eProcureAI / Platform / Manufacturing
IndustrySite aware routing means each plant keeps its own approvers and delivery points while the process stays identical everywhere. Stock is checked across sites before anybody orders another pallet.
Built around how plants actually buy. MRO, direct materials and capital, on one process.
Multi site manufacturers rarely have one purchasing problem. They have the same purchasing problem four times, solved four different ways.
Each plant has its own maintenance lead, its own preferred local suppliers, its own idea of what counts as urgent, and a spreadsheet that only one person understands. Head office sees a consolidated number once a quarter and has no way to tell whether Chicago and Dallas just bought the same pallet.
Standardising the process is usually resisted, and reasonably so. A plant that cannot get a part when a line is down does not care about consistency. So the answer is not one process imposed everywhere, it is one process that is site aware.
A request raised at Plant 2 routes to Plant 2 approvers, delivers to Plant 2 docks, and gets received by Plant 2 people. A request raised at Chicago does the same for Chicago. It is the same form and the same rules engine, reading the site.
What head office gains is that every plant is now producing comparable data, which is the thing that makes cross site stock checks and consolidated sourcing possible at all.
On a phone, from the floor, with the site already set from who they are. Urgency is declared rather than implied by tone of voice.
Before a purchase is even considered, other plants are checked. Fourteen units sitting in Dallas is a transfer rather than an order.
The plant maintenance lead approves, escalating to operations above a threshold. Other plants are not involved and do not need to be.
Repeat MRO runs against an existing blanket order, so nothing needs renegotiating and the remaining value is tracked.
Counted on a phone where the pallet actually lands, with condition recorded, so the invoice can match against reality.
The most common avoidable cost in multi site manufacturing is two plants buying the same thing in the same week. Checking first is a five second step that pays for itself repeatedly.
Most MRO spend is the same items from the same suppliers, endlessly. Running that through a fresh approval every time is theatre, and it slows down the requests that genuinely need looking at.
A receiving step that requires a desktop does not happen. It gets done from memory on Friday, or not at all, and then accounts payable cannot match anything.
Manufacturers usually run these as three separate worlds. They do not need to be.
| Spend type | What it covers | What it needs | How it is handled |
|---|---|---|---|
| MRO | Maintenance, repair and operations. High volume, low value, repetitive. | Speed and stock checks | Catalog and blanket releases, minimal approval |
| Direct materials | Inputs that go into the product. Volume driven and schedule sensitive. | Reliability and supplier performance | Contracted suppliers with performance tracked |
| Capital | Equipment and plant. Infrequent, high value, long lead. | Scrutiny and commitment tracking | Full approval chain, committed at approval, hard stop budgets |
The difference between them is the rules applied, not the system used, which is what makes consolidated reporting possible.
Cross site stock checks make this visible before the order rather than at quarter end.
Not always wrong. What matters is that it is visible and priced, rather than invisible and assumed.
Urgent requests take a shorter chain rather than skipping approval, so speed does not cost the record.
Cost per site by category is the report that starts the most useful internal conversations.
Often cheaper and faster than buying, and almost never considered because nobody can see the other plant's shelf.
Once every plant produces comparable data, sourcing a category across all of them becomes possible.
Plants keep the autonomy they need and head office gets the comparability it never had.
Plant teams raise and receive. Head office sets the rules and looks at the comparison.
Reads the site and behaves accordingly, then makes the plants comparable.
We will configure both on the call, including the ones that insist they are the exception.
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