Who it's for / Manufacturing
For small manufacturers & workshops
Manufacturing software — and what to do when your workshop outgrows it.
Every roundup ranks the same MRP tools. Here's a fair look at where they fit, where a made-to-order workshop hits the wall, and the option none of the lists mention: software built exactly around how your orders actually flow, from sale to install, a module at a time.
The real options.
Manufacturing software — MRP — plans what to buy and what to make, and keeps orders, bills of materials and production in one system instead of a spreadsheet and a whiteboard. For a workshop coming off paper it's a real step up — and for a lot of manufacturers, one of these is exactly the right answer.
| Tool | Known for | Typically best for |
|---|---|---|
| MRPeasy | Self-serve cloud MRP you implement yourself | 10–200-staff manufacturers, standard products |
| Statii | Job-shop system written by two engineers for subcontract work | 5–30-staff UK job shops, one-off work |
| Fitfactory Tricorn | Production control for subcontract precision & fabrication, around since 1986 | UK machinists, sheet-metal & assembly shops |
| Katana | Inventory + production for product brands selling online | D2C makers, simple variants, Shopify-first |
| 123Insight | Train-before-you-buy MRP subscription (Forterro) | 20–100-staff make-to-order manufacturers |
| Access FactoryMaster | The UK-suite MRP (The Access Group) | Small-to-mid UK manufacturers |
| Unleashed | Inventory with a light assembly add-on (also Access Group) | Product brands doing light assembly |
| Cim50 · Sicon | The Sage route — partner add-ons that replaced Sage's own retired modules | Firms whose accounts live in Sage 50/200 |
A snapshot, not a ranking — and check who owns what today: The Access Group owns both FactoryMaster and Unleashed, Forterro owns 123Insight among eleven ERP brands, and Sage has retired its own manufacturing modules entirely — "Sage manufacturing" now means a partner add-on. If one of these fits what you make, buy it — we'd tell you to, and help you wire it in. This page is for the workshops it doesn't fit.
Where a made-to-order workshop hits the wall.
Stock MRP is built for standard products and standard bills of materials. If every order that leaves your workshop is different — configured, sized, specified to the customer — you're not who the box was built for. Below the big-ERP tier, no off-the-shelf tool turns a customer's choices into a bill of materials, a routing and a price. So the workarounds start:
- The order arrives on a form or an email, gets sketched by hand, typed into a spreadsheet for the invoice and written on a whiteboard for the floor — four copies of the truth, none of them connected.
- The person who knows how to price the awkward jobs carries the price book in their head — and the day they retire, it leaves with them.
- Spec changes cascade by memory: the customer rings, someone scribbles on the original order form, and whether the old version gets built depends on who remembers to tell the floor.
- Quality lives in experience and spot-checks, so defects surface at the worst possible moment — on delivery day — with no record of where in the line they came from.
The cost of standing still
Small margins, scarce hands, dear electricity.
The UK has about 130,000 registered manufacturing businesses, and roughly 95% of them have fewer than 50 staff (ONS, September 2025) — workshops, not factories. Three numbers worth sitting with:
Manufacturing companies in England and Wales that went insolvent in 2025 — a third more than 2019's 1,483, and the third year running near the two-thousand mark (figures as published June 2026, provisional). The sector's margin for process waste has been gone for three years. (Insolvency Service, June 2026)
Of manufacturing vacancies in 2024 were skills-shortage vacancies — unfillable for lack of the right skills, against a 27% average across the economy — and 67% of the manufacturers stuck with them said it was driving their operating costs up, on the Department for Education's Employer Skills Survey of 22,712 UK establishments, published November 2025. The ONS counted around 50,000 unfilled manufacturing jobs in spring 2026. Skilled hands are the scarcest thing you have; every hour they spend re-keying paperwork is the dearest hour you buy. (DfE ESS, November 2025) (ONS, June 2026)
What UK industry paid for electricity in 2024, taxes included — the highest of the 25 IEA countries reporting, roughly 70% above the median, on the government's own international comparison published September 2025. When the meter takes that much before a single part is made, the rest of the operation can't afford to leak too. (DESNZ, September 2025)
What we'd build instead.
The smallest thing that removes your worst pain first, then the next — each module shaped around how your orders actually flow, live in weeks, and yours to own. No year-long ERP project. For a made-to-order workshop, that usually starts here:
One live record per order, sale to install
Every order, payment, spec change and delivery event against a single record with a full history — so when the customer rings, anyone can answer, and the change gets to the floor because the system cascades it, not because someone remembered.
A configurator that becomes the build ticket
The customer or your sales agent configures the product — size, options, finish — and the system prices it, blocks impossible combinations, and generates the exact build ticket from the same source of truth. The thing entry-level MRP rarely does, buildable for how your product actually configures.
Quality with a chain of custody
Every piece carries a scannable identity; nothing moves to the next stage without evidence the last one passed. Defects stop being delivery-day surprises and start being data — by piece, by stage, by batch.
Balance collection on a schedule
Deposits and balance payments collected on their own schedule — payment link, reminders, bank transfer — with a person stepping in only when the sequence escalates. Cash arrives days earlier than a phone-chase cycle.
A live workshop queue instead of a whiteboard
Every order's stage visible at a glance — queued, in build, in QC, ready to load — with bottlenecks showing up before dispatch feels them, and the morning numbers assembled before you're in.
Every one is a capability we can build now with AI-assisted development — not a promise your workshop needs all of it. We start with the one that hurts most.
Where we've done it
We haven't built for a manufacturer. We've built this exact pattern.
The modules above aren't hypothetical — they're drawn from a full order-to-install platform we've specified, line by line, for a UK made-to-order manufacturer, and manufacturing-adjacent work sits in the track record (a credit-note processing accelerator among the fifteen-plus years of shipped software behind this practice). The deepest proof is the pattern: a UK accountancy practice — documents arriving by email, the same details retyped between five subscriptions, chasing that ate the week — came to us and, a module at a time, left all five behind for one custom platform. Documents read by AI and checked by maths, one record every system works from, chasing that runs itself: the same pattern, pointed at orders and build tickets instead of tax returns.
Fair questions
What workshop owners ask us.
Can I create my own ERP system?
Yes — but the honest version isn't "build an ERP". It's building the part no box covers — your configurator, your build tickets, your quality gates — a module at a time, while keeping accounts and payroll on the off-the-shelf tools that already work. That's exactly what we do, on a monthly retainer, and you own the code and data from day one.
What is the best manufacturing software for a small business?
It depends what you make. MRPeasy is the usual self-serve cloud answer; Statii and Fitfactory Tricorn are built for UK subcontract job shops; Katana suits product brands selling online; FactoryMaster and 123Insight are the step up. For many manufacturers one of these is exactly right, and we'll tell you so. The gap is configure-to-order — if every order is different, see above.
Is there free software for manufacturers?
Katana has a free tier and several tools offer free trials — workable for a very small operation making standard products. The ceiling arrives quickly: order volume, custom products, and the moment your process doesn't match the tool's assumptions, the spreadsheets and the whiteboard creep back in alongside it.
How much does manufacturing software cost?
Entry cloud MRP runs to tens of pounds per user per month; established UK packages sell annual licences that run into five figures; and mid-tier ERP is a consultant-led project measured in months. Custom on a monthly retainer sits differently: tiers from £2,500 to £6,500 a month, starting with a free process audit, and you own what gets built.
What's the difference between MRP and ERP?
MRP plans materials and production — what to buy and make, and when. ERP is the bigger box that adds finance, sales and everything else. The third option, for the workshop that fits neither: keep the tools that already work, and build the missing piece — the one that matches how your orders actually flow — module by module.
Start here
Bring us the whiteboard.
A free process audit is thirty minutes. Walk us through the part of running your workshop that wastes the most time — the order forms, the whiteboard, the balance chasing — and you'll leave with a written map of what could run itself, whether or not we ever work together.
No pitch deck, no obligation. The map is yours either way.