The plastics and polymers industry (injection, extrusion, rotational moulding, thermoforming) has hybrid manufacturing traits: it carries the constraints of continuous process (continuous extrusion) as well as discrete process (producing parts one at a time on injection presses). The financial and capacity nerve centre of this industry is not just the machine — it is the tooling (the moulds).
The critical stake: moulds and cavities
A generic ERP treats the machine tool as the primary work centre. AVIA's ERP for plastics processing natively considers machine/mould pairs. A mould can have multiple cavities (for example 4 or 8 cavities per shot), which entails:
- Multi-constraint planning: the system can only release a work order once the press AND the right mould are available at the same time.
- Mould life-cycle management: shot counter, mould conformity tracking (blocked cavities affecting throughput without disrupting the cycle) and triggering preventive-maintenance alerts.
Recipes and material traceability (regrind, colorants)
The circular economy forces processors to handle purgings, sprues and material scrap cleverly. A good platform manages not fixed bills of materials but recipes (process BOM) that allow set levels of regrind reintegration according to the final customer's requirements (and approvals), while scrupulously tracking masterbatch (colorant) consumption.