Routings That Match How Gears Are Made
A gear routing is not a single machining step. It includes blank prep, turning, tooth cutting, deburring, heat treat (often outside), correction operations, hard finishing and inspection, and each step has its own work center, setup and queue. The ERP should handle routings with outside operations as first-class steps, supplier lead times, and move times between cells.
It should support alternate routings (hob and shave versus hob and grind) and let planners attach tooling such as hobs and grinding wheels to the operation. If your system forces everything into a single labor and machine record, you will lose the data you need for quoting and costing.
Material and Heat Lot Traceability
Gear customers in aerospace, energy, off-highway and wind expect material certs and heat treat certs that follow the lot. The ERP should store heat number, mill cert, heat treat lot and furnace load, and let you trace a finished serial or lot back to them and forward from a suspect heat. Check that lot splitting after heat treat keeps the link, that partial shipments carry the right certs, and that cert documents attach to the receiving record rather than living in a shared drive.
- Heat number captured at receiving and carried through operations
- Heat treat vendor cert and case depth results attached to the lot
- Forward and backward trace by heat, lot or serial
- Certificate of Conformance generated from linked records
Costing, Quoting and Quality Hooks
Gear work is cost-sensitive at the operation level, so the ERP should capture actual hours by operation, outside processing cost, scrap by reason code and rework. It should let estimators copy a past job and adjust. For quality, you need inspection plans that tie to the part, records for lead, profile, pitch and runout results or a link to the gear checker report, nonconformance handling, and calibration tracking for gages.
Shops pursuing AS9100, ISO 9001 or IATF 16949 should check document control and corrective action modules, or plan an integration with a quality system.
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Manufacturing Process Types and Product-Process Matrix Reference
Compare project, job shop, batch, cell, repetitive, assembly line and continuous processes by volume, variety, layout, planning approach and typical ERP setup.
Common Systems and Where They Fit
Small to mid-size gear and bearing shops often start on JobBOSS, E2 or ProShop, which are strong on job costing and shop-floor simplicity. Growing manufacturers with multiple plants, engineering change control and heavier compliance often move to Infor SyteLine (CloudSuite Industrial), Epicor Kinetic, Plex, IQMS/DELMIAworks, Acumatica or NetSuite with manufacturing. No system is gear-specific out of the box, so expect configuration for hob and tool tracking, accuracy-grade attributes and heat treat processing.
Ask each vendor for a reference using multi-step outside processing and lot genealogy.
Where AI Helps Without Replacing the ERP
Most gear shops do not need a new ERP to get better answers. A private AI layer over the current system can answer questions like actual cost of the last ten jobs for a part family, scrap by reason code this quarter, or which lots used a given heat. It reads, shows the underlying query and respects ERP roles; any write-back needs human approval.
If your issue is that planners cannot trust booked hours or routings, fix data discipline first, because AI amplifies what is in the system, good or bad.
Frequently asked questions
What ERP do gear manufacturers use?
It varies. Smaller job-shop style gear makers commonly use JobBOSS, E2 Shop System, ProShop or Global Shop. Larger or multi-site power transmission manufacturers often use Infor SyteLine, Epicor, Plex, NetSuite or SAP. Choose based on routing complexity, traceability, compliance and reporting needs, not on a gear label.
Does ERP need to track hobs and grinding wheels?
It helps. Tool life and cost per part feed quoting accuracy, and special hobs are expensive. Some ERPs include tool management, others need a tooling module or a simple custom table. At minimum, track tool cost and parts per tool for the operations where tooling is a meaningful share of cost.
How should heat treat outside processing be set up?
As a routing operation with a supplier, lead time, cost and a return receipt that carries the cert. Keep the heat lot and case depth results on the lot record. This preserves traceability and makes the cost visible in job costing rather than buried in overhead.
Tell Netray which ERP you run and we will show how to ask it about gear costs, scrap and traceability without moving the data out.