Open source ERP and CRM provider Compiere this week extended its push into manufacturing with the announcement of a comprehensive material requirements planning offering that integrates and automates scheduling, cost management, and reporting across the order to cash cycle.

Compiere Manufacturing is an enhancement to the manufacturing module the company rolled out last year. The first add-on covered basic bill of materials (BOM), work orders, and shipping and assembly. The material requirements planning (MRP) edition has an expanded feature set that can integrate customer demand forecasts with inventory on hand, as well as track and modify plans to meet expectations.

For example, a released work order in Compiere Manufacturing will automatically identify material in inventory, or create a purchase order if necessary. The system then follows the process through production, tracking labor and materials used at each station, as well as through final assembly and out to the shipping dock. Every financial transaction in ERP is integrated with the materials management in MRP in a single view, the company said.

Compiere Manufacturing is written on open source code, meaning the user has access to the code without paying up-front licensing fees. In addition, a model-driven application platform allows users to adjust screens and functions without coding.

The application is available on premise, in a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, or in the cloud. Earlier this month, Compiere announced the Compiere Cloud Edition, migrating its flagship ERP suite to Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud.

Like SaaS, the cloud utility model offloads the IT infrastructure to a service provider — in this case Amazon — and provides users access based on a monthly subscription fee. Unlike many SaaS offerings, which deliver one version of the application to all customers, Compiere’s cloud deployment is a private set-up whereby customers can tailor the offering to their specific needs, said John Cingari, chief marketing officer at Compiere, in an interview with Managing Automation.

The company also touts the integration of manufacturing and ERP as a way to boost productivity.

“MRP systems with work order tracking and integration give customers the ability to lower purchasing costs, inventory costs, as well as to improve customer service because there is better visibility into where work orders are,” Cingari said. “If there’s a delay, there is traceability on the shop floor. If there’s an inefficient process going on, management has the visibility [that enables them to] take corrective action.”

Competing primarily with Microsoft’s Dynamics ERP product and NetSuite’s SaaS-based ERP offering, Compiere Manufacturing will be available in mid-June, priced at $750 per-user, per-year for the on-premise version, and $945 per-user, per-year for the SaaS or cloud computing model.