# ERP for Foundries: Requirements That Actually Matter > Source: https://netray.co/resources/erp-for-foundries > Publisher: Netray (netray.co), AI and integration engineering for ERP and manufacturing systems. > Section: Knowledge Base ## Short answer What a foundry ERP needs: heat and lot traceability, alloy and melt costing, pattern tracking, cleaning room routing, scrap by defect, and honest fit questions. ## Category erp-general ## Content **Intro:** A foundry ERP has to handle things generic job shop software skips: heat number traceability, alloy and charge costing, pattern and core box management, yield and scrap by defect, cleaning room routing, and outside heat treat or machining. Many foundries run JobBOSS, E2 Shop System, Global Shop Solutions, Epicor, Infor SyteLine or industry-specific packages, and the right choice depends less on brand than on how well the system models your melt-to-ship flow. Use the checklist below to separate real fit from a good demo. **Sections:** #### Melt, Heat and Alloy: The Core Foundry Requirements **Body:** Your system must treat a heat as a first-class record: charge materials, alloy additions, spectrometer chemistry results, pour temperature, and which castings came from it. When a customer reports a chemistry or mechanical problem, you need to go from the casting serial or lot to the heat, then to every other casting from that heat. For costing, the system should let you roll up charge cost, melt loss and energy into a cost per pound of molten metal rather than a single stale standard. Ask vendors to demonstrate a heat-to-casting trace and a melt cost rollup, not just describe them. **Bullets:** - Heat records with chemistry results and certificate attachment - Charge and alloy addition tracking with lot numbers - Melt cost per pound updated from actual material and energy - Forward and backward trace from heat to shipped lot #### Patterns, Core Boxes and Dies as Assets **Body:** Tooling is a revenue-critical asset, and most generic systems treat it as a note. You need tool records tied to part numbers with owner, location, condition, and usage counts, plus maintenance history. Die casters need shots per die; sand foundries need pour counts per pattern and core box. The system should be able to show which tools are due for repair before the next run, and block or warn when a tool is flagged out of service. If the vendor says use a custom field, ask what reporting and scheduling logic sits on top of it. #### Routing Through Molding, Cleaning and Finishing **Body:** Foundry routings are different from machining routings. Molding, coring, pouring, shakeout, cutoff, grinding, blast, heat treat and inspection often have yield and scrap loss at each step, and some steps are batch or lot based rather than single piece. The ERP needs to report good quantity, scrap by reason and operation, and carry accumulated cost forward. It should also handle pouring from one heat into many job orders. Test with a real part: can the system show what percentage of a mold lot was lost at cleaning and why? **Bullets:** - Scrap by reason code at each operation - Batch and lot-based routing steps - Outside processing with cost and return tracking - Rework loops that do not break job costing #### Quality, Certifications and Customer Requirements **Body:** Customers will ask for certificates of conformance, material test reports, radiography reports, dimensional reports and sometimes PPAP packages. The ERP or its connected quality system should store these against the lot and make them retrievable fast. If you serve automotive, IATF 16949 expectations apply; aerospace shops need AS9100 style controls; many industrial buyers require ISO 9001. The point is not to buy a quality module for its own sake, but to confirm you can produce the paperwork a customer audit will ask for without a scavenger hunt. #### Fit Questions and Where AI Helps **Body:** Ask each vendor for a foundry reference of similar size and process, not a generic metal fabricator. Ask who configures heat traceability and what it costs. Then consider what you already have: if your ERP is adequate but data is hard to get out, adding a natural language query layer on top may beat a full replacement. A private assistant such as ERPray can answer questions like scrap by heat or open jobs by pattern from the existing system, read-only. It does not replace a poor system, but it can extend a good-enough one. **Cta:** If you are weighing a replacement versus getting more out of your current system, we can review your reporting gaps and show what a read-only AI layer could answer today. **Faq:** #### What ERP do foundries use? **Answer:** Foundries use a mix of job shop systems such as JobBOSS, E2 Shop System and Global Shop Solutions, larger platforms such as Epicor, Infor SyteLine and Plex, and some foundry-specific packages. The right choice depends on heat traceability, melt costing, tooling tracking and quality documentation needs. #### Does a foundry need MES as well as ERP? **Answer:** Not always. Smaller foundries can capture molding, pouring and cleaning data through ERP shop floor screens. Larger or higher-volume operations, especially die casting cells with machine data, often benefit from an MES layer that feeds the ERP. #### How do I handle heat traceability in an ERP? **Answer:** Create heat as a lot-controlled record with chemistry results, link it to the castings poured, and carry the lot through to shipping and certificates. Test a forward and backward trace in the demo, because many systems claim it but implement it weakly. #### Can I keep my current ERP and add AI? **Answer:** Often yes. A private, read-only AI layer can answer questions over your existing ERP and quality data without replacing it. It will not fix missing data capture, so fix scrap and heat recording first. ## Related Slugs - mes-erp-integration-discrete-manufacturing - lot-traceability-electronics-manufacturing - manufacturing-costing-methods-comparison - spc-integration-erp-quality ## Search terms erp for foundries, foundry erp software, foundry management software, casting erp, heat traceability software, die casting erp, foundry software requirements --- Talk to an engineer: https://netray.co/contact?intent=erp_ai | Machine catalog: https://netray.co/agent/catalog.json