MRP and MES Software for Job Shops

Quick answer: MRP plans what should happen and MES records what did. A make-to-order shop usually needs the second more than the first, because its real problem is that nobody knows what a finished job actually consumed. Test any product against your own routings, and treat machine integration as the claim most likely to be oversold.

Local Context

Edmonton is a denser manufacturing market than its reputation suggests, and it changes who the typical buyer is here.

Statistics Canada’s business counts for the Edmonton CMA (businesses with employees, July 2025) record 1,872 manufacturing businesses against Calgary’s 1,688, in a metro carrying 55,906 businesses in total against Calgary’s 65,639. In the 20 to 199 employee band, where a production system decision usually becomes urgent, Edmonton has 505 manufacturers to Calgary’s 419.

Most of that population is make-to-order. Cut, form, weld, machine or assemble against a customer drawing, in batches of one to fifty, with a routing that changes per job.

That matters because most manufacturing software is built for the opposite case. Repetitive production, stable BOMs, forecastable demand and long runs are what the category was designed around, and a demo built on that shape will look excellent and answer none of your questions.

A caveat worth carrying: a business-count table counts locations, so the large single-site processing plants in Alberta’s Industrial Heartland appear as a handful of records. The table understates the industrial base rather than flattering it.

MRP and MES, and Why the Distinction Decides the Purchase

MRP is material requirements planning. It works backwards from demand, through the bill of materials, against current inventory and lead times, and tells you what to make or buy and when. It answers what should happen.

MES is a manufacturing execution system. It runs and records the floor: which operation is on which machine, who is running it, elapsed time, quantities good and scrapped, and the traceability record that results. It answers what did happen.

The ISA-95 standard formalises the layering between planning systems and execution systems, and it is worth knowing the framework exists when a vendor uses the terms loosely.

For a job shop the second is usually the constraint. A shop that plans immaculately and captures nothing cannot improve its estimating, because it never finds out what work costs. A shop that captures accurately and plans on a whiteboard at least learns.

The failure this produces is specific and common. A shop quotes from the last similar job, the last similar job was never costed accurately, and the error compounds quietly across every future quote off the same reference.

What a Make-To-Order Shop Actually Needs

Routings that change per job

A repetitive manufacturer defines a routing once. A job shop defines one per job, often from a drawing, sometimes while the job is already moving.

Ask how long it takes to create a new routing, and whether an operator can be added to a step mid-job without an engineering change. If the answer involves a change request, the system will be bypassed within a month.

Time capture the floor will actually use

The best data model loses to a terminal nobody touches. Ask to see the operator interface, on the device it would run on, with gloves in mind.

Two questions separate real products: can an operator run more than one job at a time and have the time split sensibly, and what happens when somebody forgets to clock off at shift end.

Material traceability to the level your customers demand

A shop working to spec has to connect a mill test report to a heat number, that heat to the pieces cut from it, and those pieces to the assembly that shipped, reproducible years later.

That is simultaneously a lot-and-serial configuration decision, an inventory valuation decision and a document-handling decision. Ask to see a completed traceability package produced out of a system the vendor configured, rather than a description of one.

Nesting, drop and remnant

Cutting produces offcuts that either get reclaimed into inventory with a real value or get written off. Most systems handle this poorly and few vendors raise it.

Ask directly how a remnant is returned to stock, what cost it carries, and how it is found when a later job could use it.

Outside processing

Parts leave for galvanizing, heat treat, plating or anodizing, and come back onto the same job. Ask how the system represents inventory that is off-site but still owned, and how the vendor’s invoice lands against that job.

Job costing that survives a dispute

Labour, material, machine time, outside processing and scrap, all against the job, closing to a number somebody will defend in a conversation with a customer.

The Categories of Tool

Dedicated job shop systems

JobBOSS, E2, ProShop and similar. Built for exactly this shape of work, with quoting, routing and shop floor capture designed around make-to-order.

Trade-off: they are usually their own island, connected to accounting through an integration you maintain.

Standalone MES

Bought when execution and machine data are the constraint and a planning system already exists. Strong on floor capture and OEE. Usually sits alongside an ERP.

ERP with manufacturing modules

Odoo, Business Central, Epicor and similar run manufacturing alongside purchasing, inventory and accounting on shared data. A work order consumes stock and posts cost as it happens.

The question for a job shop is whether the manufacturing module is built for repetitive production or handles per-job routing well. That is a demo question and it is the one to spend the demo on.

Spreadsheets and a whiteboard

Genuinely adequate below a certain size, and the honest threshold is when two people need to know the same thing at once, or when quoting starts depending on jobs nobody costed.

How to Run the Evaluation

1. Bring one real job. A drawing, its routing, its material with certs, one outside-process step, and the invoice it produced. Make each vendor run it.
2. Watch an operator use the floor interface, ideally one of yours, on the shop floor.
3. Ask for a traceability package produced from a configured system.
4. Ask how a remnant is costed and found again.
5. Confirm which of your machines can actually be read before pricing any machine integration.
6. Compare a quoted job to its actual cost inside the system, in the demo.
7. Measure two numbers before and after: how long it takes to cost a finished job, and how far your quotes sit from actuals.

About the publisher

Edmonton Biztech is published by Solvync Inc., an Odoo implementation partner based in Calgary, Alberta.

Odoo appears above as one option among several and the publisher implements it, so read that section accordingly. The routing, traceability and remnant tests are the ones to put to Solvync and to every job shop specialist on the same terms, and the demo on your own job is what settles it.

Related Reading

• Metal Fabrication and Welding covers the operating detail.
• Shop Rate Calculation covers what an hour actually costs.
• Pricing Welding and Fabrication Work covers the estimating side.
• Mill test report defines the traceability document.