Manufacturing & Supply Chain
A small manufacturer or distributor runs on small, repeating bits of admin that the ERP either does not do or makes painful — re-keying the delivery note line by line, walking the spreadsheet on Monday morning to see what is below the reorder point, sending the same RFQ to four suppliers when a new project lands, sequencing next week's production against the same three machines, telling the customer their order has shipped, chasing the supplier whose PO is now a week late. These workflows take the repeatable bits off the office desk so the day stays on the line.
Nothing in this category auto-sends a purchase order, an RFQ, a supplier chase, a customer order acknowledgement, or a customer dispatch email, and nothing commits a production schedule. Every supplier-facing and customer-facing communication stops at a draft for the buyer, the project lead, the production manager, the salesperson, or the dispatch desk to review and send. The cost of a duplicate PO, a wrongly-priced RFQ, a schedule that double-books the laser cutter, a customer promise we cannot keep, or a tracking number typed in wrong is far higher than the cost of one minute reviewing a draft.
Use Cases
| Use Case | Description |
|---|---|
| Low Stock Reorder Runner | Each Monday, scan the stock sheet for items below the reorder point, group them by supplier, and draft a consolidated PO per supplier for the buyer to review |
| Goods-In Reconciliation Against PO | When goods arrive, reconcile the delivery note against the original PO and the supplier invoice; flag shortages, overages, damages, and price drift before the invoice gets paid |
| Supplier RFQ from New Project BoM | When a new project's bill of materials lands, group components by preferred supplier, draft an RFQ email per supplier with quantities, our part numbers, and a needed-by date |
| Weekly Production Schedule from Confirmed Orders | Every Friday, sequence next week's confirmed sales orders against line and machine capacity, flag conflicts and material shortages, and put a draft schedule in front of the production manager |
| Dispatch Confirmation and Customer Tracking Email | When ops marks a sales order as dispatched and fills in the carrier and tracking number, generate the packing list PDF, email the customer their tracking link, and log the dispatch |
| Overdue Purchase Order Chase Runner | Every morning, find purchase orders past their expected arrival, draft a polite chase email to the supplier for each, and surface anything already chased that still has not landed |
| Customer Order Acknowledgement with Realistic Promise Date | When a confirmed sales order lands, compute a realistic promised ship date from stock-on-hand and standard production lead times, draft an acknowledgement to the customer, and post any orders that need sales-team judgement |
| Slow-Moving and Dead Stock Review | Each month, classify every SKU by how it has actually moved over the last twelve months, build a draft write-off and clearance proposal, and put it in front of the finance lead and the buyer |
| Customer Return and RMA Authorisation | When a customer emails asking to return goods, match the request to their original sales order, validate the return window, draft an RMA acknowledgement with a unique reference and return instructions, and log the case for the warehouse to expect the goods |
| Non-Conformance Report Tracker with Corrective Action Routing | When QC raises a non-conformance, route it to the right owner by type (goods-in, in-process, or customer complaint), draft a corrective-action form, log the case, and chase open actions weekly |
| Cycle Count List with Variance Review | Each Tuesday, generate the week's cycle-count list as a rotating slice of the SKU base weighted by ABC class and days since last count, capture the counted quantities, and draft a variance review for the buyer before any stock adjustment lands |
| Supplier Price-List Update Reconciliation | When a supplier emails a new price list as an attachment, extract the lines, compare to our master pricing, and put the change summary in front of the buyer for approval before any cost is updated |
| Shift-End Production Output Capture and Catch-Up Plan | At the end of each shift, prompt the production lead for output per work centre, compute variance against this week's schedule, and draft tomorrow's catch-up plan for the production manager |