ERP Integration for the Manufacturing Industry

In manufacturing, products are not sold individually but as parts of assemblies, plants or systems. A machine spare part only makes sense when the customer knows which assembly it belongs to and which other parts are also needed for the replacement. The bill of materials (BOM) is the central document describing these relationships, and it must be navigable in the shop just as it is in the ERP.

Our integration reads multi-level BOMs from your ERP system and presents them in the shop as navigable tree structures. The customer sees the assembly, can navigate into individual parts, add required components to the cart and sees real-time availability and prices throughout. When a BOM changes in the ERP, for instance because a component is replaced by a successor model, the shop display updates automatically. Discontinued items are flagged as such, and the replacement part is recommended.

Spare parts sales are a high-margin business for many industrial companies, but they only work when the customer can quickly find the right part. In traditional sales processes, the service technician calls, provides the machine number and has the part looked up. A digital spare parts shop must replicate this process: the customer enters the serial number and immediately sees the associated BOM with all available spare parts.

We integrate machine master data from your ERP into the shop so that every delivered machine is linked with its configuration, BOM and service history. The customer logs into the portal, sees their installed base, navigates to the affected machine and orders the spare part in a few clicks. The service history shows which parts have already been replaced and when the next maintenance is due. All this data comes from the ERP and is synchronized in real time.

Kanban-driven reordering of C-parts, consumables and standard parts is a proven principle in manufacturing that digitizes excellently. The customer defines a reorder point and standard order quantity for each article. When stock reaches the threshold, whether through manual entry, barcode scan or IoT sensor, the system automatically generates an order and passes it to the ERP integration.

For the customer, this means: no manual reordering, no forgotten orders, no production interruptions due to missing small parts. For your company, it means: predictable order volumes, stronger customer retention and reduction of phone orders. The integration ensures that Kanban orders go through the same ERP process as manual orders: availability check, price calculation, picking and dispatch.

Industrial products are not differentiated by color and size but by technical attributes: torque, rated voltage, sealing class, material, tolerance class, certification. A ball bearing has twenty relevant attributes, a pneumatic cylinder thirty, a frequency converter fifty. These attributes must be filterable in the shop so the buyer finds the right product, and they must be correctly synchronized from the ERP or PIM.

Our integration supports importing structured attribute sets from ERP and PIM systems. Attributes are transferred with units, value ranges and filter categories and made searchable via Elasticsearch faceted filtering. Technical drawings, CAD files, certificates and safety data sheets are synchronized as linked documents and are available for the customer to download directly from the product view.

Industrial companies frequently use industry-specific ERP systems that are not reachable via standard connectors. Beyond the major systems like SAP and Microsoft Dynamics, we regularly encounter proAlpha, abas, PSIpenta, INFOR and industry-specific niche solutions. Many of these systems have been extended over years with custom modifications that must be considered during integration.

We begin every industrial project with a detailed analysis of ERP interfaces: which APIs are available? Which data can be queried in real time, which only as batch export? Are there documented webhooks or do we need to implement polling mechanisms? Based on this analysis, we design the integration architecture and select the optimal technical path for each data flow.

An ERP-shop integration in industrie is not a completed project but a permanent connection that must keep pace with updates from both systems. Our maintenance packages include proactive monitoring of all synchronization processes, timely adaptation to API changes and quarterly reviews of data quality and performance. Through automated contract tests, we detect breaking changes early and can react before production updates. This long-term perspective ensures your integration works reliably not only today but also in two years, keeping pace with your growing requirements.

Integrating ERP and shop in the manufacturing industry brings specific challenges that are less pronounced in other sectors. Bill of materials integration for configurable products, connectivity to production planning systems for realistic delivery dates, capacity queries for custom manufacturing and synchronization of technical product attributes according to industry standards like ETIM and eclass require deep understanding of both ERP logic and shop architecture. Our project experience in manufacturing encompasses exactly these scenarios and enables us to avoid typical pitfalls from the start and deploy proven solution approaches.

Our maintenance packages for industry integrations include monitoring of all synchronization processes, adaptation to ERP and shop updates, and quarterly reviews of data quality, performance and error rates. This long-term support ensures your integration works reliably even with growing requirements and changing system landscapes.

For industrial companies needing comprehensive technical support for their shop alongside ERP-shop integration, we offer combined maintenance and integration packages. A single contact for the entire technical infrastructure reduces complexity and ensures all system components remain coordinated.