Integrating ERP Systems Into Production Processes

What does integrating an ERP system into production actually mean?#

Integrating an ERP system into production means the production line, warehouse and business side of the company work off shared data instead of separate records. A work order created in the ERP system reaches the machine or workstation, and feedback on completed work, material consumption and scrap flows back into the system without manual entry. The same order number then ties together procurement, stock, production and cost accounting.

For a company with several departments, this is not only a technical question but a decision about who owns each piece of data. When production keeps its own records separate from the ERP system, gaps appear between what the business system shows and what is actually on the shelf or running on the line. Integration removes that gap only if it is designed so each data point is created in one place and flows outward from there. Without that agreement, connecting the systems turns into double entry that increases errors instead of reducing them.

For the customer, this means mapping out beforehand which data already exists, where it originates and who currently enters it manually. Only on that basis can you decide which part of production connects to the ERP system directly through an API and where a manual step remains. Deciding the scope of integration is therefore one of the first things a company has to align between the production manager, the IT manager and the contractor.

When is the right time to integrate ERP into production?#

The right moment to integrate an ERP system into production arrives when manual reconciliation between production and the business system starts causing errors, delays or duplicate work. The most common signal is that the same stock figure or order status exists in two different records and occasionally diverges. Once that happens regularly, manual reconciliation can no longer keep pace with a volume of production that is growing faster than the team reconciling it.

Another common trigger is opening a new production line, plant or shift where existing manual procedures cannot absorb the extra volume. The same applies when a company introduces a new ERP system and has to decide, at the same time, how it will connect to existing production equipment, sensors or a quality-monitoring system. In both cases integration is not an add-on that can be postponed but a condition for the new or expanded process to run without manual duplication of work.

A third reason is a traceability requirement set by customers, auditors or regulation in a regulated industry. When every product has to show which material batch it came from and who approved the order, manual records quickly become unreliable. In that situation, integrating the ERP system with production is a condition for traceability, not just efficiency, so it is worth planning well ahead of the deadline the external requirement sets.

Which data and systems need to be connected#

Before an integration project starts, you need to map which systems and data already exist in production and which of them must become part of the shared flow with the ERP system. That map shows whether this is a simple API connection between two systems or a larger migration from an older, possibly undocumented system. How thorough that map is determines how realistically you can estimate the scope of work and the risks integration brings.

Each of these data sources has an owner who currently decides how and when it gets updated. Integration has to preserve that ownership or deliberately reassign it, otherwise doubts arise about which system holds the correct value. Machine and sensor data is particularly sensitive, since it arrives in a different format and frequency than data entered manually into the business system, and therefore needs an extra layer for conversion and validation before it reaches the ERP system.

For the customer, this means choosing a contractor is not just a question of building a connection, but of who knows the existing production equipment and its interfaces well enough to read the data correctly. If a machine has no open interface, that needs to surface during analysis, not during development, since it materially affects which part of the integration is possible and which requires additional hardware.

• Proizvodni nalogi in njihov status na posameznem delovnem mestu
• Kosovnice in tehnološki postopki, ki določajo porabo materiala
• Zaloge surovin, polizdelkov in končnih izdelkov
• Podatki iz strojev in senzorjev na proizvodni liniji
• Evidenca kakovosti, izmeta in reklamacij
• Vzdrževanje opreme in evidenca zastojev
• Matični podatki o dobaviteljih, kupcih in zaposlenih

Risks in connecting production with an ERP system#

Integrating production with an ERP system carries risks that need addressing before development starts, not only once an error shows up in production. The biggest risk is not the technical connection itself but the consequence a wrong or delayed data point causes on a line where decisions are made in real time. Each risk is therefore worth assessing by how quickly the error is noticed and how much damage it causes before someone stops it.

Some of these risks can be limited through the integration architecture itself, for example by letting production keep running briefly even if the connection to the ERP system drops, sending the data once it is restored. Another part of the risk is organisational and comes down to who in the company approves changes to master data and who has access to which part of the system. Data security and access control need to be part of the integration plan from the start, not an add-on bolted on before go-live.

For the customer, it is essential that source code, documentation and data remain their property regardless of which contractor carries out the project. That reduces dependency on a single vendor and lets the company switch maintenance contractors if needed without losing access to its own system or data history.

• Neusklajeni matični podatki, ki povzročijo napačno količino ali material na nalogu
• Izpad povezave med strojem in ERP sistemom med tekočo izmeno
• Nepooblaščen dostop do proizvodnih ali poslovnih podatkov
• Prekinjena sledljivost serij ob delni ali neuspeli migraciji podatkov
• Odvisnost od enega izvajalca brez dokumentacije in dostopov v lasti naročnika

How does an ERP-to-production integration project actually run?#

An ERP-to-production integration project runs through steps that follow one another, from analysing the current state to handing over a working system into regular operation. Among them there is always a phase where behaviour is verified on realistic but controlled data before the connection is switched on for the actual production line. The order of steps can adapt to the size of the project, but their content stays the same regardless of company size.

On larger projects, Epix and its specialist partner network appoint a project lead who coordinates teams on both the contractor's and the customer's side, draws a clear line around responsibilities and agrees how progress will be reported. We can take on the full project, from analysis through to go-live, or a single package, such as only the connection of machine data to the ERP system, while another team or the customer's internal IT department handles the rest.

When a company already has a partially built or stalled integration project, the existing system can be taken over after reviewing the source code, architecture, infrastructure and data. That is often faster than starting over, but it requires a thorough review to establish which part of the existing solution can be kept and which needs fixing or replacing before the project moves toward go-live.

• Analiza obstoječih sistemov, podatkov in vmesnikov v proizvodnji
• Določitev arhitekture povezave in odgovornosti za posamezen podatek
• Razvoj povezav prek API-jev in po potrebi migracija podatkov
• Testiranje v ločenem testnem okolju brez pravih osebnih podatkov
• Prevzemno testiranje po vnaprej dogovorjenih merilih
• Uvedba v produkcijsko okolje in nadzor v prvih tednih delovanja

What impact does integration have on production employees?#

Integrating an ERP system most directly affects the employees who currently enter production data by hand, since part of their work changes or moves to a different point in the process. Instead of typing quantities and statuses into a separate system at the end of a shift, the operator confirms the data right at the workstation, and the system immediately passes it on to procurement, quality and finance.

That change requires training that is not a one-off event at go-live but follows the project from testing onward, so employees understand why the procedure is changing and what happens to the data they enter. Without that understanding, employees often keep a parallel, old-style record on the side, which duplicates work and defeats the purpose of the integration. The production manager therefore needs to be part of the project from the start, not just the recipient of the finished solution.

For management, this means the project plan has to allow time for training and a period in which the old and new ways of working temporarily coexist. Clearly assigning who is responsible for each step in the new process reduces resistance to change and speeds up the point at which employees actually trust the new system more than the spreadsheet they used before.

Testing and verification before going live in production#

Before the connection between the ERP system and production goes live on the actual line, it has to pass testing in an environment separate from both development and production systems. The test environment does not use real personal data, only prepared test cases that mimic real production scenarios, including exceptions such as a dropped machine connection or an incorrectly entered product code.

Testing includes both manual checks of key business scenarios and automated testing that verifies, with every code change, that the connection still behaves the same way as before. For integrations that carry a significant part of the production process, it is worth adding an independent QA review, separate from the development team that built the connection, since that kind of review more often catches assumptions the developers took for granted.

The last step before go-live is acceptance testing, where the customer confirms, against criteria agreed in advance, that the system meets the agreed scope. Only after that confirmation is the change deployed to the production environment where actual manufacturing runs. That sequence of steps is not a formality — it protects the company from a connection error surfacing only once it is already affecting real production orders.

Support and maintenance after go-live#

Once the ERP-to-production integration is in production, the project does not end but moves into ongoing operation, where connection stability has to be monitored, errors fixed and changes in production or in the ERP system tracked. Without agreed post-launch support, the risks described above grow over time, because the system keeps changing while documentation and oversight fail to keep up.

It makes sense to structure support into priority classes based on how an error affects production, since a full system outage needs different handling than a minor issue that does not affect ongoing operations. Splitting support into priority classes also lets the contractor and the customer agree in advance, before the first incident, on what counts as urgent and what can wait for the next scheduled release of changes to the system.

Response times for each class are agreed in the support contract based on how critical the production process is, since a universal response time does not exist and would not make sense applied equally to every company. Beyond fixing errors, support also covers technical and security updates as well as further development if the production process changes, for example when a new line is introduced or a bill of materials changes and that change has to be reflected in the connection to the ERP system.

• Razred 1, izpad: sistem ali ključni del ne deluje, obravnava ima najvišjo prednost
• Razred 2, motnja: sistem deluje, posamezna funkcija ne, obravnava po dogovorjeni prednosti
• Razred 3, napaka: manjša napaka brez vpliva na poslovanje, uvrščena v naslednjo objavo
• Razred 4, zahteva: sprememba ali nadgradnja, obseg se oceni in termin uskladi

How do you choose a contractor for ERP-production integration?#

When choosing a contractor for ERP-production integration, what matters most is whether the team understands both the business side covered by the ERP system and the production side, where data comes from machines, sensors and work orders. A contractor who only knows one side often underestimates the difficulty of the other, and that usually surfaces during testing or after go-live.

Epix and its specialist partner network can put together a team for such a project that combines developers, solution architects, process automation specialists and engineers who understand industrial equipment, sensors and API-based connectivity. That same range of skills makes it possible to run the project as a whole, from analysing existing systems through go-live and support, or to limit it to a single package the customer needs, such as connecting machine data to an existing ERP system.

It is also worth checking how a contractor handles source code, access credentials and documentation: these need to be handed over to the customer, not remain solely with the contractor. The same goes for prior experience in the manufacturing industry, since a contractor who has already worked in this sector recognises typical pitfalls in connecting machines, shifts and bills of materials to an ERP system more quickly.

What determines the price of integrating an ERP system into production?#

The price of integrating an ERP system into production is not fixed, since it depends on the scope of functionality, the number of systems that need connecting and the state of existing data, which is why an analysis of the specific case is always needed before any estimate. There is no fixed price list for this kind of project, because the amount of work differs between companies depending on how many production lines and shifts have to be included.

Rather than a single price, it makes sense to break the project into packages, such as analysis, connecting an individual system, and go-live, so that each package can be estimated and delivered separately. That breakdown shows the customer where most of the work lies before committing to the full project, and lets the scope be adjusted if needed without putting work already done on other packages at risk.

Before pricing, Epix and its specialist partner network typically propose a short analysis of the current state that reveals the real complexity of the project. Only on that basis can an estimate be given that reflects the company's actual systems, not just the general scope described by the customer at the first meeting. That estimate is therefore always tied to the specific case, not to a generic project type simply labelled ERP-production integration.

• Obseg funkcionalnosti in število uporabniških vlog v sistemu
• Število obstoječih sistemov in vmesnikov, ki jih je treba povezati
• Stanje in količina podatkov, ki jih je treba prenesti ali uskladiti
• Zahteve glede varnosti, sledljivosti in skladnosti v regulirani panogi
• Obseg testiranja in potreba po neodvisnem QA pregledu
• Raven podpore po uvedbi in dogovorjeni odzivni časi