You quote in metres, you buy in kilograms, and the copper price moved between the two.
A cable factory has a problem almost no other manufacturer has: its main input is an exchange-traded commodity that moves daily, and its output is measured in a different unit from its input. Add returnable drums, per-drum test certificates and a process chain where scrap has genuine value, and the ordinary ERP model starts to leak in specific, repeatable places.
Recognise any of this
Where the money goes before anyone calls it a problem
If more than two of these are true this week, the cost is already larger than the system you would replace.
- 01
The quotation went out on Monday. The copper for it was bought on Thursday, at a different number.
On a cable with a large conductor cross-section, the copper is most of the price. A quotation with no validity window and no metal clause is an open position on the LME taken by your sales team without anyone calling it that.
- 02
Sales sells metres. Purchasing buys kilograms. The conversion lives in a spreadsheet somebody built years ago.
Conductor mass per metre depends on cross-section, number of cores, stranding factor and construction. When that conversion is manual, every price and every material plan carries an error nobody can see, and it compounds across the order book.
- 03
Nobody can say how many drums you own, or where they are.
Returnable drums carry deposits, they sit at customer sites for months, and they are an asset that behaves like a liability. Untracked, you buy drums you already own and you write off deposits you were entitled to reclaim.
- 04
Startup scrap, off-spec insulation and offcuts are written off as yield loss.
Copper scrap has a real, recoverable value and a real quantity. Treating it as yield loss means the recovery never reaches the job cost and the true consumption per metre is never known — so the standard you cost against drifts further from reality every year.
- 05
A 500 metre drum is cut for three orders and the remainder becomes stock nobody will sell.
Cut-to-length is where cable factories quietly accumulate dead inventory. Offcuts below a saleable length are either given away or held forever, and both are decided at the cutting table with no visibility of the alternative.
- 06
The customer asks for the routine test certificate for drum number 4471 and it takes two days to find it.
Test results belong to the drum, not to the order. When they are filed by order, every certificate request, every project handover and every type-approval query becomes a search through paper.
What we build
The system that removes those, specifically
Not a feature list. Each of these exists because one of the problems above cost somebody real money.
Copper exposure carried on the quotation
Metal content per metre, a metal base price on the quotation and a validity window, so the price the customer holds you to is the price you can still buy at. What is at risk between quotation and purchase becomes a figure rather than a feeling.
One conversion, defined once
Cross-section, cores, stranding and construction define the mass per metre in the item master. Sales quotes metres, planning nets kilograms, and neither of them is retyping a factor from a spreadsheet.
Drum register with deposits and location
Every drum tracked as a returnable asset: type, size, deposit value, whose site it is on and how long it has been there. Drums out beyond their return window surface as a list, not as an annual write-off.
Scrap and copper recovery in the job cost
Startup scrap, off-spec and offcut recorded by quantity and grade, with recovery value posted back against the order that produced it. Consumption per metre becomes a measured number you can hold the standard against.
Cut-to-length with the remainder visible
Cutting plans that show what is left on the drum and whether the remainder is saleable before the cut is made, so an offcut is a decision rather than a discovery.
Lot traceability through the whole process chain
Copper rod through drawing, stranding, insulation, sheathing and armouring to a numbered drum — forward and backward. When a customer reports a fault, the question is which rod lot and which extrusion run, and that has an answer.
Test certificates held against the drum
Routine test results recorded per drum and issued with it, with type test certificates and standard approvals held against the product. A certificate request is a lookup.
Questions
What people in this industry ask us first
Is this a product you already sell, or would it be built?
The core is standard: Odoo's manufacturing, lot traceability and costing are mature and we implement them daily. The parts specific to cable — metal content on the quotation, drum custody, per-drum certificates — are configured and extended for your factory. We will tell you at the diagnosis which is which, and what each piece costs, before you commit to anything.
We make several standards — IEC, BS, and local approvals.
Then the approval status belongs on the product and has to be visible at the point of sale, not in a folder. Which standards a construction is approved against, and for which markets, is part of the item record so an order for a market you are not approved in does not leave the building.
Where would you start?
With the copper. It is the largest number in your business and the one with the most exposure between quotation and purchase. Getting the metal content, the conversion and the quotation validity right pays for itself before the rest of the implementation begins.
How we deliver it
Cable and wire manufacturing
Start with a diagnosis, not a demo
Two weeks. We walk your floor and your books, and you get the list of where money is leaving the business with a cost against each item. The list is yours whether or not you work with us afterwards.
Monday to Friday, 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM (GST)
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