Metal fabrication ERP that fits how your shop actually cuts, forms and welds.

Metal fabrication ERP is manufacturing software built for shops that turn sheet, plate, tube and structural stock into finished parts and assemblies. The work is high-mix by nature. One order is forty brackets off the laser, the next is a single weldment with a customer-supplied drawing, a powder coat step and a delivery date somebody promised on the phone.

That variation is what breaks generic manufacturing software. A system designed around repeat production assumes stable routings and predictable demand. A fab shop needs the estimate, the cut list, the material, the routing, the schedule, the inspection step and the invoice to stay tied to one specific job, even when the job changes on Thursday.

Metal fabrication ERP keeps those things connected. Tangle adds a second layer on top: the system can be shaped around your process using Milo, Tangle's built-in AI engineer, so a field you need on the traveler or a report your biggest customer asks for does not turn into a six-week consulting request.

Estimating off real material cost

Build quotes from the part tree down, with material, cutting, forming, welding and finishing as separate operations carrying their own rates. The cost tree rolls up and recalculates when the quantity changes, so you can see what a run of ten does to the per-part number before you send the price.

Material and what is actually on the rack

Track stock against active jobs instead of against a number somebody typed in last month. Shortages surface against demand rather than waiting for a purchaser to notice; purchase orders can be raised straight from the shortage list.

Scheduling around the constraint

See load by department and by machine, with hours against capacity. When the press brake is the bottleneck the schedule says so, and moving a job shows you what it does downstream before you commit to it.

The floor without paper travelers

Shop-floor cards show what is released, who is on it and where it sits. Operators start and stop against the operation, and can attach a photo from the device when something needs a record.

Job margin before the truck leaves

Labor and material post against the work order as they happen, so the gap between what you quoted and what it cost is visible while you can still do something about it.

The parts nobody else builds for you

Heat numbers and mill cert references, a weld map, a customer-specific first-article format, a finishing step your powder coater needs called out a particular way. These are the things every fab shop asks for and no standard ERP ships. In Tangle they get built with Milo, previewed in a sandbox, and promoted once you are happy with them.

Most shops do not leave their old system because it lacked features. They leave because changing anything costs money and months, so the shop quietly builds a spreadsheet instead, and then another one, and eventually the real operating system is a shared drive nobody trusts.

Tangle carries the normal ERP backbone. Quotes, sales orders, multi-level work orders, purchasing, inventory, scheduling, shipping, invoicing and a QuickBooks Online sync for invoices and purchase orders. What is different is what happens when the backbone does not fit. Milo reads the system, plans the change, shows you a preview in a sandbox that does not touch anyone else's work, and applies it when you approve. Changes are tracked on a board so you can see what was asked for and what went live.

There is an honest caveat worth stating. This works because your people describe what they need in plain language, and that means somebody at the shop has to know what good looks like. Shops that have never written down their process get value more slowly than shops that have.

Yarl Metal runs Tangle across a metal fabrication operation, including the quoting and shop-floor work that most fab shops are still doing on spreadsheets and paper.

If you want numbers before you want a vendor, the metal fabrication benchmark data and the research on quoting time in metal fab are both published and free to read. Compare your own shop against them first. It is a better use of an hour than another demo.

Fab shops that also run mixed job-shop work will want the companion page on job shop ERP.

How long does this take, honestly?

It depends on how much of the shop you move at once, and we will give you a straight answer for yours on the first call. Tangle supports phased rollout and running in parallel with the old system, so you start with the workflow that hurts most rather than cutting everything over on one weekend.

What happens to the data in our current system?

It gets mapped and moved. Off Ramp handles a staged migration with a live sync, so the old system stays authoritative until you decide it should not be.

We have a spreadsheet that does something nobody can replace.

Bring it to the demo. That spreadsheet is usually the most useful description of your actual process anyone at the shop has written down, and it is normally the first thing Milo rebuilds properly.

Do we need someone technical to use Milo?

No, but you need someone who can say clearly what the shop needs. Milo handles the building; knowing what should be built is still your job.

Does it replace QuickBooks?

No, and that is deliberate. Invoices and purchase orders sync to QuickBooks Online and your accountant carries on working the way they already do.

Our prices are on our website, by user type, so you can work out what Tangle would cost your shop before you talk to anyone. The core migration and setup work needed to get live is normally included in that price, with no separate services bill for the basics, and we support running your old system in parallel until you are ready to switch.