From 5 SAP B1 licenses to 60+ users operating on the plant floor — a custom MES with native SAP B1 integration that delivered up to 40% improvement in on-time delivery
We scaled SAP without scaling the cost of SAP: 3 plants, 30 tablets on the floor and 6+ years in production with continuous evolution.
CIO, COO or owner of a discrete manufacturer (furniture, home appliances, auto parts, metalworking, medical devices, configurable products such as mattresses, doors, windows or cabinets) running SAP B1 or another corporate ERP, with a “parallel Excel” in complex quoting, the plant floor, quality or after-sales. If you have 5 licenses of your ERP's production module but more than 60 people who need to run the plant floor — this case describes your situation.
The client
- Industry
- Manufacturing — made-to-order upholstered furniture supplying large national retail chains
- Client
- Mexican made-to-order upholstered furniture manufacturer
- Size
- Multi-plant (3 production plants)
- Time in production
- 6+ years in production with continuous evolution
The corporate ERP didn't reach the plant floor, and licensing it for everyone made no sense.
- Only 5 SAP B1 production licenses for 60+ users who actually needed plant-floor visibility
- Production fragmented across multiple disconnected tools (Excel, paper, supervisor radios)
- No real-time visibility of order progress on the plant floor
- Reactive quality control with no root cause methodology
- Manual reconciliation between operations and SAP B1 — every reconciliation cycle a source of errors
- Returns and repair operations without traceability — high cost, no learning loop
A modular web platform with 15 modules that scales SAP B1 without scaling the cost of SAP: the 5 licensed users keep working against the corporate ERP, and 60+ additional users work through our platform with bidirectional SAP sync. It includes a quoting engine with kits and components, production by plant/department/process with 11 states, bulk order generation, sales with weekly/monthly forecasting, centralized catalogs, design, a built-in manual and RBAC.
We scale SAP without scaling the cost of SAP
The client keeps its 5 SAP B1 production licenses for accounting and master inventory users; our platform absorbs the 60+ operational users (supervisors, data entry, quality, returns & repairs, sales, forecasting). Bidirectional sync respects SAP as the master source.
Data is captured where it's produced
30 tablets on the floor with PIN authentication eliminate duplicate administrative data entry.
5-Why quality
Root cause analysis with visual mapping, designed as a reusable module.
Returns & Repairs
End-to-end flow with photo evidence and technical assessment.
Stack & architecture
Results
Quotable furniture models with full explosion of kits, fabrics, hardware, legs and add-ons.
Simultaneous work orders in the full flow (quote → planning → floor → quality → shipping), across 3 plants in a single operational view.
Double data entry: bidirectional SAP B1 sync of BOMs, products, raw materials, price lists, customers, production orders and returns.
“We went from five licenses of SAP's production module to more than sixty users capturing data from tablets on the floor, without buying more SAP. The integration did what the corporate ERP can't: speak the language of our manufacturing — and we improved on-time delivery by up to forty percent.”
Timeline & phases
6+ years in production with continuous evolution on the same codebase, with no rewrite. The on-time delivery improvement wasn't immediate: first the system exposed the missed commitments that paper had been hiding, and the gain came once the organization absorbed the data and adjusted its operation.
Lessons learned
- Bidirectional SAP B1 integration isn't sold as “license savings” — it's sold as “respect the ERP where it's the master and absorb what it can't reach.” The client keeps its SAP investment instead of replacing it. That turns the CIO into an ally instead of a defender of the status quo.
- The 30 PIN-secured tablets on the floor were key: we invested in simplified UX with fast authentication and automatic refresh every 60 seconds for industrial environments with dirty hands and variable lighting. A full login on the floor wasn't viable — design for the real context, not the desk.
- The 40% delivery improvement wasn't immediate: visual aids and status lights first exposed prior missed deliveries that paper had hidden. The system doesn't improve operations by itself — it makes them visible so the organization can improve them.
- The 5-Why quality model was designed as a reusable module, and the methodology transfers to other sectors (manufacturing, hospitals, logistics).
