Production management for small manufacturers.
In a small manufacturing business the floor and the office are never far apart, but information still manages to get lost between them. A customer order triggers a work order, which needs materials, which need a stock check, which needs a purchase request, which needs approval — and somewhere in that chain a step gets done by memory rather than by record. Tenderely BPM connects those steps into one traceable flow without code, so the people on the floor and the people at the desk are always looking at the same picture.
What does a small manufacturer repeat every day?
01
Taking a customer order
The customer says what they want, in what quantity and by when. If that agreement is not structured, the production floor works from a verbal briefing and disputes happen at delivery.
02
Opening a work order
The order has to become a production instruction: which product, which bill of materials, which quantities, which deadline. Done on paper or in a chat, those instructions are hard to track and easy to lose.
03
Checking and reserving materials
Before production starts, the materials have to be there. Finding out at the bench that a critical component is missing stops the whole run.
04
Recording quality checks
Checks happen at intake, during production and before shipment. If the results live in a notebook, a defect that reappears is very hard to trace back to its source.
05
Machine and equipment maintenance
A machine that breaks during a run costs far more than a scheduled service. Maintenance schedules and service histories need to be somewhere everyone can see them.
06
Shipping and delivery confirmation
What left the warehouse, in what quantity, to which customer and when. Without a record on both sides, every delivery dispute becomes a word-against-word situation.
Where does this break down today?
The work order is a whiteboard
Production priorities get written up and rubbed off. What was made, when it was finished and who signed it off is gone the moment the board is updated.
Stock is counted when something runs out
There is no live number for raw material or finished goods. The first sign of a shortage is a production stoppage or a customer call asking where their order is.
Quality records are handwritten
Inspection sheets fill a folder. When a customer returns a batch, linking it back to which production run, which operator and which check was missed takes hours.
Nothing connects order to cost
How much did that job actually cost in materials and time? The answer usually never gets calculated, so pricing stays based on feel rather than fact.
What changes with Tenderely BPM
01
Order to work order in one record
The customer order and the production instruction live on the same record. What was agreed, what was produced and what was shipped are all in one place and always traceable.
02
Approval steps that enforce themselves
Quality sign-off, management approval for a non-standard run, maintenance clearance before restarting — these become conditional steps in the flow, not tasks that depend on someone remembering.
03
Materials are visible before production starts
Stock levels are updated as work orders are opened and closed. A shortage surfaces at the planning stage, not at the bench.
04
Quality checks are structured data
Every check is a record with a time, an operator and a result. When a defect appears, the trail back to its source is already there.
05
Tenderely keeps the floor and the office in sync
The same flow runs on a phone in the iOS and Android apps, so a machine operator on the floor can log a check or flag a problem without walking to a desk.
06
Costs and performance are on a dashboard
Open work orders, late jobs, material consumption and pending quality issues sit on a live dashboard instead of waiting for someone to compile a weekly report.
FAQ
Can we start with the package and adjust it to our own process?
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Yes. The package opens with forms, approval flows and a dashboard already in place. You then adjust each form, approval step and field to match how your workshop actually works. The package is a starting point, not a constraint — nothing is locked.
Can workers on the floor use it on a phone or tablet?
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Yes. Every form and approval step runs in the iOS and Android apps as well as on the web, so a machine operator can open a work order, log a quality check or flag a maintenance issue from the floor without needing a desktop.
Can a customer submit an order from outside without an account?
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Yes. A public form can be shared with a customer as a link. Their submission lands as a structured record inside your system. The customer does not need an account and cannot see anything except the form itself.
How does it handle approval for non-standard jobs or exceptions?
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Any step in a flow can be made conditional. If a job is outside normal parameters — a customer-requested change, an oversized batch, a material substitution — the flow can route it to a manager for approval before production continues, and that approval is recorded.
Who can see production and cost data?
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Role- and unit-based permissions decide who sees what. A floor supervisor can see work orders and quality checks without seeing financial data; a manager can see the full picture. Field-level permissions let you hide specific values from specific roles.