Your fab customer wants full wafer genealogy and your ERP stops at the goods-in note
For a Newport semiconductor supplier or M4 distributor, a custom ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) that actually ties wafer-lot genealogy to supplier compliance and despatch runs £70k to £200k over 5 to 9 months. Off-the-shelf NetSuite or Microsoft Dynamics handles your ledger fine; it falls apart the moment a fab customer asks you to trace a single GaN-on-SiC batch back to its substrate lot and every process step in between. That gap is what a custom build closes in Newport.
You bought NetSuite or Dynamics to run finance and purchasing, and for the ledger it does the job. Then a major fab customer sends a quality escape and asks for full genealogy on a wafer batch shipped three months ago. Your ERP knows you invoiced it. It does not know which substrate lot it came from, which epitaxy run, or which operator signed off the metrology step, because all of that lives in a shared spreadsheet on someone's desktop.
That is the real limit around Imperial Park and Celtic Springs. Generic ERP models a 'product' as a SKU with a stock level. Compound-semiconductor work needs lot-level, serialised, multi-process genealogy where one input wafer becomes dozens of die batches, each carrying forward its own test data. SAP can be bent to do it, but the configuration and the per-seat licensing for shop-floor operators turn a £40k tool into a multi-year programme.
The problems nobody warns you about
- A fab customer raises an 8D and you cannot reconstruct which substrate lot and epitaxy run a shipped wafer batch came from within the contractual 48 hours
- Supplier compliance certs (RoHS, REACH, conflict-minerals declarations) sit in email and PDFs, not linked to the inbound lots they cover
- NetSuite treats a wafer as one SKU, so yield loss across the saw and test steps never reconciles against what you invoiced
- Welsh Government and Innovate UK grant audits need cost-per-process evidence your off-the-shelf ledger was never set up to produce
The case for owning your erp
A Newport-built ERP models the unit your business actually runs on: a serialised lot that splits, merges, gets tested, and carries its full process history to despatch. It links each inbound substrate to its supplier certs, records every shop-floor step against an operator and a machine, and lets you answer a fab customer's genealogy request in minutes rather than a frantic afternoon of spreadsheet archaeology. You own the data model, so when the next customer demands a new traceability field, you add it instead of waiting on a SAP partner's change request queue.
Budgeting a erp build in Newport
| Project scope | Typical cost | Timeline |
|---|---|---|
| Genealogy module bolted onto existing NetSuite/Dynamics | £70k to £110k | 4 to 6 months |
| Full bespoke ERP for a single-site fab supplier | £120k to £170k | 6 to 9 months |
| Multi-site ERP across Newport fab and M4 distribution | £170k to £200k+ | 9 to 14 months |
What your build should include
Newport ERP: the full scope
Digital Heroes builds the full ERP stack for Newport teams. Typical engagements cover SAP integration, Odoo development, Microsoft Dynamics 365, ERP migration, cloud ERP, manufacturing ERP and distribution ERP.
Exactly what you get
A working ERP whose core object is a serialised, traceable lot, not a flat SKU. Inbound substrate arrives bound to its supplier certs, every process step is captured against operator and machine, lots split and merge with full genealogy, and despatch carries a complete history a fab customer can audit. You get the source code, the data model documentation, and integration hooks to your existing finance ledger, CRM (Customer Relationship Management), and warehouse management system.
How to choose a developer in Newport
Pick a team that asks about your fab customers before it talks about technology. The right partner will want to see a real 8D request and a sample traceability spec, and will sketch the genealogy data model before quoting. Local matters less than domain fit here, though a team that understands the CSConnected cluster and Welsh Government grant conditions will move faster. Ask for a reference where they integrated with shop-floor or test equipment, not just a SaaS dashboard.
- !They quote a fixed price before seeing your genealogy requirements; ask how they will model split/merge lots
- !No question about your fab customers' traceability SLAs; ask them to walk through an 8D scenario
- !They propose ripping out your working finance ledger; ask why it can't be integrated instead
- !They have never integrated with MES or test equipment; ask for a comparable shop-floor reference
- !They skip a discovery phase; insist on it, because the data model is where bespoke ERPs live or die
Most Newport teams pricing erp end up comparing notes on internal tools, shopify, inventory management too; the systems share one data spine.
Rohan advises mid-market and enterprise teams on ERP, CRM and custom software, and has led delivery on dozens of business-software builds.
Writes for Digital Heroes, shipping business software for 2,000+ brands across 55+ countries since 2017.
Frequently asked questions
Can't we just configure NetSuite for wafer traceability?
You can bend NetSuite toward batch tracking, but compound-semiconductor genealogy needs split/merge lot logic and per-process capture that NetSuite was never built for. The configuration cost and per-seat shop-floor licensing usually approach a bespoke build, without the flexibility to add new traceability fields when your next fab customer demands them.
How long before a fab customer audit is fully supported?
For a single-site Newport supplier, plan on 6 to 9 months to a production system that answers genealogy requests from one query. The genealogy data model and shop-floor capture are the long poles; finance and purchasing reuse patterns you likely already have.
Do we need the bilingual Welsh interface?
Only for functions that touch the public or public-sector bodies under Welsh Language Standards. Internal shop-floor screens rarely need it, but if you supply Newport City Council or Welsh Government, scope bilingual support into customer-facing modules from the start.
What happens to our existing finance system?
A good build integrates with it rather than replacing it. Your ledger keeps doing VAT and statutory reporting; the new ERP owns lot genealogy, compliance, and shop-floor data, and feeds reconciled cost figures back to finance.