We are a used cars retailers, we purchases used cars from various sources, recondition them, and resell them.
We implemented ERPNext as our ERP system, and we have a dedicated development team working on customizing or introducing new modules in the system to meet our needs.
Our next project is a workshop management system.
We don’t service customers cars, we only service our own cars, the system we will build should be able to open work orders for our items, issue repair tasks, monitor the time needed to complete said tasks, and manage spare parts requisition and fulfillment.
We were thinking to explore the manufacturing module in ERPNext if it could be customized to our needs instead of building the system we need from scratch.
Was wondering if anyone have any experience implementing a cars workshop management in ERPNext?
What do you advise us to do? build our own module from scratch, customize the manufacturing? or do you have another approach in mind?
@Mohammad_Johary I Think building new module would be better. keep it simple and easy . but you can use predefined doctypes such as job card / operations / workstations…
I think the tricky part of the existing module is that it’s for standard discrete manufacturing, where you have a traditional BOM of a finished product, with material components and operations, and those parts build a new, different product.
It sounds like you’re really repairing or refurbishing a product which technically remains the same item, but with additional components, labor, etc; more of a repair process than a manufacturing process.
You could possibly treat the repaired car as a new item, and the original vehicle as a primary input component, along with additional materials as the repair parts. Standard manufacturing operations would be your repair processes, which you can track time and labor with.
I assume each job is highly customized, that complicates it a bit because each BOM would need to be different. Also, would you need to continually add operations and materials as you’re working on the job and discover new parts that need repair? That would probably require some customization on the work orders and job cards.
Maybe there are some ERPNext users out there who have been able to tweak standard ERPNext manufacturing module into this type of repair system…
Just a suggestion to explore the Issues and Support Module. you may customize the Support Module of the ERPNext. you can add the details of repairs, works, parts used in the repair of car etc. there. and it won’t interfere with Manufacturing Module.
The only thing to be added to Support Module would be consumption of Parts (either on FoC basis or on Chargeable Basis).
You can treat it as Warranty Support / Warranty Replacement of Parts and can estimate/calculate the labour costs, Parts Costs, Denting/Painting works etc.
We are basically in to the manufacturing business of some machinery for which we provide warranties upto 18 months. For any breakdown of the machinery during the warranty period, we provide the Free Repairs of the machines.
We are trying to tweak the support module in order to issue the Parts/items against warranty claims which would have the cost of items only instead of sales price of same item. I assume that it can be a better option instead of developing the module from scratch…
This is the approach that I’m focused on at the moment, as you said each job is customizable and can add operations and parts during the job.
I think I will not use the current work order and instead do a new one with some functionalities copied from the manufacturing work order.
Our business case is different than yours.
While your repairs are for warranty claims, ours is to prepare the vehicle before selling it, so we need to track the costs associated with the item.
Also we want to keep track of the workshop resources, utilization, efficiency…etc
In Warranty Repairs as well, we need to track the cost of warranty repairs of a product. Although we can’t bill the warranty repairs to customer but we still need to keep a track of parts/man hours consumed by closing a warranty complaint.
Similarly, for repair of second hand car, you must conduct some repairs on the car. you may require to replace some of the parts on the car i.e. worn out tires, some accessories etc.
You would like to have a total cost of vehicle when it ready for sale i.e purchase cost + Parts needed for repair + Man hour used to do the repairs. that becomes your final cost of vehicle. now you can add on your margins to arrive on a sales price.
Nevertheless, Out of the box Support Module doesn’t have the feature to record the parts consumption on any warranty claim, hence it will need a customization.
However, customizing the Support Module rather than Manufacturing module was suggested as it won’t need separate Bill of Materials for each job card/ work order.
Anyway, It will be great if you can share the progress on this subject…