1. The finished good is the hub
Every other master — moulds, raw materials, semi-finished parts, customers, presses — exists to connect to a finished part. The product master should show, for each part, the mould that makes it, the presses it is approved on, the material and masterbatch, the customer's part number and the HSN. If the software keeps these as separate lists that you join by hand, it is a list manager, not an ERP.
2. Shots × cavities, not pieces
The press makes shots. A shot makes as many parts as cavities are running — and a cavity can be blanked off for a week. Output, rates, cycle time and machine cost per piece all come from that one rule. An ERP that asks the operator for "pieces made" and nothing else cannot reconcile against the press counter and cannot cost a job.
3. Moulds as assets, often someone else's
A mould has a life in shots, a service interval in shots, a shot counter, a clamp-force need, a cavity count, and usually an owner who is your customer. The ERP should raise service when the shots are due, record every service, and check the mould against the press's clamp force before a job is released. On a floor that runs 75 to 350 tonnes this check alone prevents a wrecked mould.
4. The hourly sheet filled by the press
Indian moulding floors live on the printed hourly production report. The ERP should be that sheet — hour rows per shift — and should fill shots, made and cycle from the press when a press is connected, leaving the floor to enter rejects and the reason for a stop. Old presses without a data port can be tapped; insist that the software can read them.
5. Your own rejection and idle codes
Every plant has them: A–M for rejection (short shot, flash, silver streak…), 1–11 for idle (mould change, no material, power cut, breakdown…). The software should take the plant's list as it is printed, make the codes compulsory, and give a Pareto by mould and press. Retraining a floor to a vendor's list is how data entry dies.
6. Material the way a moulder counts it
Part weight plus runner weight per shot, divided by cavities, less the runner reused as regrind; masterbatch as a percentage; purge and start-up loss. Consumption should backflush from shots, and the regrind percentage should be a setting per part, because some customers forbid it.
7. Costing per piece that uses the real cycle
Material, machine hour rate × cycle ÷ cavities, labour, rejection, overhead, margin — with the machine rate built up honestly (depreciation, interest, power, operator) and the cycle taken from the floor's last run, not the quotation from two years ago. Try the part cost calculator to see the shape of it.
8. GST, HSN, e-invoice, e-way bill
The right HSN and rate on every part, by part, not by invoice. Cycle parts at 5%, auto parts at 18%, household at 18%, caps at 18% — one wrong master costs real money: at Star Enterprises, 34 cycle parts carried at 18% instead of 5% would have over-charged ₹3.06 lakh of GST on ₹23.5 lakh of sales. E-invoice JSON and e-way bill from the dispatch, not retyped.
9. Books that agree with the floor
Either the ERP keeps the ledgers, receipts and payments, bank reconciliation, P&L and balance sheet itself, or it exports vouchers to Tally that balance to the paisa. Two systems that each think they are right is the normal state of a plant, and the worst.
10. Job work and challans
Most moulders do job work. Material and moulds arrive on the principal's challan, parts go back on yours, and ITC-04 wants the reconciliation. If the ERP does not know what job work is, your accountant will do it in Excel for ever.
11. Alerts that reach a phone
The owner is not at a screen. A press stopped forty minutes with no reason, a cycle running slower than its best, power burning on a stopped press — these should arrive as a WhatsApp, with the rupees, not sit on a dashboard nobody opens.
12. Pricing that doesn't fight the floor
Per-user pricing is poison for a moulding plant: the people who must enter data are the setters and operators, and per-seat fees push the plant into one shared login, after which nobody knows who entered what. Look for a pilot on one cell, then a yearly plant licence with support and every user included.
What generic options miss
| Option | Does well | Misses |
|---|---|---|
| Tally alone | Books, GST, e-invoice | Everything on the floor; moulds, shots, costing |
| Generic ERP (SAP B1, Odoo, Busy) | Orders, stock, accounts | Shots × cavities, moulds as assets, press data, floor codes; heavy per-user fees |
| Machine-monitoring dashboards | Live OEE from the press | Orders, costing, GST, books — a second system to reconcile |
| Moulding-specific ERP | All of the above in one database | Check that it reads old presses and does Indian GST, not just the brochure |
Cystems is one of the moulding-specific options; the seven steps from order to invoice and the Star Enterprises case study show what it does. Whatever you choose, take this list to the demo and ask for each item on your own parts, not theirs.