries. 

The best ERP software for discrete manufacturing therefore includes capabilities such as push and pull manufacturing, make to order, assemble to order, available to promise (ATP), capable to promise (CTP), (MRP) material requirements planning as well as product configuration and variant production.

Some of the best discrete manufacturing ERP software solutions include SAP, Infor, Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics.

ERP software for manufacturers can provide many benefits including:

• Reducing stock holdings by optimising supply chains.
• Better visibility and reporting across your business.
• Less quality management issues.
• Faster product recall and fault detection processes. 
• Enhanced customer satisfaction.
• Lower administrative and accounting costs.
• Higher adherence to compliance across accounting, quality and more. 
• Lower IT and systems integration costs.

Manufacturing ERP software can vary in cost depending on the size of your business, the complexity of your business processes and the manufacturing ERP system that you choose to implement. Generally speaking, the cost of a manufacturing ERP cost can be broken into manufacturing ERP software licensing costs, implementation fees and support costs.

Its highly recommended that you begin your ERP evaluation process by building an ERP requirements document when choosing manufacturing ERP software. You can use a prebuilt ERP requirements document to do this, or create one from scratch.

Once you've completed this, we then recommend evaluating 4-8 ERP solutions and vendors. You can reach out to ERP vendors and implementation partners yourself, however this can be time consuming which is why many companies use a comparison service like ERP Research to help them shortlist the best manufacturing ERP software for their needs. You can compare over 100+ ERP solutions for manufacturing as well as other industries in under 15 minutes by talking to one of our experts here.

Typically most manufacturers will select a third party ERP partner or systems integrator to implement their manufacturing ERP software. You will need to have your own internal team dedicated to steering the project. By using a third party implementation company specialized in your chosen manufacturing ERP software, your chances of success are much higher and will prevent ERP failure.

At ERP Research we are specialised in comparing ERP software for manufacturing companies. We provide in depth comparisons of ERP systems for the manufacturing industry.

Our experts have dealt with hundreds of CXO's and IT leaders in the manufacturing industry. Our first. focus is to understand the goals of your manufacturing business before recommending the best ERP software for your needs. Once we understand your goals and challenges, we compare dozens of ERP software for manufacturing to find the best fit.

We have worked with thousands of businesses in multiple industries and commonly work with those looking for ERP for small business manufacturing as well as larger organizations too.

Cloud ERP software for manufacturing is becoming increasingly popular and in short, yes, manufacturers can use Cloud ERP solutions. Cloud ERP can come in many guises including hosting On-Premise licenses in the Cloud, as well as Private Cloud hosted ERP solutions as well as fully managed SaaS Cloud ERP solutions for manufacturing.

Cloud ERP software for manufacturing is becoming increasingly popular as more and more manufacturers look to migrate their enterprise resource planning software into a software as a service model. Manufacturing Cloud ERP allows organizations to harness the benefits of the Cloud and hyperscalers such as Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services, whilst also improving their day to day processes.

We recommend reviewing popular Cloud ERP systems for manufacturing such as SAP Business ByDesign, Netsuite and Infor Cloudsuite Industrial as well as Odoo if you are a small business.

If your organization is larger, we recommend evaluating Oracle ERP Cloud, SAP S/4 HANA or Microsoft Dynamics.

ERP for manufacturing can cover a variety of features and modules, including:

• Bill of materials (BOM)
• Engineering change management
• Material Resource Planning (MRP)
• Production Management
• Variant and Configuration Change Management
• Available to Promise (ATP)
• Supply Chain Management
• Supply Chain Forecasting
• Sales & Demand Forecasting
• Plant Maintenance
• Field Service Maintenance
• Work Order Management
• Production Orders
• Quality Management
• Quality Inspection
• Traceability
• Lot Management
• Batch Management
• Inventory Management
• Sales Order Management
• Product Lifecycle Management