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Industry

Plastics Manufacturing - Injection Molding

Project Type

Odoo ERP implementation

Location

USA

Timeline

9 months

Team Size

12

Executive Summary

A leading US plastic injection molding manufacturer faced chronic schedule overruns, high scrap, and limited visibility across molds, materials, and work centers. Implementing Odoo as a unified ERP and manufacturing platform streamlined planning, shop-floor execution, and quality control. Within six months of go-live, the Client achieved a 31% reduction in average molding cycle time, along with benchmark-based improvements in OEE, scrap, and on-time delivery, while establishing a scalable digital foundation for further automation and process optimization in plastic manufacturing and competitive market positioning.

Business Challenges

Like many plastic manufacturers in the United States facing complex production planning demands, rising labor costs, and pressure to compete with overseas production, the Client encountered critical operational bottlenecks:

  • Schedule Volatility & Labor Inefficiency: Frequent schedule changes and manual production planning caused extended cycle times, unbalanced machine loading, and chronic overtime on critical molding assets.
  • Quality & Traceability Gaps: High scrap and rework due to manual quality checks and limited traceability by mold, cavity, resin batch, and regrind usage across operations.
  • Operational Visibility Deficit: Poor visibility into WIP, tool status, and machine downtime; manual shift-end consolidation delayed real-time decision-making.
  • Material Management Inefficiency: Regrind and masterbatch consumption tracked in spreadsheets, causing inventory discrepancies and material budget strain.
  • Process Silos & Delivery Inconsistency: Disconnected sales, production, and dispatch processes created prioritization conflicts and inconsistent on-time delivery performance.

Objective

  • Reduce Cycle Time: Lower molding cycle time and increase throughput on high-volume SKUs without significant capex investment.
  • Enhance Quality Metrics: Improve OEE, scrap rate, and first-pass yield using standardized routings and quality control points.
  • Ensure Regulatory Compliance: Strengthen lot and batch traceability for FDA compliance and US plastic industry standards (ASTM, ISO).
  • Optimize Planning Accuracy: Enhance production planning and scheduling using MPS/MRP and capacity-aware work-center loading.
  • Improve Inventory Control: Increase visibility for raw materials, WIP, and finished goods across manufacturing facilities.
  • Enable Data-Driven Decisions: Provide real-time dashboards and KPIs for throughput, scrap, efficiency, and service level monitoring.

Key Modules Implemented

The implementation deployed Odoo's core manufacturing and logistics modules configured for plastic injection molding with US compliance requirements:

  • Odoo Manufacturing Module: Manages BOMs, routings, work orders, and work centers for injection molding and finishing operations.
  • Inventory & Warehouse Management: Controls raw materials, regrind, WIP, and finished goods across manufacturing sites with lot/batch tracking.
  • Odoo Quality Management: Defines in-process and final inspection plans with control points for critical dimensions and material properties.
  • Preventive Maintenance in Odoo: Schedules maintenance for molds and machines to reduce downtime and track breakdowns.
  • Odoo PLM: Centralizes product versions, mold revisions, and engineering changes linked to BOMs and routings.
  • Purchase Management: Links MRP to vendor management for just-in-time purchasing of resins and consumables.
  • Sales Order Management: Integrates quotation-to-order workflows with production plans and capacity reservations.
  • Accounting & Costing: Automates postings from production movements for accurate product costing and margin analysis.
  • Barcode-Based Material Tracking: Enables barcode-driven material issues and backflushing for shop-floor accuracy.
  • Odoo IoT and Reporting: Delivers custom dashboards and IoT signals for runtime and downtime tracking across equipment.

Solution Overview

  • Solution Architecture: Designed a plastics-specific data model for molds, cavities, regrind proportions, and alternate materials within Odoo structures, tailored to US injection molding workflows and compliance requirements.
  • Workflow Integration: Implemented plan-to-produce and quote-to-cash workflows fully in Odoo ERP, replacing legacy tools and spreadsheets with unified processes across manufacturing and supply chains.
  • Real-Time Connectivity: Integrated shop-floor terminals, barcode scanners, and machine signals to capture real-time production events, downtime, and equipment status across molding assets.
  • Standardized Operations: Standardized quality plans and preventive maintenance regimes across critical injection molding machines and molds, linked to work orders and production calendars.
  • Change Leadership: Executed structured change management and training programs compliant with US labor practices, including pilot lines, super-user enablement, and phased facility rollouts.

Architecture & Implementation

#1: Discovery & Mapping

  • Conducted discovery workshops across sales, production, maintenance, quality, and finance to document current-state processes and define the future-state ERP vision aligned with US operational needs.

#2: Process Alignment

  • Mapped production planning, scheduling, regrind management, and dispatch processes to standard Odoo capabilities, US best practices, and labor regulations.

#3: Data Preparation

  • Cleansed and standardized master data for items, BOMs, molds, work centers, suppliers, and customers prior to Odoo migration with US data structure requirements.

#4: Manufacturing Configuration

  • Configured BOMs and routings for each product-family, including cavity-specific cycle times, regrind proportions, and scrap allowances per US manufacturing standards.

#5: Capacity Planning

  • Defined work centers and calendars for molding, printing, and packing with realistic capacities, shift structures, and changeover downtime.

#6: IoT Integration

  • Set up Odoo IoT and machine integration to capture machine states (running, idle, breakdown) linked to work orders for real-time shop floor visibility.

#7: Quality Framework

  • Implemented quality control points at goods receipt, injection molding, and final packing with NCR and corrective action workflows for plastics compliance.

#8: Maintenance Strategy

  • Configured preventive maintenance plans based on machine cycles, run hours, and historical breakdown data to reduce downtime.

#9: Supply Planning

  • Enabled MPS/MRP to drive material requisitions and production orders, factoring in safety stocks, lead times, and US supplier performance.

#10: Analytics & Dashboards

  • Designed role-based dashboards for planners, supervisors, quality teams, and management with key plastic manufacturing KPIs and OEE benchmarks.

#11: Training & Validation

  • Conducted end-user training, UAT cycles, and controlled pilot on select molding lines before full-plant go-live with ongoing support.

#12: Cutover & Support

  • Managed cutover, hypercare support, and iterative MRP parameter tuning with 24/7 US-based technical support and US data residency compliance.

Workflow

1

Quote-to-Cash

Configure customer-specific products, confirm sales orders, reserve machine capacity, and trigger production and dispatch workflows aligned with US customer expectations.

2

Plan-to-Produce

Use forecasts and firm orders to generate manufacturing orders via MPS/MRP, allocate machines and molds, and optimize sequences and changeovers.

3

Procure-to-Pay

Run MRP, raise purchase orders for resins and consumables, receive against lots with quality checks, and automate vendor invoicing.

4

Material & Regrind Management

Issue prime resin and regrind via barcodes, backflush consumption, and reconcile variances with full audit trails.

5

Shop-Floor Execution

Operators start/stop work orders, record production quantities, scrap, and downtime using terminals and barcode scanners at each machine.

6

Quality Loop

Capture in-process checks, log non-conformances, quarantine batches, and drive corrective/preventive actions linked to molds and suppliers.

7

Maintenance Loop

Trigger PM tasks based on machine cycles; record breakdowns, root causes, and spares directly in the maintenance module.

8

Dispatch & Invoicing

Allocate finished goods to orders, generate delivery notes and labels, and create invoices tied to shipments for accurate billing.

Outcome

  • Cycle Time Achievement: Achieved a 31% reduction in average molding cycle time through optimized routings, balanced loading, and real-time shop floor visibility.
  • Overall Equipment Effectiveness: OEE improved an estimated 8-12%, benchmark-based, driven by better uptime, speed adherence, and reduced minor stops.
  • Quality & Yield: Scrap and rework reduced by an estimated 15-20%, benchmark-based, via standardized work instructions and in-process quality controls.
  • Customer Delivery: On-time delivery performance improved an estimated 10-15%, benchmark-based, through integrated planning and inventory visibility.
  • Planning Accuracy: Production planning accuracy improved an estimated 20-25%, benchmark-based, with MPS/MRP replacing spreadsheet-based planning.
  • Equipment Reliability: Machine downtime reduced an estimated 8-10%, benchmark-based, through preventive maintenance and systematic breakdown analysis.
  • Inventory Precision: Inventory variance on key resins dropped to low single digits through barcode-based issues and automatic backflushing.
  • Working Capital Optimization: Inventory turns improved an estimated 10-15%, benchmark-based, by aligning purchases with actual consumption patterns.
  • Compliance & Traceability: Batch and lot traceability audit time reduced significantly with end-to-end tracking supporting customer audits and FDA compliance.
  • Data-Driven Decisions: Real-time dashboards enable management to monitor throughput, scrap, efficiency, and service levels with operational excellence and competitive advantage.

Tech Stack

ERP Platform

  • Odoo v17 Enterprise Edition

Database

  • PostgreSQL 14 with replication
  • automated backups

Cloud Hosting

  • AWS US regions (EC2, RDS, S3, CloudFront CDN)

Odoo Modules

  • Manufacturing
  • Inventory (WMS)
  • Purchase
  • Sales
  • Accounting
  • Quality
  • Maintenance
  • PLM
  • Barcode
  • Studio
  • CRM
  • Analytics

IoT & Shop Floor

  • Odoo IoT Box
  • PLC/OPC UA connectors
  • barcode scanners
  • mobile terminals with real-time data capture

Mobile App

  • Odoo Mobile (iOS/Android) with offline-sync
  • barcode scanning
  • push notifications
  • work order management

REST APIs

  • MRP demand APIs
  • machine connectivity (OPC UA/MQTT)
  • Email/SMS (Mailgun/Twilio)
  • Carrier APIs (FedEx/UPS)
  • Google Maps
  • AWS S3 integration

Integration Tools

  • Fivetran for data migration
  • n8n/Make.com for workflow automation

Analytics & Reporting

  • Odoo built-in reports
  • custom Studio dashboards for OEE
  • cycle time
  • scrap
  • inventory turns
  • machine downtime

Version Control & CI/CD

  • Git (GitHub/GitLab)
  • automated CI/CD pipeline
  • Dev→QA→Production promotion
  • automated testing

Security & Compliance

  • SSL/TLS encryption
  • RBAC
  • 2FA
  • FDA lot/batch traceability
  • ASTM/ISO standards
  • PCI-DSS Level 1
  • encrypted backups (cross-region)
  • audit trails
  • regular security patching

Infrastructure & DevOps

  • Ubuntu/Linux with Nginx reverse proxy
  • AWS Auto Scaling
  • 24/7 monitoring (CloudWatch/New Relic)
  • multi-region failover
  • Docker containers
  • Terraform/CloudFormation IaC

Performance & Optimization

  • Database indexing
  • Redis caching
  • asynchronous job processing
  • API rate limiting
  • CDN for static assets

Support & Maintenance

  • 24/7 US-based support
  • SLA guarantees
  • system health checks
  • quarterly security reviews
  • annual disaster recovery testing

Team

  • Project Manager: 1
  • Solution Architect: 1
  • Odoo Functional Consultants: 2
  • Technical Lead: 1
  • Odoo Developers: 4
  • QA Engineer: 1
  • Data Migration Specialist: 1
  • Support Analyst: 1

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Client Testimonials

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