ERP for Aluminium, Glass and Facade Fabricators in the UAE

Walk into most aluminium and glass workshops in the UAE and you will find the same picture. Estimates are built in Excel from the estimator's experience. Cutting lists are produced by the optimisation software and printed. Production is planned on a whiteboard. Deliveries are arranged by phone against the site's programme. The accounting system sees a quote at the start and an invoice at the end, and nothing in between.

The business works because the people are good. It leaks money because nobody can see where a job's margin went until months after it was delivered. This guide explains what an ERP actually does for a fabricator, where the hard parts are, and how the implementation is phased so the factory never stops.

What makes fabrication different

A fabricator is three businesses in one. It is a project contractor that wins work from drawings and bills of quantities, delivers to site and invoices by progress. It is a manufacturer that extrudes, cuts, machines, powder-coats, glazes and assembles in batches. And it is a trader that buys profile, glass, hardware and consumables from a handful of suppliers whose prices and lead times move.

Standard accounting software models the trader. Standard manufacturing software models repeat production. Neither models a job that is quoted once, produced once and delivered once, with the cost spread across all three activities. That is the gap an ERP configured for fabrication has to close.

Quoting from cost, not memory

The estimate is where margin is made or lost, and in most workshops it rests on one or two experienced people. An ERP changes the estimate into a costed bill of material: for each window, door, curtain-wall panel or shopfront type, the profile lengths, glass area and type, gaskets, hardware, coating, labour minutes and installation time, priced from current supplier costs.

Configurable products do most of the work. An estimator enters the opening size, system and finish, and the BOM and cost are generated. The quote is then a list of costed items with a margin the owner can see, rather than a total the owner has to trust. When the job is won, that same BOM becomes the purchase requirement and the production order. Nothing is re-entered.

Cost element	Where it hides today	How the ERP captures it
Profile (aluminium)	Estimated per metre; yield and offcuts ignored	BOM by length with standard yield; actual consumption from cutting list
Glass	Supplier quote per job, rarely reconciled	Glass BOM by area and spec; purchase matched to job; breakage logged
Hardware and accessories	Bought in bulk, allocated by guess	Issued to the work order from stock at actual cost
Coating and processing	Subcontractor invoice months later	Subcontract operation on the routing, cost on the job when received
Labour	Monthly payroll, not per job	Time captured per work order from the floor
Installation and site	In the foreman's head	Site timesheets and material issues to the project

Production: batches inside projects

The factory does not make one project at a time. It cuts profile for three jobs together to improve yield, coats a full batch, and assembles by delivery sequence. The ERP has to let the planner group work orders across projects for cutting and coating while keeping each piece tagged to its project, floor and elevation for assembly and delivery.

In practice that means work orders generated from the project BOM, a routing per product type with cutting, machining, coating, glazing and assembly operations, and the ability to batch the early operations. Cutting lists come from the optimisation software; the ERP records what was cut and issues the material. Each operation is confirmed on a tablet at the station, which gives live status by project and real labour time per job.

Material control is margin control

Aluminium and glass are 60 to 70 percent of the cost of most jobs. Small leaks are large money: a few percent of profile yield, glass cut wrongly and replaced from stock without a record, hardware taken from the store for one job and used on another.

The ERP closes those leaks by issuing material to work orders from a stock that is counted, tracking offcuts that are returned to stock as usable lengths, logging breakage and rework against the job, and matching supplier deliveries and invoices to purchase orders. Landed cost matters too: profile imported from the Gulf or further away carries freight and duty that must sit in the unit cost or the margin on every quote is overstated.

Site, delivery and progress billing

The job is not done when it leaves the factory. Deliveries go to site against the main contractor's programme, installation happens over weeks, and billing is by progress certificate with retention held. All of that is project data, and it drives cash.

Delivery notes generated from the project, installation progress recorded by the site team on a phone, and progress invoices built from certified work with retention and advance recovery handled as data: that is what lets a fabricator invoice on time and know its true position on every contract. From 2027 those progress invoices also have to be structured e-invoices, which spreadsheets cannot produce. Modelling the project properly now solves both problems.

Finance that matches the factory

The owner's question is simple: what did that job make? Answering it needs the project to carry every cost described above and the revenue from every certificate, with work in progress valued correctly at month end. When the ERP is configured this way, job profitability is a report, not an investigation, and the estimator can see which product types and clients are worth chasing.

Multi-entity groups, which are common in UAE fabrication where a trading company, a factory and an installation company sit under one owner, need inter-company flows configured so that transfers between them are clean and the consolidated picture is true.

Implementing without stopping the line

Fabricators cannot pause production for a systems project, and they should not have to. Kaido phases fabrication implementations in the same order every time:

1. Finance, purchasing and projects first. Chart of accounts, VAT, supplier price lists and the project structure. Quotes and progress invoices move to the system. The factory is untouched.
2. Inventory and cutting lists. Counted opening stock, material issues to jobs, offcut returns, landed cost. The optimisation software is integrated or its lists are imported.
3. Work orders on the floor. Routings, station tablets, labour capture and batching. Started on one product line, then extended.
4. Costing and reporting. Job profitability, WIP valuation, estimator feedback loops.

Each phase has an approval gate and a short parallel run. The old method stays alive until the new one is proven for that step. The whole programme typically runs across a few months, with the factory operating throughout.

Odoo or SAP Business One

Both can run a fabricator. Odoo suits most UAE workshops: manufacturing, projects, inventory and accounting in one system, configurable products for made-to-order work, and a price that fits a mid-market business. SAP Business One suits larger, more standardised producers that want deeper production costing and are prepared for a heavier implementation. Kaido delivers both and will tell you plainly which one fits your volume and product mix.

Kaido has implemented ERP for aluminium and glass manufacturers in the UAE, including a seven-phase Odoo programme covering CRM, sales, purchasing, inventory, projects, accounting, manufacturing and HR for a Ras Al Khaimah fabricator. The pattern above is the one we use.