Case Study: Bill of Materials Generation for a Manufacturer
Overview
A manufacturing company needed a simple, reliable way to get printed bills of materials into the hands of their foremen at the start of each production run. Their existing process involved exporting data manually from their production system, which was slow and prone to errors when order volumes picked up.
By connecting VeloxFactory to their MySQL production database, they now generate 200 to 300 bills of materials per day, each one triggered with nothing more than a production order reference number.
The Challenge
Before VeloxFactory, generating a bill of materials meant pulling data out of the production system by hand, formatting it and sending it to print. The foreman often had to wait, and mistakes in the data transfer occasionally caused issues on the shop floor. The company needed:
- A fast way to generate accurate, print-ready BOMs from live production data
- A process simple enough for office staff to use without training
- No dependency on exports or manual data handling
The Solution
kiwi software connected VeloxFactory to the company's MySQL production database using a configured data adapter. Staff now use VeloxFactory's built-in web frontend to trigger BOM generation: they type in the reference number of a production order, VeloxFactory fetches the full set of production data from the database and renders a structured bill of materials as a PDF. The document is printed and handed to the foreman before the run starts.
No exports, no formatting, no waiting.
Technical Setup
| Component | Details |
|---|---|
| Frontend | VeloxFactory web frontend (built-in) |
| Report engine | VeloxFactory |
| Report template | Jaspersoft Studio (.jrxml) |
| Data source | MySQL database via VeloxFactory data adapter |
| API input | Production order reference number |
| Output | Print-ready PDF bill of materials |
| Daily volume | 200 to 300 BOMs |
The data adapter resolves the production order reference into the full component list, quantities, units and any production notes required for the BOM layout.
Results
Since the rollout, BOM generation is no longer a bottleneck before production starts:
- 200 to 300 bills of materials generated per day
- Generation time reduced from several minutes to seconds
- No more manual data exports or formatting steps
- Foremen receive accurate, consistently formatted documents every time
Why VeloxFactory
VeloxFactory's built-in web frontend meant no custom tooling was needed at all on the user side. kiwi software set up the MySQL data adapter and the Jaspersoft report template, and the company was up and running within a day. The foremen now get a clean, standardised BOM for every production order without anyone having to touch the underlying data.
"Our foremen get the BOM before the run starts. That used to take minutes, now it takes seconds." -- Production manager