Odoo MRP (Manufacturing Resource Planning) handles the manufacturing process: bills of materials (BOM), work orders, raw material consumption, planning, and quality control. The basic version is in CE, advanced planning in Enterprise.
Bills of Materials (BOM)
A BOM describes which components are required to manufacture a product. Chair: four legs, one seat, eight screws. Each component references a product in the product register. BOMs can have sub-BOMs (a seat consists of frame, foam, fabric).
Manufacturing orders
Create manually or let it trigger automatically from a sales order (make to order) or a reorder rule (make to stock). Odoo reserves components from inventory. The operator marks steps as complete. When everything is done, the finished product is produced and stock updated.
Work centers and operations
Define work centers (cutting, assembly, painting) with capacity and cost per hour. Operations in the BOM link to work centers. Odoo calculates production time and cost automatically. In Enterprise it's shown in a Gantt planner.
Quality control
Quality module (CE basic version): define quality checks at specific points in production. Measurements, pass/fail, photos. Block delivery until quality check is approved.
CE limitations
No advanced scheduling (work centers with limited capacity). No visual Gantt planning. No IoT integration (machine status, automatic data collection). Enterprise fills these gaps, but CE works for simpler manufacturing.
Odoo MRP fits manufacturing SMEs that don't need SAP's complexity. If you have five to fifty employees in production and manageable BOMs (max three to four levels), it's a solid solution.