Manufacturing & MRP
Define how your products are made with Bills of Materials, execute production through work orders, and let Kayan's MRP engine tell you what to build and when.
Bills of Materials (BOMs)
A Bill of Materials defines the inputs needed to produce one unit of a finished good or assembly. In Kayan, a BOM links a set of component variants (and their quantities) to an output variant.
- One active BOM per output variant — activating a new BOM version automatically retires the previous one.
- Components can themselves be manufactured goods, creating multi-level BOMs.
- Yield percentage can be set per BOM to account for expected material waste.
- Routing steps can be added to track which work centres are used and in which order.
BOM versioning
Keep a history of your BOMs by creating new versions rather than editing the active one. This preserves a cost record that matches what was actually built on each work order.Work orders
A work order is an instruction to produce a specific quantity of an output variant on a specific date. When you create a work order from a BOM:
- 1
Component requirements are calculated
Kayan multiplies each BOM component quantity by the work order quantity, accounting for yield. You see the required quantities alongside current on-hand stock.
- 2
Work order is scheduled
You assign the work order to a work centre and set a target completion date. Capacity constraints are surfaced if the work centre is overbooked.
- 3
Production runs
As production progresses, you record actual component consumption and any variance from the BOM. Partial completions are supported.
- 4
Work order is completed
On completion, Kayan deducts the consumed components from inventory and adds the produced quantity to finished goods. The cost of production is posted to the books.
MRP — Material Requirements Planning
The MRP engine looks at your sales forecast, open work orders, and on-hand stock to tell you what to produce and when. It works top-down: starting from demand (projected sales), it calculates the net requirements for each level of the BOM and generates recommended production orders to cover shortfalls.
- Demand input — Kayan uses actual Shopify sales trends combined with manual forecast overrides.
- Safety stock — set a minimum buffer quantity per variant; MRP plans to keep you above it.
- Lead times — component and production lead times are factored in so recommendations arrive with enough time to act.
- Output — a prioritized list of planned work orders that you can approve and release in one click.
Work centres
Work centres are the physical resources (machines, production lines, teams) where work orders are executed. Each work centre has a capacity in hours per day. The scheduling view shows utilisation across all work centres so you can spot bottlenecks before production falls behind.
Cost of production
When a work order is completed, Kayan posts:
- Dr Finished Goods Inventory — at the total cost of components consumed plus any direct labour cost.
- Cr Raw Materials / WIP Inventory — for each component consumed.
- Any variance between the BOM cost and actual cost is posted to a Production Variance account.