Partially outsourced manufacturing is a business model where a company mostly manufactures in-house and uses a contracting partner for part of the manufacturing process.
Katana can also support a fully outsourced manufacturing workflow where all the manufacturing process is done by the contractor and the brand owner is responsible for purchasing raw materials and tracking their stock for the contract manufacturer.
A general workflow for partially outsourced manufacturing would look something like this:
Purchase raw materials from your supplier
Receive materials
Manufacture at your location
Send semi-finished goods to your contracting partner
Work operations at the contractor
Receive (semi)finished goods from the contractor
Sales order fulfillment
You can handle partially outsourced manufacturing by using Production Operations steps on Manufacturing Orders (MO).
Go to the Production operations tab of the product card and add the outsourced operation as an Operation directly from the table.
Tip: If you want to track product preparation for sending or receiving from a contractor, we suggest adding an operation before and after the outsourced operation. If these operations require additional costs, set them accordingly
Add the contracting partner as a Resource from the table.
Add the default cost per piece for contracting the operation by filling in the Cost per hour and Time fields.
Create a MO for the product.
Track the operation statuses on the MO card or through the Shop Floor App.
Tip: Use the Tasks tab to see which orders and products are currently at a contractor.
Adjust the operation cost if the service fee for an outsourced operation is different from the default amount after receiving an invoice.
