Any small manufacturers using OFBiz?

[CaseT]

Hello All,

 

We are a very small manufacturing business (< 20 employees). We are
currently evaluating OFBiz and are seriously considering adopting OFBiz as
our company wide ERP solution. It would be very helpful to talk with any
small manufacturing companies who have adopted OFBiz as an ERP solution to
find out what in the application works for you and what doesn't as well as
what, if any, changes you might have made to OFBiz to better suit your
business needs.

 

Please point me in the right direction if this is not the right place to
post a message of this kind.

 

TIA,

 

Case Torres

[hidden email]

Quantum Composers, Inc.

http://www.quantumcomposers.com

 

[Walter Vaughan]

Case Torres wrote:

> We are a very small manufacturing business (< 20 employees). We are
> currently evaluating OFBiz and are seriously considering adopting OFBiz as
> our company wide ERP solution. It would be very helpful to talk with any
> small manufacturing companies who have adopted OFBiz as an ERP solution to
> find out what in the application works for you and what doesn't as well as
> what, if any, changes you might have made to OFBiz to better suit your
> business needs.

We are not live with it today, but we are looking at a 8 week golive window.
We too are a small manufacturing company of around 60 employees, but we also
distribute our products worldwide from all different directions of the supply
chain. We sell face to face, we sell via a combo B2B and B2C website, we sell to
retailers, we sell to resellers, we sell to wholesalers, we sell to other
manufacturers. We drop ship for others and some of our products are drop shipped
from others. We manufacture for ourselves, and we purchase other goods to
resell. We sell on Ebay.

Most of the changes we needed have been put into the project, either into ofBiz
or the OpenTaps financial modules.

What works is that ofBiz is the "anti-niche". All the commerical systems I've
looked at are really good at one or two levels... Manufacturing and wholesaling
or wholesaling and distributing or purchasing and retailing.

And it's not a matter that ofBiz is free. You still will have a lot of costs to
deploy, you just remove the cost per seat tax. It still will cost for external
training, data conversion, features that you may need and are not ready to
develop on your own, etc...

I don't know yet what *doen't work* but, we've been looking at this project for
almost 10 months now, and I feel better now about the direction we have gone,
than if someone had given us $650K for a closed source solution.

I don't know how long you have been following the project. If your need is
primarly manufacturing, search the archives and follow the goings on of Jacopo.
He's the guy.

I'd suggest you contact someone like HotWax http://www.hotwaxmedia.com
or OpenSource Strategies http://www.opensourcestrategies.com/ofbiz/
and get a quick professional evaluation. If you like what you see, then get one
of the longer evaluations.

> Please point me in the right direction if this is not the right place to
> post a message of this kind.

No, this is exactly the right spot.

--
Walter

[CaseT]

Thanks Walter for you quick and detailed reply. We are a small company but
poised to grow very rapidly this year. We are looking for a solution that we
can use for the next 5+ years. Our minimum requirements are the following
modules:
ARAP module, Order Entry, Procurement, Service/Support Issue creation and
tracking, CRM, Project Management, and Inventory Tracking module.

We'd like the ability to change/customize the Accounting module to provide
for a Throughput accounting method vs. a Cost accounting method.

My question to the group is how long it takes to get on board with ofbiz to
be able to make minimal add a field to the GUI type changes as well as more
significant changes to meet the uniqueness of our business? Also, what
technologies do I need to be proficient in? I have a C.S. in Computer
Science and have been working with open source technologies for about 10
years. I have no Java experience but am willing to learn.

Thank again for you help.
Best Regards,

Case

-----Original Message-----
From: Walter Vaughan [mailto:[hidden email]]
Sent: Monday, April 02, 2007 6:01 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: Any small manufacturers using OFBiz?

We are not live with it today, but we are looking at a 8 week golive window.
We too are a small manufacturing company of around 60 employees, but we also

distribute our products worldwide from all different directions of the
supply
chain. We sell face to face, we sell via a combo B2B and B2C website, we
sell to
retailers, we sell to resellers, we sell to wholesalers, we sell to other
manufacturers. We drop ship for others and some of our products are drop
shipped
from others. We manufacture for ourselves, and we purchase other goods to
resell. We sell on Ebay.

Most of the changes we needed have been put into the project, either into
ofBiz
or the OpenTaps financial modules.

What works is that ofBiz is the "anti-niche". All the commerical systems
I've
looked at are really good at one or two levels... Manufacturing and
wholesaling
or wholesaling and distributing or purchasing and retailing.

And it's not a matter that ofBiz is free. You still will have a lot of costs
to
deploy, you just remove the cost per seat tax. It still will cost for
external
training, data conversion, features that you may need and are not ready to
develop on your own, etc...

I don't know yet what *doen't work* but, we've been looking at this project
for
almost 10 months now, and I feel better now about the direction we have
gone,
than if someone had given us $650K for a closed source solution.

I don't know how long you have been following the project. If your need is
primarly manufacturing, search the archives and follow the goings on of
Jacopo.
He's the guy.

I'd suggest you contact someone like HotWax http://www.hotwaxmedia.com
or OpenSource Strategies http://www.opensourcestrategies.com/ofbiz/
and get a quick professional evaluation. If you like what you see, then get
one
of the longer evaluations.

> Please point me in the right direction if this is not the right place to
> post a message of this kind.

No, this is exactly the right spot.

--
Walter

[David E Jones]

On Apr 2, 2007, at 5:17 PM, Case Torres wrote:

> My question to the group is how long it takes to get on board with  
> ofbiz to
> be able to make minimal add a field to the GUI type changes as well  
> as more
> significant changes to meet the uniqueness of our business? Also, what
> technologies do I need to be proficient in? I have a C.S. in Computer
> Science and have been working with open source technologies for  
> about 10
> years. I have no Java experience but am willing to learn.

A good place to get an intro to the OFBiz framework is here:

http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBTECH/Framework+Introduction+Videos 
+and+Diagrams

I recommend watching all of these, but to get an idea of simple  
changes check out the "Doing Some Simple Changes" video.

-David