Manufacturing for products from steel

Ive recently been introduced to ERPnext and I am struggling to define the way to use the manufacturing Module for making items from steel where variable sizes items may be needed from the same raw material, which comes in standard or bespoke sizes
If we manufacture a simple Bench and use tube for the legs and some strengthening beams.
The tubes will all be specific lengths and we will need to plan the best cutting regime to get the maximum from each standard length of steel. If I say that the bench has 2 beams 2.5 m and legs of length 0.4 m. The standard length of our tube is 6 m.
If I set up each part with the quantity I can get from a standard length for the beam it will be 2 with scrap of 1 m for the beams and 15 for the legs.
For the best use of material we would want to factor in using the 1m length for 2 legs and reduce the scrap.
This is a simple explanation but the same issue arises cutting for parts from standard steel sheets.

Any thoughts ?

Look on github for a custom app for steel pipe manufacturers. It may be a close match.

You can define UOM conversion in the item master.
In your case:
Default UOM = Meter, assuming you want to see the Stock of Steel Tube in Meters. Stock Entry will always be posted in Default UOM
Then define multiple UOMs and Conversion, set Purchase Default UOM as 6 Meter (you can even set this as Kg and define the Meter to Kg conversion in the UOM table)

Define BOM in terms of Lengths


This way Raw Material will be calculated in terms of Meters considering all the Sub Assemblies, check the Exploded Material Requirement. You can then post Stock entry of the actual scrap at the end of day or each operation.

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Could you please share and excel sheet of the workflow from raw material to finished product. If you can formulate the process we can achieve your target.

If we only had these items it would be suitable. We however use the same material for a number of products all with varying dimensions. So this would mean for every length we need to add this UOM.
Also the similar scenario for sheet steel. Where the issue is more complex because there are infinite combinations due to shape size and qty depending on customer orders. Thanks for the advise so far. I will contact some other some friends that use alternative systems to see how its handled else where, may be I have the wrong expectation.

The better approach maybe to use “repack process” to cut your 6m length rods to smaller prices. All of them can be in length (meters). You need only one UOM for infinite parts.

Check out the repack process in the manufacturing module. Cheers

We are thinking in same line. Keeping the item code same for either pipe / structure ( variable length) or sheet metal ( variable width x length).

We purchase raw material like pipe, sheet etc. in Kgs and issue in calculated Kgs Of each produced item in numbers. This relation can be defined at item / BOM master.