Component database (PLM) to ERPNext item sync

Integration
1

Hi,

Question comes up now and then but curious to hear if anyone is running ERPNext with a 2-way sync against a separate “components database”?

Let’s assume the database is a PLM with a REST API, containing 10.000+ electrical and mechanical articles in various categories.

What would be the best strategies to get something like that up and running? Any existing apps or modules out there with similar functionality?

As most parts will have a unique “vendor part-number”, that could be used as a key to detect if the part exists in the PLM or not, allowing you to create a new part either directly in ERPNext (which would trigger a sync to check if it exists in the PLM, fetch the “PLM item_id” or create it).

The other way around, if an item is created in the PLM, erpnext would simply create a mirror of that item next time it syncs.

Tricky cases might be relative changes to the part/item parametric values causing conflicts. This would need some sort of reconciliation view to help manually resolve items that couldn’t automatically sync.

Thoughts?

2

I suggest you to use some sort of automation for that like Apache NiFi. It has some learning curve but then you will feel at home.

You also need to structure your algorithm well before everything. You should create clear cases when there should be some conflicts and you should raise some alarms when conflict happens. Sometimes you can’t prevent it but you can manage it by assigning it to users.

3

yes, been looking that way, soo many products doing basically the same thing
apache airflow, apache spark, etc. Then you have the gitlab off-spring Meltano that seems quite promising.

So is my understanding correct that ERPNext itself doesn’t have any more advanced 2-way integrations written to-date that allow two systems with either warehouse, sales or items to run in harmony!?

4

n8n is the closest thing, I think. Did you use develop anything for your PLM?

5

aws glue or meltano still my candidates for these type of jobs

for PLM, the landscape has changed now when PTC aquired arena, they raised pricing 350%…

would people be interested in building a PLM like feature-set into erpnext?
I think it would be an extremely valuable add-on