When Do You Actually Need MRP for Small Factories vs. Just Using Excel?

MRP is a digital planning engine that calculates exactly what raw materials you need to buy, in what quantities, and when. It does this by analyzing three key inputs: your master production schedule, your bill of materials recipes, and your live inventory records, ensuring you never run out of materials during production.

You should transition when your factory manages more than 20 distinct SKUs, experiences frequent production halts due to late component deliveries, incurs regular express shipping charges, or relies heavily on the unwritten memory of a single coordinator to plan production runs.

A standard implementation of an SME ERP with built-in MRP functions, like Odoo, generally costs between 175,000 and 350,000 Baht. This budget is based on professional service rates of 7,000 Baht per man-day, with average projects requiring 25 to 50 man-days to complete successfully.

An integrated ERP with MRP capabilities is highly superior for small factories. Standalone planning tools require expensive, custom IT development to synchronize data with your sales, warehouse, and accounting ledgers, whereas an ERP handles all functions on a single, shared database out of the box.

Start by auditing and cleaning up your Bills of Materials to ensure perfect accuracy. Next, organize your physical warehouse, and run a pilot launch using just one high-running product line. This allows your team of 20 to master the software and iron out process bugs before rolling it out factory-wide.