Manufacturing inventory for small producers
Small manufacturers get squeezed between spreadsheets that can't track production and ERPs priced for factories. Alef Solutions covers the middle: components in, production runs, labeled finished goods out — with real traceability.
From PO to put-away
Purchase orders feed scan-first receiving; received components are put away into a warehouse and area hierarchy you define.
- Supplier catalogs and reorder defaults
- Receiving with QA quarantine when inspection comes first
- Guided put-away tasks
Production runs that keep the ledger true
Runs consume component stock and produce finished goods — with lots or serials, costs, and labels — so finished inventory is born tracked.
- Component consumption per run
- Serial or lot assignment at production
- GS1-128 labels printed at the line
Counts, valuation, and visibility
Staged stock counts, adjustments with reasons, and valuation with a clear costing basis keep the numbers you plan with honest.
- Count → review → post workflow
- Movement history per item, lot, and location
- Inventory value with costing basis
Modules Manufacturing businesses use
Start with the module that hurts most; add the rest when you're ready — they share one login and one set of records. See the module library and pricing.
- Inventory
- Tasks & Operations
- Knowledge & SOPs
- Reports
Questions operators ask
Is this MRP, or just inventory with extra steps?
Production runs consume components and yield finished goods against the same item records inventory already tracks, with lot and serial carried through. What it is not is a full MRP planning engine: there is no demand forecasting, no capacity scheduling and no multi-level MRP run. If you need the planning half, say so early — we would rather scope it than have you discover the gap.
Can we trace a finished good back to the components that went into it?
Yes, and this is the reason lot tracking runs through production rather than stopping at receiving. From a finished lot you can see the component lots consumed; from a component lot you can see the finished goods it reached, and where they shipped.
Do we get labels and barcodes for what we make?
GS1 barcodes and GS1-128 labels come out of the Inventory module, with a label template designer, so a finished good is labelled the way your customer's scanner expects rather than with a generic code you then have to explain.
We are a small shop. Is this too much system?
The build is scoped to what you run. Modules are bought separately, so a shop that needs production runs and traceability is not paying for a warehouse or a storefront it will never open — and if you take the product as-built there is no build fee at all.
See it on your operation
Create an account, or tell us how your Manufacturing business works and we'll show you the fit.