How Small Electronics Manufacturers Manage Increasing Operational Complexity

Chaos rarely knocks before entering your manufacturing facility. It builds step by step as products become more sophisticated, bills of materials grow deeper, more parts need to be tracked, and production workflows start involving more people, locations, and subcontractors.

At a certain point, spreadsheets stop being enough

Most small electronics manufacturers do not replace spreadsheets because spreadsheets are useless. They replace them because complexity eventually reaches a point where Excel cannot keep up. The issue is not just inconvenience, but mainly the growing risk of missed details, broken processes, poor visibility, and decisions based on outdated information.

“We needed a better way to handle it,” says Andy Nancollis, Co-founder and Chief Design Officer at Motion Impossible, a film equipment manufacturer from Yate, UK. “The complexity of our new product compared to the older models was overwhelming for a spreadsheet-based system.”

Complexity usually starts with the product itself

One of the first places operational complexity shows up is in the product structure. As electronics manufacturers rarely stop developing their products, over time many more components, revisions, and dependencies are introduced to the process. As that happens, it gets harder and harder to keep control over everything.

“Originally, we were just supposed to design the products,” says Alfred Neufeld, Senior Production Engineer at Technodynamics, a premium LED lighting systems manufacturer from Utah. “But they got more and more complicated and we wanted to have more control over the whole process.”

For some small manufacturers, that complexity becomes extreme. When products involve thousands or even tens of thousands of parts, even small mistakes in part numbering, version control, or BOM structure can create serious downstream issues. At that point, spreadsheets become a detriment and a need arises for a system that can handle complexity without forcing the company into a lengthy and costly software implementation.

“We needed a system where we could define our own individual part numbers, control revisions, and manage multi-level BOMs,” says James Watt, Supply Chain Coordinator at Blighter Surveillance Systems, a radar systems manufacturer from the UK. “We weren’t looking for something with all the bells and whistles that would take £100,000 to implement like SAP. But we still needed a solution for controlling production and the flow of materials through the business.”

Visibility becomes essential as operations expand

As small electronics manufacturers grow, inventory and production visibility become much harder to maintain. What used to be manageable in one location can quickly become confusing across multiple warehouses and production facilities. As a result, teams spend more time trying to understand where things are, what is late, and what needs attention, stealing away time from more value-adding tasks.

That is why operational visibility becomes one of the most important tools for managing complexity. Instead of chasing updates across spreadsheets or messages, manufacturers need a central view of inventory, orders, work in process, and delays.

“The beautiful thing with MRPeasy is that I can see our eight locations and understand exactly where any piece of inventory is,” says Novia Kaup, Director of Operations at Hydrogen Sports, a manufacturer of compact tennis and pickleball ball machines from California. “If something is running behind, it gets automatically highlighted in a central location. The visibility MRPeasy offers us is priceless because you don’t want to spend your time trying to understand where everything is and what you should have today.”

This kind of visibility matters even more when part of the production process happens outside the business. Many electronics manufacturers rely on subcontractors for specific steps, which adds another layer of complexity. Materials still need to be tracked, valued, and controlled even when they are no longer physically on site.

“We use modified transfer orders for our production,” says James Watt from Blighter Surveillance Systems. “As outside contractors do things on our part, we have to send stuff out to them. But we still own that stock. With MRPeasy, we can issue things to another site but still see the value of stock in our system and have it tracked and controlled. The transfer orders make it more straightforward for contractors to look at our things. Especially the companies that have accreditation and need everything to be displayed on the delivery note. Being able to manage all this within our internal MRP system has been great.”

Growing manufacturers need to scale without adding administrative drag

As operations become more complex, one of the biggest issues growing manufacturers experience is growth getting matched by administrative overhead. More orders, more people, and more products can easily mean more manual coordination, more paperwork, and more time spent keeping systems up to date. The most effective manufacturers avoid this by building workflows and systems that scale with the business.

That is where integrated manufacturing ERP software starts making a real difference. Instead of hiring more people just to maintain control, manufacturers can grow with little increase in administrative overheads.

“Since we started using MRPeasy, we have achieved over 100% growth in revenue,” says Chris Landen, Managing Director at Exacta Technologies Group, a computer hardware manufacturer from Bristol, UK. “And we have almost tripled our employee count from 25 to 70 without adding the same proportion of administrative overhead.”

This is also why manufacturers often find that the value of a proper system increases with complexity. The more moving parts there are, the more difficult it becomes to coordinate everything manually.

“The more complicated your manufacturing process gets, the more MRPeasy makes sense,” says Alfred Neufeld from Technodynamics.

Better control depends on connected costing and purchasing data

Another major challenge in electronics manufacturing is understanding how complexity affects cost. Rising component prices, labor-heavy routing steps, and unexpected inefficiencies can erode margins quickly if manufacturers cannot see where the money is going. As operations grow more detailed, real-time cost visibility becomes far more important than rough estimates or after-the-fact reviews.

Manufacturers that stay in control are the ones that can trace costs back to the manufacturing order, the component, or the production step. That level of detail helps them make better decisions about pricing, planning, and process improvement.

“With MRPeasy, we can go back to a manufacturing order and see a full cost breakdown—exactly which parts were unusually expensive, which routing steps were more labor-intensive, and so on,” says Alfred Neufeld from Technodynamics. “That level of detail is incredibly valuable.”

Purchasing is another area where complexity quickly overwhelms manual planning. When demand, open orders, lead times, and multi-level BOMs all interact, just figuring out what needs to be ordered can consume a huge amount of time.

“Using our previous system, it took me a day to understand what parts we needed to order and when,” says Matt Zimmerman, Founder and CEO at FarSounder, a marine navigation device manufacturer from Warwick, Rhode Island. “With MRPeasy, it takes less than an hour.”

For growing electronics businesses, integrated cost and purchasing data also support broader business decisions. It becomes much easier to see margins, outstanding work, and upcoming cash flow when production and financial information are connected.

“We needed a more integrated system for managing the business,” says Sean Rossiter, President at Oat Foundry, a split flap systems manufacturer from Philadelphia. “I wanted to be able to see our costs and margins job-by-job, tie all of the production costs to an invoice, see what’s outstanding, what our cash flow is going to be like – to have everything connected. There were a bunch of products that I looked into and trialed, but nothing was comparable to MRPeasy.”

Traceability and historical data matter more as complexity rises

In electronics manufacturing, complexity is not just about more parts and more planning. It is also about being able to trace what happened, when it happened, and how it connects to quality and compliance requirements. As products and processes become more sophisticated, manufacturers need easy access to quality and traceability documentation.

“We use MRPeasy in some unique ways,” says Jonathan Greenwald, VP of Operations and Manufacturing at KCL Manufacturing, a contract manufacturer of complex electromechanical assemblies for medical devices from Florida. “The software’s lot tracking capabilities tie seamlessly into our homegrown systems. It forms the foundation of our device history records, tying together inspection data, non-conformance reports, and floor documentation. That’s huge for our audits.”

Easy access to historical information also becomes more valuable as complexity grows. When teams can instantly find older purchase orders, compare part versions, or review past price changes, they waste less time hunting for data and can solve issues much faster.

“I can click on a part and find a two-year-old purchase order related to it, see the different versions of the part, track its price changes, and so on,” says Lindsey Daniels, Project Manager at RetiVue, a medical device manufacturer from Charlottesville, Virginia. “The information is very easily accessible thanks to the search and filter functions.”

Managing complexity is really about staying in control

Small electronics manufacturers manage increasing operational complexity by building stronger control into the way they work. That means better product structures, clearer inventory visibility, more connected costing, easier purchasing, stronger traceability, and faster access to operational history. Complexity does not have to slow a business down, but it does require systems that can keep pace with growth.

For manufacturers that are outgrowing spreadsheets and disconnected tools, the goal is not to add more software for the sake of it. The goal is to make sure increasing complexity does not turn into increasing chaos. The manufacturers that handle it best are the ones that put the right structure in place before complexity starts running the business for them.

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