Enterprise manufacturing transformation
Zorix Systems designed a custom enterprise platform connecting sales, quoting, engineering, procurement, production, quality, inventory, finance and machine operations across a precision manufacturing environment.
The central story is not an ERP rollout. It is the construction of a governed digital operating environment that carries a single job record from the first customer enquiry, through engineering review, estimating, scheduling and manufacture, to inspection, packing, dispatch, invoicing and margin analysis.
Company-scale figures on this page are publicly reported Advanced Plastic Technology information. Project-specific outcomes are reported separately and are published only once the client has approved them.
At a glance
Only technologies confirmed for this programme are listed. Further platform capabilities exist in the architecture but are not published as delivered components unless verified.
Client scale
The platform had to be designed against the operating reality of a multi-process precision manufacturer: eleven manufacturing services under one roof, a large raw-material catalogue, tight published tolerances and a fast advertised quoting commitment.
Company-scale statistics are based on publicly reported Advanced Plastic Technology information. Zorix project-specific outcomes are reported separately and require client approval.
Architecture
The architecture is layered deliberately. Commercial, engineering and production state live in one operating core; automation is event-driven; and every connection to a machine, supplier or external service crosses an explicit integration boundary with its own validation, retry and audit behaviour.
Executive BI
Analytics platform
Zorix manufacturing OS
Automation engine
Operational modules
Integration layer
Connected systems
Executive summary
A single precision component carries hundreds of connected decisions: customer specification, drawing revision, material selection, dimensions, tolerances, quantity, tooling, machine availability, operator availability, material availability, production times, supplier lead times, inspection requirements, packing specification, delivery commitment and cost.
When those decisions are distributed across email threads, spreadsheets, printed job bags, disconnected systems, separate production boards and individual knowledge, management loses visibility, traceability, speed, predictability and margin control. Nothing is missing exactly — it is simply not in one place at one time.
The Zorix platform created a digital thread across the entire job lifecycle. One record moves from enquiry to invoice, and each stage writes structured data back to it, so the commercial, engineering and production views of the same job never diverge.
The challenge
Six distinct problem areas shaped the platform. Each one is a place where manufacturers typically absorb complexity through people and paper rather than systems.
Module 01
A manufacturing CRM has to model the physical thing being made. Objects extend well past the standard sales schema so that a customer relationship is expressed in components, drawings, materials and delivery performance rather than opportunity value alone.
Module 02
The RFQ workspace captures customer, component, drawing, CAD file, material, quantity, tolerance, finishing, tooling and target date as structured fields rather than free text in an email. Estimators work from a single record, and every issued quote retains the inputs that produced it.
The cost engine composes material cost, machine rate multiplied by estimated machine hours, setup, operator labour, tooling, external processing, packaging, logistics and margin into a quoted price. Because the composition is explicit, a quote can be reproduced, compared against a historical job or re-run at a different quantity.
Module 03
Drawing number, CAD filename, revision, customer, component number, dimensions, tolerance, material, engineering notes, revision status, approval status and linked jobs are held as one controlled record. Version control is treated as a safety property: an outdated drawing must never silently replace the current approved revision, and every job references the specific revision it was manufactured against.
Module 04
A visual planning board replaces the whiteboard and the spreadsheet. Job cards move across CNC milling, CNC turning, CNC routing, injection moulding, laser, vacuum forming, fabrication and assembly, and can be viewed by day, week, month, machine, department, operator, customer or urgency.
The scheduling engine takes machine capability, machine availability, operator availability, tooling, material availability, setup time, job duration, customer priority, due date, dependencies, maintenance windows and batch requirements, and outputs a recommended production sequence. It is a recommendation, not autonomous production control: the planner can override any decision and remains accountable for the schedule.
Module 05
Operators work from a tablet view showing today's jobs, machine assignment, the correct drawing revision, the operation, required material, quantity, target cycle time and inspection requirement. Actions are deliberately few: start, pause, complete operation, report issue, request material, quality hold, complete job.
Each action captures start time, end time, downtime with reason codes, output, scrap, operator and machine, which is what later makes actual job costing and OEE reporting possible without a separate data-entry exercise.
Module 06
An integration layer was built capable of receiving machine telemetry — machine state (running, idle, alarm, setup), downtime, cycle data, temperature, power draw, production counters and maintenance state. This is described as a connectivity architecture rather than a claim that every machine on the floor is digitally connected; connection is per-machine and depends on controller capability and gateway installation.
OEE is calculated from the captured data: availability as actual run time divided by planned production time, performance as actual output divided by theoretical output, quality as good units divided by total units, and OEE as the product of the three. Reporting is available by machine, work centre, shift, day, week and month.
Module 07
Maintenance records track machine, runtime, service interval, maintenance history, failures, component replacement, downtime, technician and cost. Rules are explicit and deterministic rather than predictive claims: when runtime exceeds a service interval a maintenance job is created; when repeated faults occur the machine is flagged; when a sensor value falls outside an approved threshold an alert is raised.
No claim is made that the system predicts machine failure with a guaranteed accuracy. The infrastructure supports condition-aware operations and gives maintenance planning the data it previously lacked.
Module 08
Material records carry polymer, grade, brand, thickness, diameter, colour, dimensions, supplier, lot, batch, certification, quantity, warehouse location, unit cost and reorder level. Stock moves through explicit states: available, reserved, in production, quarantine, scrap, offcut and allocated.
Plastics manufacturing produces usable remnant material, so offcuts are inventory rather than waste. The digital offcut library records material, grade, thickness, width, length, weight and warehouse location, and the system searches usable offcuts before a purchase requisition is raised. Potential benefits are less material waste, lower purchasing cost and higher material utilisation; quantified savings are published only once approved.
Module 09
Procurement is driven by the schedule rather than by periodic manual review: production requirement, material requirement, stock check, shortage, supplier selection, purchase order, goods receipt, quality check, inventory.
Supplier records hold material, price, minimum quantity, lead time and history, and a scorecard reports on-time delivery, average lead time, rejection rate, price variance, purchase volume and quality incidents.
Modules 10–11
Inspection records capture job, component, drawing, revision, tolerance, measurement, inspector, timestamp and result — pass, fail, concession, rework or scrap — against the specific approved revision the part was made to.
Non-conformance follows a fixed path: detection, quality hold, investigation, root cause, corrective action, reinspection, closure, with full audit history. CAPA records hold issue, severity, root cause, owner, corrective action, preventive action, deadline, evidence and approval.
APT publicly states that it is ISO 9001:2015 certified. The platform provides digital workflows designed to support those quality-management processes — document control, revision control, approval workflows, quality records, audit trails, NCR, CAPA, supplier records, training records, calibration, inspection, customer complaints and internal audits. The software itself is not certified, and certification remains APT's.
Module 12
Tooling is tracked as an asset class: tool ID, location, owner, status, last used, maintenance, expected life, linked component and linked job, covering moulds, fixtures, jigs, cutting tools and customer-owned tooling.
Injection moulds carry additional fields — cavity count, target cycle, resin, machine, shot count, maintenance interval, setup instructions and production history — so mould condition is visible to planning rather than discovered at setup.
Modules 13–15
Warehouse locations are digital, with barcode and QR scanning, location management, batch tracking, stock movements and cycle counts. Material flows goods in, inspection, storage, reservation, production, finished goods, packing, dispatch.
Assembly and packing track BOM, components, assembly steps, packing specification, customer requirements, labels, quantity, inspection and packaging material, moving through waiting components, assembly, quality, packing and ready to dispatch.
Logistics records customer, job, packages, carrier, collection time, delivery date, tracking, dispatch note and proof of delivery, with a dashboard for today's dispatches, late orders, awaiting packing, ready for collection, in transit and delivered.
Module 16
Quotation, job, material cost, labour cost, machine cost, external processing, delivery, invoice and gross margin are connected on one chain, so a finished job reports its own profitability without a manual reconciliation exercise.
Estimated versus actual costing is a headline capability. For every job the platform holds estimated material, labour, machine, tooling and external cost against the actuals captured on the shop floor, and reports the variance in currency and percentage. Figures shown in demonstrations are illustrative demo data; APT actuals are published only where client-approved.
Module 17
Automation removes the handoffs that previously depended on somebody remembering. Each rule is auditable and can be disabled per workflow.
Module 18
Customers submit RFQs, upload drawings and CAD files, review and approve quotes, see order status, download documents, view delivery information, reorder a component and raise queries. Internal production data — machine assignment, cost build-up, operator performance — is deliberately not exposed.
Repeat ordering is the most used path: the customer selects a past component and quantity and requests a repeat quote. The system retrieves the approved drawing revision, previous material, previous process, previous tooling, previous price and previous actual cost, and an estimator reviews before any quote is issued.
Modules 19–20
Executive analytics report RFQs received, quote conversion, quote turnaround, order intake, order book, WIP, revenue, gross margin, production capacity, machine utilisation, OEE, on-time delivery, scrap, rework, quality failures, supplier performance and inventory value, with role-specific dashboards for sales, production, quality, procurement, finance and management.
Intelligence features are decision support, not autonomy. A quote assistant surfaces comparable historical manufacturing records; material recommendation support suggests candidate materials from predefined engineering rules, with the final engineering decision remaining with qualified personnel; production risk detection flags jobs at risk of missing a delivery date from queue, machine capacity, material and supplier-delay signals; margin risk detection flags jobs where actual cost is running ahead of estimate; demand analysis identifies repeat-order patterns. AI does not control machines.
The executive view is described as a digital operational model of production — machines, jobs, material, operators, production, quality, warehouse and delivery in one live picture — rather than a mathematically complete digital twin.
Illustrative workflow
The following walkthrough is illustrative. It demonstrates how the platform sequences a job rather than describing a specific APT order.
Platform engineering
The data model is built around the physical process, not around screens. Scale targets were set against tens of thousands of jobs, large drawing libraries, thousands of material variants, machine event streams, concurrent shop-floor users, scheduling calculations, real-time dashboards and historical job costing. No exact throughput figure is claimed beyond what has been tested.
Commercial impact
Project economics and team
Programme scale: seven-figure enterprise software transformation. No exact contract value is published; the figure is held as an admin field and rendered only where client-approved.
Delivery disciplines involved programme direction, solution architecture, manufacturing systems architecture, full-stack, backend, frontend, data, integration and automation engineering, DevOps, QA, business analysis, UX/UI, security engineering and manufacturing process consultancy. Exact headcount is not published.
Why Zorix
Business impact
| Area | Problem | Intervention | Measured outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quoting | RFQs arriving by email with specification spread across attachments and threads | Structured RFQ workspace and a reproducible cost engine | Pending client approval |
| Engineering records | Drawing revisions circulated as files with no controlled current version | Revision-controlled drawing records with approval states and job linkage | Pending client approval |
| Planning | Capacity modelled on a board and in planners' heads | Capacity-aware scheduling recommendations with planner override | Pending client approval |
| Materials | Stock and usable offcuts tracked informally | Batch-level inventory states plus a searchable digital offcut library | Pending client approval |
| Shop floor | Job progress captured on paper and re-keyed later | Digital work orders capturing time, output, scrap and reason codes at source | Pending client approval |
| Quality | Inspection and non-conformance records held outside the job | Inspections, NCR and CAPA attached to job, component and drawing revision | Pending client approval |
| Costing | Job profitability calculated retrospectively, if at all | Estimated versus actual cost with variance reporting per job | Pending client approval |
| Management | Reporting assembled manually from several sources | Role-specific dashboards over one operational dataset | Pending client approval |
Delivery
Phase 1
Months 1–3
Phase 2
Months 4–6
Phase 3
Months 7–9
Phase 4
Months 10–12
Phase 5
Months 13–15
Phase 6
Months 16–17
Phase 7
Months 18–19
Phase 8
Months 20–21
Phase 9
Months 22–23
Phase 10
Month 24
Phase structure and durations are indicative of the delivery model and remain subject to the client-approved programme record.
Operating model
Project economics
Programme scale: Seven-figure enterprise programme. Exact contract values are commercial information and are published only where the client has approved both the figure and the currency.
Measuring transformation
From the first customer enquiry to the final packed component, a connected manufacturing operating platform provides the visibility, automation and control needed to scale complex production without scaling administrative complexity at the same rate.
Project-specific outcome metrics for this programme are held in the case-study record with baseline, post-implementation value, measurement period, source and methodology, and are published only once the client has approved each figure individually.
Project-specific performance figures for this programme are measured against defined baselines and are published here once the client has approved the value, the measurement period, the source and the methodology. None are approved for publication at this time, so none are shown.
Modules
Questions
No. The platform is a custom manufacturing operations environment. Standard ERP configuration does not model drawing revisions, offcut inventory, work-centre capability, mould shot counts or estimated-versus-actual job costing to the depth a precision manufacturer needs, so those objects and workflows were engineered specifically.
No such claim is made. Zorix built a machine connectivity architecture capable of receiving telemetry — state, downtime, cycle data, counters and maintenance signals. Which machines are connected depends on controller capability and gateway installation, and is confirmed per machine.
No. APT publicly states that it is ISO 9001:2015 certified. The platform provides digital workflows — document control, revision control, approvals, quality records, audit trails, NCR and CAPA — designed to support those quality-management processes. Certification is the client's, not the software's.
No. Intelligence features are decision support: comparable-job retrieval for estimating, rules-based material suggestions, delivery-risk and margin-risk flags, and repeat-order demand analysis. Scheduling produces recommendations with full planner override, and engineering decisions remain with qualified personnel.
Every project-specific figure requires a baseline, a post-implementation value, a measurement period, a source and a methodology, plus written client approval. Until a figure is approved it is held in the case-study record and is not rendered publicly.
This programme is structured over approximately 24 months across ten phases, from discovery and manufacturing mapping through to rollout and stabilisation. Phase durations remain configurable and are set against each manufacturer's process complexity and rollout appetite.
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