Manufacturing software shaped around your factory

What is manufacturing software for a made to order factory?

Manufacturing software for a made to order factory is one system that takes a job from the enquiry to the delivery note: the quote, the sales order, the material, the schedule, the work on each machine, the inspection and the paperwork. It replaces the spreadsheets, whiteboards, paper travellers and double keying that most job shops still run on.

It answers the questions that eat a production manager's day:

• Can we deliver by that date? Checked against the real load on the machines the job needs and when its material arrives
• Where is that order? The current operation, parts done and a forecast finish, live from the shop floor
• What happens if we take this rush job? Every order that would now go late, shown before you commit
• Which customers got parts from that heat of bar? One search from the heat number

MRP software usually covers material and production planning. Our portal goes further, with quoting, shop floor capture, quality and maintenance joined up, but stops short of accounting, which stays in the package you already use. It is the kind of business system we build around how a company really works.

Try our live manufacturing software demo

The quickest way to judge manufacturing software is to use it, so we built a working factory you can try now at manufacturing-demo.varsuite.co.uk.

The demo is Hollinbrook Engineering, a fictional precision engineering and fabrication company in Accrington with 11 work centres, two shifts, 25 customers and months of realistic history. You can sign in as:

• the managing director, with on time in full, the order book and machine load
• the operations manager, with the planning board, capacity, late jobs and rush jobs
• the estimator, with quotes, delivery date checks and customer purchase orders to check
• a CNC machinist, on the shop floor tablet with their job queue
• the stores and purchasing lead, with goods in, shortages, subcontract work and traceability
• the quality manager, with inspections, NCRs, complaints and gauges
• a buyer at one of the customers, signed in to the customer side of the portal

Every visitor gets their own private copy, so nothing you change affects anyone else, and you can reset it whenever you like. A Run the factory for an hour button moves the clock on, so jobs progress, scrap is booked and the board changes in front of you. Two factor sign in is on, with the demo code shown on screen.

What does the manufacturing portal include?

The portal is built from modules, and each factory switches on what it needs:

• Enquiries and quotes: quotes priced from routings, work centre rates and material, with quantity breaks, margin and a PDF to send
• Sales orders: order acknowledgements, a delivery date check on every line, and customer purchase orders checked against the quote for price, quantity, revision and date
• MRP and material planning: demand netted against stock and open purchase orders, through every level of the bill of materials, with suggested purchase orders and works orders to approve
• Production scheduling: a finite capacity planning board by work centre that respects your shifts and UK bank holidays, a capacity view, rush job previews and changeover grouping
• Works orders: multi level assemblies with linked sub assembly jobs, printable job travellers and time used against the quote
• Shop floor tracking: tablet screens where operators sign in with a badge or PIN, start and stop work, book good parts and scrap, take a photo, report a machine down and see the current drawing revision
• Stock and goods in: locations, heat and batch numbers, material certificates and stock takes
• Purchasing and subcontract: purchase orders and work sent out for plating, anodising or powder coating and booked back in
• Quality: inspections, first article checks, non conformance reports with photos and quarantine, corrective actions, customer complaints and a gauge register
• Maintenance: machines, planned maintenance, breakdowns and hours lost
• Dashboards: on time in full, the order book, machine load and open issues

Can it replace paper travellers and whiteboards on the shop floor?

Yes. Each work centre gets a tablet showing the operator's queue in order: the job running now, the next one and what follows. An operator taps their name and enters a PIN, or scans their badge, then records good parts, scrap with a reason, pauses and breakdowns as they happen on big touch buttons.

Because every booking lands straight in the portal, the office stops chasing paperwork at the end of the shift. Sales orders show where each line has got to, the planning board updates its forecast finish times, and the operations manager sees a slipping job while there is still time to do something about it. Job travellers can still be printed for the jobs that need one.

How does traceability work, from heat number to customer?

Stores record the heat or batch number and the material certificate when material is booked in. When that material is issued to a works order, the link is kept, so a single search shows every job a heat went into and every customer order it reached. It works backwards too: from a sales order line to the bar it was cut from and its certificate.

When something fails, quality raises a non conformance report with photos, the batch is quarantined and the works order is held until there is a decision to use as is, rework or scrap. For aerospace, rail, food machinery and construction customers who ask for a Certificate of Conformity with material certificates, we set up your dispatch paperwork to draw on that same trail, so nobody rebuilds the pack by hand.

Looking for a Sage 200 Manufacturing replacement?

Sage support for Sage 200 Manufacturing ended on 1 January 2026, so firms still running it need a plan for what comes next. Moving is also a chance to stop working around a system that never quite fitted the factory.

We bring across what you need from your current system, such as customers, parts, bills of materials, routings, stock and open orders, and shape the portal around how you work today. Accounting stays where it is, with orders and invoice data passed to your accounts package. Where data has to flow between systems, our data integrations work connects them.

How we tailor it to your factory

This is not off the shelf software that you bend your factory to fit. Everything in the demo is a starting point, and we fine tune it for you. We start by walking through the demo with your team and noting what you would change, then shape the portal around the answers:

• your work centres, machines, rates, shift patterns and holidays
• your routings, bills of materials and how you price a quote
• your documents: quotes, acknowledgements, travellers, delivery notes and certificates, in your branding
• your shop floor: tablets, badge scanners, the questions operators answer and the reasons they choose from
• your quality system: inspection points, NCR workflow and the records your customers audit
• your integrations, such as accounting software, CAD and drawing stores, or your customers' own portals
• a customer portal where your buyers check order status and download their documents

In the demo, the purchase order reader is a labelled simulation that works on sample files. In your portal it can be connected to an AI agent that reads your customers' real purchase orders, with a person approving anything it flags.