Forging Industry ERP Case Study | Forset Forge & Odoo MRP

Client Profile

Forset Forge

Industry	Automobile Parts Forging & Manufacturing
Products	Forged automobile components including flanges, shafts, hubs, gears and custom parts
Location	Rajkot, Gujarat, India
Team Size	100+ employees
Export Markets	Europe, Middle East & Southeast Asia
Production Model	In-house forging + external job work (machining, heat treatment, finishing)
Platform	Odoo MRP & SCM

Forset Forge has built its reputation as one of India's leading automobile parts forging manufacturers from Rajkot, the engineering capital of Gujarat. Their product range spans forged flanges, crankshafts, wheel hubs, gear blanks, and complex custom components for automotive OEMs and Tier-1 suppliers across India and international markets.

Forging is one of manufacturing's most capital-intensive processes. A single forging hammer represents a multi-crore investment, and every idle hour on that equipment is a measurable cost. Yet without the right ERP for discrete manufacturing, Forset Forge was making production scheduling decisions that were leaving significant hammer capacity on the table, while simultaneously losing visibility over job work vendors, machining operations, and export cost accuracy.

Odoo MRP and SCM transformed production planning, job work control, machining management, and export costing on a single platform, and the numbers reflect it.

32%

Increase in Hammer Utilisation

40%

Reduction in Production Idle Time

25%

Lower Job Work Costs

100%

Export Cost Sheet Accuracy

2×

Faster Production Scheduling

The Operating Reality

Why Forging Is One of Manufacturing's Most Complex Operations to Run

Before the challenges, the context. Forging isn't just complex engineering. It's a multi-stage, multi-vendor, capital-heavy operation where planning errors compound quickly.

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Multi-Crore

Equipment Investment Per Hammer

Each forging press or hammer is a massive capital asset. Idle time isn't just inefficiency — it's a direct, measurable cost against that investment that shows up in every P&L.

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5–8

Production Stages Per Component

Forging, trimming, shot blasting, heat treatment, machining, finishing, inspection. Each stage may involve a different vendor, a different lead time, and a different quality checkpoint.

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Lot-wise

Traceability Requirement

Automobile OEM and export buyers require full lot-wise traceability including heat number, die number, material certification, and process records for every batch of forged components.

The Challenge

What Was Costing Forset Forge, Visibly and Invisibly

In a forging business, the cost of poor planning isn't abstract. It shows up in idle hammers, delayed deliveries, and export quotes that don't reflect reality.

Production Planning

Hammer scheduling done on experience, not data

Production schedules were built on the foreman's experience and a whiteboard. There was no system linking the confirmed order book to hammer capacity, die availability, or material readiness. The result: hammers sat idle between jobs, and rush orders created scheduling conflicts that drove up overtime costs.

Hammer Utilisation

No measurement of actual vs. available hammer time

Forset Forge had no system to track how many hours each hammer was actually running versus available. Die changeover time, warm-up losses, and breakdown downtime were known informally but never measured. The true OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) of the forge shop was unknown and therefore unmanageable.

Job Work

Multi-stage job work with no central tracking

Post-forging operations including heat treatment, shot blasting, CNC machining, and surface finishing were outsourced to multiple vendors. Batches in transit between stages were tracked mentally or on paper. Material losses, delays, and quality rejections at vendor sites were discovered late, after they had already disrupted the production schedule.

Machining

In-house machining not integrated with forging schedule

The machining shop operated independently from the forge floor. There was no system linking forging output to the machining queue. Machining either waited for forgings or received batches before it had capacity. Bottlenecks bounced between the two shops without visibility.

PRC Management

Production, rejection & correction tracked manually

Production quantity, rejection count, and correction (rework) records were maintained in paper registers at each workstation. Summarising PRC data for management or identifying which die, shift, or operator was generating the most rejections required manual compilation that rarely happened.

Export Costing

Export cost sheets built on estimates, not actuals

Preparing a cost sheet for an export inquiry required manually aggregating material cost, forging cost, job work charges, machining cost, packaging, and logistics, all estimated from memory or outdated figures. Quotes were sometimes won on prices that, once the order was actually executed, turned out to be below true cost.

Inventory

Raw material and WIP across stages with no visibility

Steel billets at the forge shop, semi-finished forgings at heat treatment, and machined components in the inspection bay. The actual material position at any moment required physical checking. Over-purchasing to compensate for uncertainty was the default, and working capital suffered accordingly.

SCM

Procurement not linked to production requirements

Steel and raw material procurement was planned on past consumption patterns rather than actual upcoming production requirements. Grade mismatches, rushed procurement at premium prices, and occasional stock-outs that stopped the forge shop were recurring problems that could have been entirely avoided.

The Solution

Odoo MRP & SCM for a Precision Forging Operation

Every solution below was designed around the specific reality of forging: die-based scheduling, multi-stage job work, lot traceability, and export cost accuracy.

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Production Planning Linked to Confirmed Order Book

The foundation of the entire implementation was connecting Forset Forge's confirmed sales orders directly to the Odoo MRP production planning engine. Every order generates a production work order with the correct die number, material grade, forging weight, and estimated hammer time. The production schedule is now built on data: what orders are confirmed, what die is available, what material is in stock, rather than experience. The forge shop runs a structured schedule with clear daily targets per hammer, per shift.

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Full Hammer Utilisation Tracking, Every Hour Accounted For

Each forging hammer now has a machine centre in Odoo with tracked available hours per shift. Production time, die changeover time, breakdown time, and planned maintenance are all logged against each hammer. Management sees a live utilisation dashboard showing actual forging hours as a percentage of available capacity, per machine and per shift. Idle time is flagged. Breakdown patterns are visible. The forge shop's OEE is now a managed number, not an unknown. Within two quarters of go-live, hammer utilisation had improved by 32%.

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Job Work Management Across Every Stage and Vendor

Every batch that leaves the forge shop for external processing (heat treatment, shot blasting, CNC machining, surface finishing) generates a job work order in Odoo against the parent production order. The system tracks quantity dispatched, vendor name, process, expected return date, and actual return date. Quality inspection is triggered automatically on return. Vendor-wise rejection rates, turnaround times, and cost variances are captured, driving a structured vendor review process and a 25% reduction in job work costs through renegotiation backed by data.

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Machining Management, Forge and Machine Shop in Sync

The in-house machining centre is now integrated into the same production flow as the forge shop. When a forging batch completes and passes inspection, the machining work order is automatically queued in the machining schedule with the correct operation sequence, tooling requirements, and cycle time. The machining team no longer waits to be told what to run next. The forge floor no longer dumps forgings into a queue that machines can't absorb. Bottlenecks are visible and manageable in real time.

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PRC Management, Production, Rejection and Correction in Real Time

Every production work order captures production quantity, rejection quantity, and correction (rework) quantity at each stage: forge, heat treatment, machining, and finishing. PRC data is logged digitally by operators at workstations, replacing paper registers. Management can now run rejection analysis by die, by shift, by operator, and by material grade, identifying quality problems at their source rather than discovering them at final inspection. Die life tracking based on actual hit counts has extended average die life by 18%.

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Export Cost Sheet, Accurate, Automated, Instant

The export cost sheet module was one of the highest-impact customisations in the project. For any export inquiry, the system generates a complete cost sheet by pulling actual costs from the live system, including material cost (by grade and weight), forging cost (by hammer time and energy), job work charges (by process, from actual vendor rates), in-house machining cost (by cycle time), quality and inspection cost, packaging, and freight to the export port. The cost sheet takes minutes to produce, reflects current actuals rather than historical estimates, and has eliminated the risk of quoting below true cost. Export margins are now known before the order is confirmed, not after it's shipped.

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Raw Material SCM, Grade-wise Procurement Linked to Production Plan

The Odoo SCM module generates material requirements from the confirmed production schedule, broken down by steel grade, diameter, and cut weight. Purchase requisitions are raised automatically with the correct lead time buffer for each supplier. Grade mismatches and last-minute procurement are eliminated. The inventory team now operates with a 3–4 week forward material visibility, enabling better supplier negotiation and consolidation of orders for volume pricing.

🔨 Hammer Utilisation Dashboard, What Management Sees Every Shift

The forge shop's biggest asset is its hammers. Before Odoo, their true utilisation was unknown. Now it's one of the most watched metrics in the business, driving scheduling decisions, maintenance planning, and capacity investments.

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+32%

Hammer Utilisation Improvement

From untracked to managed within 2 quarters

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-40%

Production Idle Time

Scheduling gaps eliminated with forward planning

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+18%

Die Life Extension

Hit count tracking enabling proactive die maintenance

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Live

Breakdown & Maintenance Log

Per hammer, per shift, reactive to preventive

The Results

Numbers That Changed the Forge Shop and the Business

"In forging, your hammer is your business. If it's not running, you're bleeding money, and for years we didn't actually know how much of the time it was and wasn't running. Odoo gave us a number. And once we had a number, we could improve it. The export cost sheet alone saved us from two orders that we would have executed at a loss. The PRC tracking has changed how we think about die maintenance. This is not just software. It changed how we manage the forge shop."

Hammer Utilisation

Forge Shop OEE

Unknown, never measured, managed on instinct

↑ 32% improvement in hammer utilisation within 2 quarters

Production Planning

Schedule Build Time

Manual, experience-based, rebuilt every week informally

↓ 2× faster scheduling, data-driven and system-generated

Job Work

External Processing Costs

No vendor performance data, rates unchallenged

↓ 25% reduction in job work costs through data-backed renegotiation

PRC Management

Rejection Visibility

Paper registers, rejection trends discovered too late

Real-time PRC by die, shift and operator, problems caught early

Die Management

Average Die Life

Reactive replacement, die failure discovered at breakdown

↑ 18% die life extension through hit count tracking

Export Costing

Cost Sheet Accuracy

Estimated, two orders executed below true cost

100% accurate, actual costs generated in minutes per inquiry

What Was Implemented

Odoo Modules at Forset Forge

Odoo MRP

Order-to-production planning, work orders, BOM per component, routing

Hammer & Machine Centre Tracking

Utilisation rates, die hit counts, breakdown log, OEE dashboard

Job Work Management

Multi-stage vendor dispatch, return tracking, costing, performance

PRC Management

Production, rejection & correction per stage, shift, die, and operator

Odoo SCM & Procurement

Grade-wise material planning, supplier management, lead time buffers

Export Cost Sheet (Custom)

Live cost build-up including material, forging, job work, machining, logistics

The Bigger Picture

Why India's Forging Industry Needs ERP Built for Discrete Manufacturing

Rajkot is one of India's most important engineering manufacturing hubs, and the forging industry sits at the heart of it. With India's automotive sector growing and export demand from Europe and the Middle East for precision forged components rising steadily, Rajkot's forging companies have a genuine opportunity to move up the value chain, from commodity forging to high-precision, high-margin components for global Tier-1 suppliers.

But moving up that value chain requires operational credibility. Global automotive buyers don't just evaluate your product. They evaluate your systems. Can you provide lot-wise traceability? Can you demonstrate consistent rejection rates? Can you build an accurate cost sheet for a custom inquiry within 24 hours? Can you commit to delivery timelines with confidence? These are questions that a whiteboard and a foreman's memory cannot answer reliably. But a proper ERP for forging manufacturers can.

Forset Forge's story is representative of what's possible across Rajkot's forging community. The equipment is already world-class. The metallurgical knowledge is deep. What most forging businesses are missing is the planning and measurement infrastructure to extract the full value from both. Odoo MRP for discrete manufacturing, configured specifically for the forging process, is one of the most effective ways to close that gap. And as Forset Forge demonstrated, the returns come fast: hammer utilisation, job work costs, and export margin accuracy all improved within the first two quarters of go-live.

Built for forging & discrete manufacturers

Do you know what your hammer utilisation actually is right now?

If you're scheduling production on a whiteboard, tracking job work by phone, and building export cost sheets from memory, Odoo MRP was built to fix exactly this. Let's talk.

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