Demo: Epicor Kinetic for Fabricated Metals Manufacturers

Unlocking Growth for Fabricated Metal Manufacturers with a System of Action

Fabricated metal manufacturers are under constant pressure to deliver faster, manage volatile material costs, and maintain full traceability — all while operating in highly customized, engineer to order environments. Rising demand across industries, ongoing labor challenges, and increasingly complex supply chains make disconnected systems and manual processes a serious barrier to growth.

This is where a modern, connected ERP system of action becomes essential.

Why Fabricated Metal Manufacturers Need More Than Traditional ERP

Metal fabrication businesses face challenges that generic ERP systems aren’t designed to handle well:

• Volatile raw material pricing tied to global metal indexes
• Complex inventory tracked by weight, length, width, and attributes
• Engineer to order and make to order production flows
• Job centric costing with tight margins
• High compliance and traceability requirements
• The need to maximize material utilization through nesting

A system of action connects quoting, engineering, production, inventory, procurement, shipping, and financials into a single, intelligent workflow; this gives teams real time visibility and control from RFQ to shipment.

From Quote to Cash: A Job Centric Manufacturing Flow

For most fabricated metal manufacturers, the business process starts with a customer RFQ. That request triggers a tightly connected flow:

1. Quotation and Cost Estimation
   Engineers and estimators can quickly build quotes using historical jobs, templates, or placeholder parts for custom, one off work. This allows manufacturers to respond faster without cluttering the item master.
2. Engineer to Order Execution
   Once a quote is accepted, it converts directly into a sales order and job. Bills of material, operations, and costing details flow forward automatically, ensuring estimated and actual costs stay aligned.
3. Procure to Pay Integration
   Material requirements generate purchase requisitions and purchase orders, ensuring raw materials are ordered just in time — and with no excess inventory.
4. Job Execution and Shop Floor Visibility
   Labor, material consumption, and production progress are captured in real time, providing accurate job costing and production status.

This job centric flow allows fabricators to move from opportunity to execution without manual re entry or disconnected spreadsheets.

Managing Complex Inventory with Advanced Units of Measure

One of the biggest pain points in metal fabrication is inventory visibility. Materials are often purchased and valued by weight but consumed by length, width, or other attributes.

Advanced unit of measure capabilities solve this by allowing manufacturers to:

• Track a single material across multiple dimensions (weight, length, bends, etc.)
• Manage drops and remnants under the same part number
• Plan inventory using attribute level min/max and safety stock
• Ensure MRP understands the difference between usable material forms

This eliminates blind spots, reduces waste, and improves inventory accuracy.

Improving Traceability and Compliance with Digital Certifications

Traceability is non negotiable in the metals industry. Material test reports (MTRs), heat numbers, and compliance documents must be accessible throughout the product lifecycle.

By combining intelligent data capture with automated workflows, manufacturers can:

• Automatically extract data from supplier certificates using AI driven OCR
• Validate chemical composition against specifications
• Attach certifications directly to lot records
• Ensure certificates are included automatically at shipment

This dramatically reduces manual effort while improving compliance, audit readiness, and customer confidence.

Optimizing Material Usage with Nesting Integration

Material costs are one of the largest expenses in metal fabrication. Efficient nesting across multiple jobs is critical to protecting margins.

By integrating ERP directly with leading nesting software, manufacturers can:

• Eliminate manual re entry of part and job data
• Nest common components across multiple jobs and assemblies
• Track drops and remnants automatically
• Post labor and material costs back to the correct originating jobs

The result is less scrap, fewer redundant operations, and more accurate job costing.

Faster, Smarter Shipping with Integrated Logistics

Shipping fabricated metal products often involves complex freight requirements. Integrated shipping tools allow teams to:

• Rate shop carriers directly from the ERP
• Generate bills of lading and shipping labels automatically
• Attach certifications and quality documents to shipments
• Send complete shipment documentation to customers in one step

This speeds up fulfillment while reducing errors and manual coordination.

Turning Data into Decisions with Embedded Analytics

Modern metal manufacturers need more than reports—they need insights.

Embedded business intelligence provides:

• Real time KPIs for operations, inventory, and financial performance
• Interactive dashboards for executives and plant managers
• The ability to combine ERP data with external sources like CRM and spreadsheets
• AI assisted insights to help teams understand trends and anomalies

With better visibility, leaders can make faster, more confident decisions.

Financial Planning Built for Manufacturing Reality

Financial planning and analysis tools tailored for manufacturing allow organizations to:

• Analyze profitability by job, product, or customer
• Drill from financial statements down to source transactions
• Build budgets using quantities instead of just dollar values
• Use machine learning to generate predictive forecasts

This bridges the gap between operations and finance, ensuring plans reflect what’s actually happening on the shop floor.

A True System of Action for Fabricated Metals

For fabricated metal manufacturers, success depends on speed, accuracy, and adaptability. A connected system of action brings together:

• Quoting and engineering
• Job centric production
• Advanced inventory and nesting
• End to end traceability
• Integrated shipping
• Embedded analytics and financial planning

By unifying these capabilities, manufacturers gain the visibility and control needed to scale, optimize margins, and meet customer demands—without adding complexity.

1. What ERP software is best for fabricated metal manufacturers?
Fabricated metal manufacturers need ERP software that supports job centric, engineer to order workflows, advanced units of measure, nesting integration, and full material traceability.

2. How do metal fabricators manage volatile material pricing in ERP?
Modern ERP systems can integrate with public metal price indexes, allowing manufacturers to manage surcharges, reconcile pricing changes, and protect margins.

3. How can manufacturers improve material traceability and compliance?
By using AI driven document capture and automated workflows, manufacturers can extract data from material certificates, validate specifications, and attach documentation directly to inventory lots and shipments.

4. What is Part on the Fly in manufacturing ERP?
Part on the Fly allows manufacturers to quote, produce, and ship custom or one time products without creating permanent item master records.

5. Why is nesting integration important for metal fabrication?
Nesting integration reduces scrap, improves material utilization, and ensures accurate labor and material costing across multiple jobs.