THE NOVOBI ENGINEER-TO-ORDER BLUEPRINT
Protect Your Margin Where It Actually
Erodes — In Execution
A proven Odoo implementation for engineer-to-order manufacturers.
Engineer-to-order manufacturers win on engineering capability, but margin doesn’t disappear in the bid. It erodes during execution, across handoffs, revisions, and procurement that generic ERP was never designed to coordinate.
The Novobi ETO Blueprint is a pre-defined, structured Odoo implementation that unifies engineering, operations, procurement, and finance in a single source of truth. It is not a generic ERP project with manufacturing add-ons. It is a defined scope, a proven delivery sequence, and a team of ETO-specific SMEs who have built this model before, for a business model where change only stops when the job is complete.
WHAT THE BLUEPRINT DELIVERS
Operational Control in a Business Built on Change
Real-Time
Margin Control
Every cost, labor, materials, subcontracting, overhead, flows into one job record as it happens. Know profitability at 20% completion, while you can still protect it, not after delivery when it’s too late to recover.
Coordinated
Cross-Functional Execution
Engineering, operations, procurement, and finance work from a single source of truth. BOM changes propagate automatically. Handoffs are structured. Blame-shifting becomes unnecessary.
Scalable,
Data-Driven Estimating
Quote profitably using a system that learns from every completed job. Historical actuals replace tribal knowledge. Junior estimators become productive in weeks, not years.
The outcome: operational stability that enables profitable growth in a model built on customization and change.
IS THIS THE RIGHT FIT FOR YOUR BUSINESS?
Built for ETO Operations Leaders Who Are Done Firefighting
The Novobi ETO Blueprint is built for mid-market engineer-to-order manufacturers ($15M–$150M in revenue, 30–300 employees) whose products are engineered, configured, or materially modified per customer order, and whose operations run on projects rather than repeat SKUs. If you’re a COO, VP of Operations, GM, or Director of Manufacturing whose engineering effort continues after the sale, whose BOMs change mid-job, and whose margin and delivery dates depend on managing that change across departments, this Blueprint was built for your business.
01. Margin Blindness
You only discover a margin gap after the job ships, when there’s nothing left to recover.
“We bid 22% margin and delivered 9%, and I can’t explain to the CEO where it went.”
02. Handoff Chaos
Sales quotes assumptions Engineering never sees. Engineering designs to specs Operations misses. Procurement learns about long-lead items after commitments are made.
“Engineering says the BOM is ready. Production says it’s incomplete. Procurement was never told.”
03. Estimating in the Dark
Your senior estimators carry decades of pattern recognition in their heads, not in systems. When they retire, that knowledge walks out the door.
“If Tom retires, we lose 20 years of estimating knowledge.”
04. BOM Chaos
Engineering works from Rev D. Production prints from last week’s release. Purchasing orders from an email attachment. Same job, multiple versions.
“Buyers ordered $15K in parts for a superseded design. We found out at final assembly.”
05. Procurement Scramble
Long-lead components surface after schedules are committed. Premium freight becomes a line item, not an exception.
“We’re always behind on materials. Always expediting. Always paying 3x for freight.”
These aren’t software gaps. They’re structural execution breakdowns and they’re interdependent. A BOM change isn’t just an engineering event; it’s a procurement event, a production event, a cost event, and potentially a customer commercial event.
The Blueprint addresses all five as one system.
What Triggers a Blueprint Investment?
A margin miss you couldn’t explain.
A flagship job came in double-digit points under bid and no one could trace where it went. Leadership now wants margin visibility during execution, not a post-mortem after delivery.
A key estimator or engineer is leaving.
Decades of pattern recognition are about to walk out the door, and nothing in your systems captures it.
You’ve hit a scaling ceiling.
You can’t grow past your current volume because you can’t execute reliably at it. Every new job adds chaos, not just revenue.
New leadership with a mandate.
A new COO, VP Ops, or GM has been tasked with putting structure around engineering change, project margin, and cross-functional execution and replacing the spreadsheets holding it together.
WHAT’S INCLUDED
A Complete ETO Operating Model
Most ERP systems treat these as separate functional areas
Finance owns costing
Engineering owns BOMs
Operations owns production
Procurement owns purchasing
In ETO, they’re interdependent at the job level. The Blueprint delivers an integrated operational backbone in which all four work from a single source of truth.
Real-Time Margin
Visibility
Every cost flows into a single job record in real time, not weeks after delivery. Know profitability while you can still protect it.
Coordinated Cross-Functional Execution
One source of truth across engineering, operations, procurement, and finance. BOM changes propagate automatically. Handoffs are structured.
Scalable, Data-Driven Estimating
Quote profitably with a system that learns from every completed job. Historical actuals replace tribal knowledge.
Ironclad Revision
Control
Engineering Change Orders formalize every BOM modification. One approved revision exists. The shop floor cannot access superseded designs.
Engineering-Aware Procurement
BOM release automatically generates project-linked purchase requirements. Long-lead items are flagged immediately. Procurement works from schedules, not scrambles.
Project-Based
Execution
Every customer order behaves like its own mini-business. Projects are created automatically from confirmed sales orders, with engineering, production, and finance milestones in one place.
Core Capabilities
- Commercial scope management (quote → sales order → execution anchor)
- Engineer-after-order product definition (design completion after order confirmation)
- Project-centric engineering execution
- Controlled change management (BOM/document revision with cost + schedule impact)
- Manufacturing execution and work-center control
- Inventory and material-flow control (order-aware, WIP visibility)
- Procurement and supply orchestration (demand-driven, project-linked)
- Subcontracting and external operations
- Quality, FAT/SAT, dispatch, and acceptance control
- Financial visibility (job-level costing, estimate-vs-actual margin)
Integrations
- CAD & engineering design — SolidWorks, AutoCAD, Autodesk Inventor
- PDM / PLM — SolidWorks PDM (EPDM) and equivalents
- Document management — SharePoint, Google Drive, Dropbox
- Business intelligence — Power BI, Tableau, Metabase, Looker
- External accounting (if retained) — QuickBooks, Sage, Xero
AI & Advanced Capabilities
- Document digitization — AI OCR extracts and matches vendor bills and receipts (available now)
- AI-assisted estimating — suggests estimate ranges from similar past jobs (requires ~6 months of clean job-cost data)
- Automated RFQ generation — structured RFQ text drafted from BOM line items and engineering notes
- Engineering capacity prediction — forecasts engineering bottlenecks from backlog patterns (future-ready)
- Supplier risk scoring — reliability index from delivery history and PO-change frequency (future-ready)
Odoo Modules
THE IMPLEMENTATION PATH
Structured. Sequenced. De-Risked.
Novobi’s phased approach de-risks the implementation before a single line of configuration is written. Every phase has a defined scope, exit criteria, and outcomes. No build starts until Phase 0 is complete and approved.
WHY NOVOBI
The Difference Between a Blueprint and a Blank Slate
Most Odoo partners start every project from scratch: months of discovery, configuration decisions made under time pressure, and ETO complexity figured out on your dime. Roughly 50–75% of ERP projects fail or significantly overrun. Not because ERP doesn’t work, but because the implementation method is wrong. Novobi’s Blueprints are built on 12+ years of Odoo delivery and real ETO implementations. Other partners call it “manufacturing.” We call it what it is: engineer-to-order, with all the complexity that entails.
We Don’t Implement Odoo. We Implement ETO Operations.
Documented Blueprint, Not Learning on Your Dime
Proven Structure
Pre-defined ETO workflows, BOM governance, procurement models, and phase exit criteria, built from real ETO implementations, not assembled during your project.
Phase 0 Eliminates the Most Costly ERP Mistakes
De-Risked Start
No configuration starts until Phase 0 is complete. This single standard eliminates the majority of ETO implementation risk: scope misalignment, BOM data surprises, and integration underestimation.
Engineering-Centric Design, Not a Bolted-On Afterthought
ETO-Native
BOM evolution, engineering change control, and post-order design completion are core capabilities, not workarounds. Designed from inside an ETO job, not from a standard module list.
Margin Visibility at 20% Completion, Not 100%
Financial Clarity
Real-time job costing without Finance overhead. Labor, materials, subcontracting, and vendor bills flow into a single cost object during execution, not after delivery.
Estimating That Learns From Every Completed Job
Scalable Knowledge
Closed-loop estimating builds a database of historical actuals: quoted vs. actual performance. Knowledge lives in the system, not in a person.
Fixed Scope,
Not Unlimited Hours
Cost Certainty
Pre-defined frameworks significantly reduce overrun risk. A defined path, not a time-and-materials gamble.
“We needed a single-source-of-truth ERP that could consolidate efforts across organizations while remaining FDA-compliant. Odoo provided the perfect framework, and Novobi was the perfect partner to build exactly that system.”
Mark Ritchie
Director of Finance & Operations
“After a lot of research, we decided Odoo would be our platform. More research led us to our Odoo Gold Partner, Novobi. They took my requests and turned them into usable systems and processes that streamlined each of our departments.”
Chad Schnitz
Vice President
Trusted by Manufacturers Since 2014
BLUEPRINT SOLUTION BRIEF
Get the ETO Blueprint Solution Brief
The Solution Brief covers the full blueprint scope, capability list, solution architecture, and phasing model, in a single shareable document. Use it to evaluate fit internally, brief your team, or prepare for a consultation.
FAQS
Common Questions from ETO Leaders
- We’ve tried ERP before, and it failed. What makes this different?
Most ERP failures in ETO come from starting configuration before requirements are understood, and from forcing generic workflows onto an engineering-first business. Phase 0 Architect & Design addresses both directly: no build starts until scope, data quality, and workflow design are validated. - Our engineering process is complex. Can this handle in-flight BOM changes?
Yes, this is core to the Blueprint, not an edge case. Engineering Change Orders are a first-class capability. BOMs are versioned and revision-controlled, and changes propagate automatically to affected manufacturing and purchase orders. - We have SolidWorks, AutoCAD, and a PDM system. Will those integrate?
CAD and PDM integration (SolidWorks, AutoCAD, SolidWorks PDM/EPDM) is a defined item in Phase 0. The master-system decision, e.g., PDM vs. Odoo for part numbers and revisions, is designed before configuration begins. - How is this different from implementing Odoo ourselves or with a generic partner?
A generic implementation starts from modules and figures out ETO along the way: you pay for that learning curve. The ETO Blueprint starts from ETO operational reality: the five structural pressure points, engineering change control, job-cost traceability, and a phased delivery structure. - What size companies is this designed for?
Mid-market ETO manufacturers with $15M–$150M in revenue and 30–300 employees: enough operational complexity to benefit from engineering-driven projects, cross-functional coordination, and active margin management.
Ready to See Exactly Where Your Operation Is Carrying Risk?
The ETO Operations Diagnostic is a 45-minute scored read across five domains: margin visibility, cross-functional handoffs, estimating, BOM control, and procurement, showing where your operation runs clean and where it’s carrying execution risk. It’s a structured operational review with a Novobi ETO specialist, not a demo.
No generic demo. No sales pitch. An honest, scored read.
The deliverable: 10 questions. 5 domains. 1 page. Yours to keep — whether or not we talk again.
Get Your ETO Operations Diagnostic
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