Custom Software for Manufacturers & Production Companies
We'd design an architecture that fits your shop floor's real flow — production planning, quality control, machine data collection, shipping, and ERP integration, brought together as one backbone.
Turkish manufacturing is one of Europe's strongest sectors by output volume, yet inside the factory the majority of firms still operate at the "paper work order plus Excel plus month-end report" level. Production plans get printed as PDFs and walked to the line by a shift supervisor; machine downtime lives in the operator's notebook, and someone keys it into a spreadsheet at month-end to compute OEE; quality control happens by eye at the end of the conveyor with no defect-logging system — feedback never makes it to the next shift. Between the ERP (Logo, SAP, Dynamics) and the shop floor there is almost no automatic flow: raw material moves in the ERP, production completion sits in a notebook, and accounting reconciles the two by hand at month-end.
This page outlines the MES + machine-data + quality-control backbone we'd design for manufacturers: not an off-the-shelf Industry 4.0 SaaS but a system tailored to your machine park, BOM structure, quality criteria, and existing ERP. Below you will find the common bottlenecks, our solution thesis, and the preferred technology stack.
Common Problems in Manufacturing
Production plans are built in Excel and delivered to the floor as paper work orders; mid-shift urgent orders or machine breakdowns leave the plan un-revisable — operators slip into 'do what I'm told' mode.
Machine data (OEE, planned/unplanned downtime, speed, scrap) does not exist in any central system; what comes out of the PLC shows up on a screen at the machine and is recorded nowhere — historical analysis means someone keying numbers into Excel.
Quality control happens by operator eye at the end of the line; quantity rejected, defect type, and which shift/operator/lot caused it are not tracked systematically — root-cause analysis is impossible.
ERP (Logo/SAP/Dynamics) and the shop floor are disconnected: raw material moves in the ERP, production completion sits in a notebook, scrap lives on a separate form — accounting reconciles them by hand at month-end, and when a variance pops up nobody has hard evidence.
Shipping and warehouse operations are manual: dispatch notes on paper, pallet labels handwritten, the truck-loading list lives in the forklift operator's memory — 'wrong product shipped to wrong customer' incidents repeat on a seasonal cadence.
Our Solution Thesis
For manufacturing we'd model the factory as a three-layer data backbone. At the bottom, the shop floor: each line gets an edge gateway that talks to its machines in their own protocols (OPC UA, Modbus, EtherNet/IP, S7, MELSEC, digital I/O), normalises the data, and pushes it over MQTT to the centre. The value point of this approach: a single central system never has to talk to every machine directly — protocol heterogeneity is resolved at the edge, and clean data arrives at the centre. In the middle, the operations layer: time-series machine data (OEE, downtime causes, cycle time, reject counts) on TimescaleDB; the MES core (work order, shift, operator, lot, BOM consumption) on PostgreSQL. At the top, the management layer: ERP integration (Logo, SAP, Dynamics), a real-time shift board, a mobile shop-floor terminal (for operators and shift supervisors), the quality-engineer panel, and the planning panel.
On the quality side we'd recommend two approaches in parallel depending on need: statistical SPC for process variability (control charts, Cp/Cpk indices, automatic out-of-control alarms), and fine-tuned computer-vision models for visual defects (trained on YOLOv8/Detectron2 with your defective/non-defective sample set). Our verified technical capability for visual quality control comes via the construction tender-takeoff AI reference (details in the case study) — we adapt the same pipeline (data sampling, gold-standard labelling, fine-tuning, operator UI) to production-line quality control. ERP integration is designed as an adapter pattern: product BOM, stock, customer orders, and raw-material inflow are read from the ERP; work-order completion, scrap, machine downtime, and quality rejects are written back to it — the two systems agree on a single master of record per field, and manual reconciliation disappears.
Process
AS-IS Process Mapping
A 1-2 week AS-IS analysis in your factory: which machines speak which protocol, which ERP modules are active, which workflows change when a work order moves from paper to digital, where operator resistance will show up. Skipping this mapping leads to a flawed technical design.
Machine Data Bridge (OPC UA / Modbus / MQTT)
Per-line edge gateway hardware plus protocol adapter installation. We pilot on 2-3 critical machines, validate the data flow, then expand to the whole line. We aim to bring OEE online in the first week — raw data quality surfaces early in the process.
MES Core + Work Orders
Production plan becomes a digital work order; shift supervisors and operators start/pause/close work orders on a mobile terminal. The shift board is real-time: seeing how the line is tracking against target accelerates output.
Quality Control (Vision / Statistical)
Statistical SPC for process variability (control charts, Cp/Cpk). For visual defects, a fine-tuned CV model — trained on your sample set, surfaced through an operator UI so the engineer can validate in seconds.
ERP Integration + Shipping
Two-way sync with Logo/SAP/Dynamics: BOM and raw-material inflow are read in, work-order completion and scrap are written back. Shipping side: barcode/QR pallet labelling, digital dispatch notes, mobile loading list for the forklift operator.
Our Preferred Technology Stack
We typically reach for the following — adapted to your machine park, ERP, and line count.
Sıkça Sorulan Sorular
Plan a Manufacturing Sector Assessment
Book a 30-minute discovery call — free, no commitment. We listen to your machine park, current ERP, line count, and the operational pain you bleed most over; then put concrete shape on a pilot plan.