Manufacturing Inventory Management
BOM-aware demand forecasting, raw-material replenishment, and finished-goods planning for scaling manufacturers, without ripping out the systems you already have.
Built for SME and contract manufacturers managing 100–5,000 finished SKUs, multi-level BOMs, and long-lead components against fast-moving demand.
Guided onboarding in weeks · No long-term contract · Works with the systems you already run
Why manufacturing inventory is the hardest planning problem
A manufacturing business doesn’t hold one inventory. It holds three, each with its own constraints, lead times, and risks.
BOMs cascade demand
One finished SKU isn’t one purchase decision. It’s ten or a hundred component decisions, each with its own lead time and supplier. Forecasting the finished good is the easy part.
16-week components vs 2-week demand spikes
Long-lead components booked in Q1 against demand that materialises in Q3. Get the long-lead call wrong and the finished-goods plan is locked before the demand signal arrives.
WIP that no one sees clearly
Work in progress is rarely tracked at the same granularity as raw materials or finished goods. Production cycle times drift, yields slip, and the planning team finds out three weeks late.
Shared components across SKUs
A single component fed into eight finished goods, each with its own demand pattern. Net component demand is the sum; get it wrong and you starve the most popular SKU first.
Supplier MOQs that don’t match the run rate
A 5,000-unit MOQ on a component you use 800 of a month. Either you over-buy and tie up six months of working capital, or you renegotiate. Planning needs to flag this, not just live with it.
Cash flow swings as production starts
Component POs go out months before finished goods sell. Without a cash-flow view tied to the production plan, finance finds out about the squeeze when it’s already happened.
What manufacturing inventory planning should do
Lumina is built around the work planners and ops leads at scaling manufacturers run every week, not the demo a generic IMS wants to show.
BOM-aware demand forecasting
Forecast the finished SKU, configured to how your range behaves, and Lumina explodes it through your BOM into component-level demand automatically. Multi-level BOMs and shared components handled natively.
Three-state inventory tracking
Raw materials, WIP, and finished goods tracked as distinct states with separate visibility, alerts, and replenishment logic for each.
Component lead-time policy
Long-lead components get wider safety windows; short-lead components get right-sized. Per-component policy, not blanket SKU rules, so working capital lands where it needs to.
Production planning and material requirements
Match raw-material purchases to the production plan, not just to historical consumption. Lumina turns the finished-goods forecast into a production plan and a precise component buy list: when to order materials, when to start the next run.
Supplier and supplier-payment visibility
Component suppliers managed with payment-term awareness, deposit and balance structures, and a supplier ledger that ties POs to cash impact.
Multi-channel finished-goods planning
If you sell across Shopify, Amazon, and wholesale on top of contract manufacturing, the finished-goods forecast handles all of them and pushes the consolidated requirement back through the BOM.
Works with your production and inventory systems
Lumina pulls BOM, stock, and sales data from the systems you already run. If you use an ERP or production system for shop-floor execution and stock records, Lumina plans on top of it; if you don’t, Lumina’s stock ledger and Production Suite can be the planning system of record on their own.
Don’t see your system? We build custom connectors to it during onboarding. See all integrations
What scaling manufacturers say about Lumina
“We’d just be hopping from one problem to the next, and not really making any decisions far enough in advance to prevent them. We went from around 300,000 pillows to 500,000 annually, and the complexity just ballooned.”
Gavin Donn, Supply Chain Lead, Trtl
The full manufacturing planning workflow, in one platform
Each capability stands on its own; together they replace the planner’s 12-tab spreadsheet that ties the inventory system, the accounting system, and the production board together by hand.
Demand planning
Finished-goods forecasting per SKU, per channel, configured to how your range behaves, with accuracy and bias tracked per SKU. Feeds straight into the component plan exploded through your BOM.
See demand planningThree-state inventory
Separate visibility on raw materials, work in progress, and finished goods, each with its own alerts and policy.
See inventory managementComponent replenishment
Reorder triggers per component, respecting MOQs and lead times per supplier. Long-lead components get wider safety windows; short-lead components get right-sized.
See replenishmentCost & cashflow
True landed cost and margin on every component and finished good, supplier payments in view, and cashflow kept healthy across production runs.
See cost & cashflowWant to size the basics yourself?
Try the safety stock calculator to compute buffer per component, or grab the free purchase order template for the supplier-ordering side. Both are free; the template just needs an email.
From signup to live in weeks
Lumina onboarding for manufacturers is guided: your BOM, your supplier data, your production calendar, set up with you over a few weeks. Not a self-service setup you figure out alone, and not a months-long implementation.
- 1
Weeks 1–2: Connections and data
Connect your ERP or production system (Microsoft Dynamics, Brightpearl, or other), accounting, and sales channels, and import anything that lives in spreadsheets. We validate the BOM structure with you, multi-level BOMs and shared components included, and map suppliers to components with lead times and MOQs.
- 2
Weeks 2–3: Forecast, production plan, and replenishment, configured to you
We set up the finished-goods forecast around how your range behaves, explode it through your BOM, and calibrate reorder rules per component with long-lead-aware safety windows. Reviewed together, so the component plan matches your intuition before you rely on it.
- 3
Week 4: First live run
Stockout and overstock alerts wired up across all three inventory states, the first planning meeting run from Lumina, and the first component POs raised together. Then we stay alongside you as you grow.
Why scaling manufacturers choose Lumina
The space between “a basic IMS with a BOM field” and “an enterprise planning suite” is where most scaling manufacturers live. Lumina is built for that space.
Basic IMS / production system
- • Track what’s on hand and what’s in production
- • Basic reorder triggers, no real forecasting
- • BOM is record-keeping, not a planning input
- • Long-lead and short-lead components share rules
Lumina
Built for this gap- BOM-aware forecasting, configured to your range
- Three-state inventory (raw / WIP / finished)
- Per-component lead-time policy
- Guided onboarding in weeks, works with your existing systems
Enterprise planning suites
- • Months-long implementation
- • Rigid workflows and master-data demands
- • Heavy IT and admin burden
- • Designed for enterprise, priced like enterprise
Comparing alternatives in detail? See our Cin7 alternatives guide and NetStock alternatives guide.
Frequently asked questions
What is manufacturing inventory management?+
Manufacturing inventory management is the discipline of planning, tracking, and replenishing the three inventory states a manufacturing business holds at any moment: raw materials, work in progress (WIP), and finished goods. It involves matching raw-material purchases to production schedules, sequencing WIP through the shop floor, and aligning finished-goods stock with downstream demand. Unlike pure-ecommerce inventory management, it's bound by bills of materials, production capacity, and supplier component lead times.
How is manufacturing inventory different from ecommerce inventory?+
Three structural differences. (1) Bill of materials: a finished SKU isn't bought, it's assembled from component SKUs, each with its own lead time. Demand on one finished good cascades into demand on dozens of components. (2) Three inventory states: raw materials, WIP, and finished goods, each managed separately. (3) Production capacity as a constraint: you can't just buy more finished goods to chase demand; you have to schedule production with capacity, labour, and component availability in mind. Ecommerce inventory is about replenishing finished SKUs from suppliers; manufacturing inventory is about orchestrating the whole production system.
Does Lumina handle bills of materials (BOMs)?+
Yes. BOM-aware forecasting and component-level replenishment are core to Lumina's Production Suite. Forecast demand on the finished SKU and Lumina explodes it through the BOM into component-level demand, then drives the raw-material replenishment plan against component lead times and supplier MOQs. Multi-level BOMs are supported, including sub-assemblies and components shared across several finished goods.
Can Lumina forecast WIP and finished goods separately?+
Yes. WIP and finished-goods stock are tracked as distinct inventory states. The finished-goods forecast drives the production plan, which converts into a WIP requirement, and Lumina surfaces when production needs to start to meet finished-goods stock targets. Production lead times and throughput are configurable.
Does Lumina replace my MRP or production system?+
It depends what you mean by MRP. Lumina does the planning side: BOM explosion, production planning, and material requirements, turning a finished-goods forecast into a precise component buy list and a production plan. What it doesn't do is run the shop floor: work orders, machine and labour scheduling, execution. If you run an ERP or production system for that, Lumina plans on top of it and connects to it. If you don't, Lumina's stock ledger and Production Suite can be your planning system of record on their own.
What size of manufacturer is Lumina built for?+
Scaling SME and contract manufacturers, typically £1–30M in annual revenue, with 100–5,000 finished SKUs, multi-level BOMs, and a planner or ops lead spending too much of the week in spreadsheets. Below that, spreadsheets and a basic IMS usually suffice. At true enterprise scale, suites like SAP S/4HANA are the typical fit. Lumina is built for the gap in between, and grows with you through it.
What integrations does Lumina have for manufacturers?+
Lumina connects to ERPs like Microsoft Dynamics and Brightpearl, PLM systems like Rechain, accounting tools like Xero, QuickBooks, and Sage, and sales channels like Shopify and Amazon, plus your own databases and spreadsheets. For any other production or shop-floor system, we build a custom connector during onboarding.
How does Lumina handle long component lead times against fast finished-goods demand?+
This is the central tension in scaling manufacturing, and the workflow Lumina is most directly designed to solve. The finished-goods forecast is exploded through the BOM and pushed back through the production chain: finished-goods demand, then the WIP requirement, then a lead-time-aware reorder for each raw material. Long-lead components are flagged earlier with wider safety windows; short-lead components are right-sized so they don't tie up working capital. The result is per-component policy, not per-SKU rules.