10 Odoo Modules Every Manufacturing Company Needs

Manufacturing companies live and die by efficiency. Every wasted hour on the shop floor, every stockout, every quality issue eats directly into your margins. The right ERP setup can make a measurable difference — but only if you install and configure the right modules.

Odoo offers a comprehensive manufacturing suite, but knowing which modules to prioritize (and how they work together) is not always obvious. Here are the 10 modules that form the backbone of a well-run manufacturing operation on Odoo.

1. Manufacturing (MRP)

This is the core module. Odoo MRP handles bills of materials (BOMs), work orders, manufacturing orders, and production planning. You define what your products are made of, how they are assembled, and in what sequence.

Key features include multi-level BOMs (products made from sub-assemblies), work center management with capacity planning, routing operations, and the ability to track work-in-progress. The scheduling engine can automatically plan manufacturing orders based on demand.

Practical tip: invest time in getting your BOMs right from the start. Inaccurate BOMs are the number one cause of production planning errors in Odoo.

2. Inventory

Manufacturing without solid inventory management is a recipe for chaos. Odoo Inventory manages your raw materials, semi-finished goods, and finished products across multiple warehouses and locations.

For manufacturers, the key features are automatic stock reservations for manufacturing orders, reordering rules that trigger procurement when stock drops below minimum levels, lot and serial number tracking, and multi-location management (raw materials warehouse, production floor, finished goods storage).

The inventory module integrates directly with MRP — when a manufacturing order is confirmed, the system automatically checks material availability and reserves stock.

3. Purchase

Raw materials need to arrive on time for production to stay on schedule. The Purchase module automates procurement with features like automated purchase orders triggered by reordering rules, vendor price lists with quantity breaks, purchase agreements and blanket orders for recurring suppliers, and lead time tracking.

The integration with MRP is critical here. When the manufacturing scheduler plans a production run and sees that raw materials are short, it can automatically generate purchase order proposals. This closed loop between manufacturing planning and procurement is what separates a well-configured Odoo from a pile of spreadsheets.

4. Quality Control

The Quality module lets you define quality checks at various points in your manufacturing process. You can set up inspections at goods receipt (incoming raw materials), during production (in-process checks), and before shipping (final inspection).

Quality control points can be linked to specific work centers or operations. You can define pass/fail criteria, measurement-based checks, or picture-based verification. When a quality check fails, the system can automatically create alerts, block the production order, or trigger rework processes.

For manufacturers serving regulated industries (food, pharma, automotive), this module is non-negotiable.

5. Product Lifecycle Management (PLM)

PLM manages engineering changes to your products and BOMs. In any manufacturing business, products evolve: a component gets replaced by a better alternative, a process step changes, or a customer requests a modification.

Odoo PLM provides a structured way to handle these changes with engineering change orders (ECOs). You can propose a change, route it through an approval process, and apply it to the BOM — all with a full audit trail. This is far better than the common approach of someone quietly editing a BOM and nobody knowing what changed or why.

6. Maintenance

Equipment breakdowns kill productivity. The Maintenance module helps you move from reactive (fixing things when they break) to preventive (scheduled maintenance before they break).

You can define maintenance schedules for each piece of equipment, track maintenance requests, assign technicians, and monitor equipment statistics like mean time between failures (MTBF) and mean time to repair (MTTR). The module integrates with work centers in MRP, so you can see when a machine is down for maintenance and adjust production planning accordingly.

7. Barcode

Paper-based tracking on the shop floor is slow and error-prone. The Barcode module brings scanning capabilities to inventory operations, manufacturing, and quality control.

Workers can scan items during goods receipt, production consumption, and finished goods registration. The mobile-friendly interface works on tablets and dedicated barcode scanners. This dramatically reduces data entry errors and gives you real-time visibility into what is happening on the floor.

For manufacturers handling hundreds of SKUs or managing lot-tracked materials, barcode scanning is not a luxury — it is a necessity.

8. Sales

The Sales module is your link between customer demand and production. When a sales order is confirmed, it can trigger manufacturing orders (make-to-order) or consume existing stock (make-to-stock).

For manufacturers who produce custom or configured products, the product configurator feature lets sales teams build orders with specific options and variants, which then translate into the correct BOM for production. Delivery lead times can be calculated based on current production capacity and material availability.

9. Accounting

Manufacturing accounting is more complex than service or trading businesses. You need to track the cost of raw materials, labor, and overhead across production processes. Odoo Accounting handles this with real-time cost tracking on manufacturing orders, automatic journal entries for stock movements and production, landed cost allocation for imports, and standard vs. real cost analysis.

For Belgian manufacturers, the accounting module includes the Belgian localization with BTW support, CODA bank imports, and the Belgian chart of accounts. Having your accounting and production data in the same system eliminates the reconciliation headaches that come from using separate tools.

10. Reporting and Dashboards

Data is only useful if you can act on it. Odoo's reporting tools let you build dashboards and reports across all your manufacturing data. Track OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness), monitor production costs, analyze supplier performance, and review quality trends.

The Enterprise edition includes a spreadsheet tool that can pull live data from Odoo, which is a practical bridge for teams that still rely on Excel for analysis. Custom reports can be built without coding using the pivot table and graph views.

How These Modules Work Together

The real power of Odoo for manufacturing is not any single module — it is how they all connect. A sales order triggers a manufacturing order. The manufacturing order checks inventory and generates purchase orders for missing materials. Quality checks run during production. Barcode scanning records each step. Costs flow automatically into accounting. Maintenance schedules keep your equipment running.

This end-to-end integration is what eliminates the spreadsheets, manual data entry, and information silos that slow manufacturers down.

Getting the Configuration Right

Installing these modules is the easy part. Configuring them to match your specific manufacturing processes — your BOMs, your routing, your quality requirements, your costing methods — is where the real work happens. A misconfigured MRP module will generate bad schedules. Wrong reordering rules will cause stockouts or overstock.

This is where experienced help pays for itself. Through odoone, you can work with senior Odoo consultants who have hands-on manufacturing implementation experience. They know the common pitfalls — like setting up routes incorrectly or underestimating the importance of master data quality. Rates start at €80/hour, with a free approval cycle so you can verify the consultant is the right fit before committing. When your production efficiency is on the line, getting expert guidance is not an expense — it is an investment.