UK motorsport in numbers
An industry that moves fast. Your systems should keep up.
£16bn
turnover in 2023
50,000
people employed
14%
of turnover spent on R&D
9 in 10
businesses export
Source: MIA and Grant Thornton UK, review of the UK motorsport industry, June 2025.
Why Smart IT 
Sound familiar?
The drawing changed on Tuesday. The floor found out on Friday.
High-mix, low-volume engineering lives on fast changes and tight deadlines. When drawings, schedules, certs and costs sit in different places, every change costs time you don’t have.
the BOM was on Rev C, the floor on Rev B.
the material cert was in someone’s inbox.
the deadline moved, the schedule didn’t.
nobody knew what the one-off cost to make.
the audit took a week of digging.
“We quote fast and build faster, but we never really know what a job made us.”
What managing directors tell us
“I need to trace any part back to its material in minutes, not days.”
What quality managers tell us
“Engineering changes reach the shop floor by word of mouth.”
What operations directors tell us
Design, make, prove it.
Every part follows the same path through one system, from the latest drawing to the certificate that ships with it.
1
Drawings BOM versions Change orders Approvals Routings
Design and change
PLM keeps every revision of every BOM and drawing, and approved changes go straight to the shop floor.
2
Work order planned · material reserved
Sent out for heat treatment
Back in, on to finishing
Plan and make
MRP schedules against real capacity and stock, with subcontracted operations tracked like any other step.
3
InspectionPassed
Serial and batchTraced
Job costPosted
Check, trace and cost
Quality checks, serial and batch traceability and the real cost of every job land in the same records.
One-offs, short runs and series supply
Prototypes and one-offs
Make to order
Job costing
Quote, build and cost a single part or assembly, with every hour and offcut captured against the job.
Short runs
Batch and serial
Full traceability
Lot and serial numbers on every part, linked back to material, operator, machine and inspection.
Series supply
Repeat customer demand
Planned
Plan repeat orders and forecasts against capacity, with reorder rules on the materials you always need.
Everything an engineering business needs, in one system
Odoo’s apps for engineering, production, quality and finance, with our own products for reporting and data migration.
PLM
Engineering change orders, BOM versions and drawings, with approvals before anything reaches the floor.
Manufacturing and MRP
Bills of materials, routings, work orders, capacity planning and shop-floor tablets.
Quality
Inspection points, alerts and certificates at every step.
Inventory and traceability
Multi-site stock with lot and serial numbers from material to finished part.
Purchasing and subcontracting
Supplier orders, outside processes and lead times in one place.
Maintenance
Planned upkeep for machines, so breakdowns don’t wreck the schedule.
Sales and accounting
Quotes, orders, invoicing and job profitability in the same books.
Daily production and margin dashboards.
Brings accounting history from Sage 50, QuickBooks or Xero.
Manufacturers on Odoo with Smart IT
GTT Europe
Live in eight weeks
End-to-end MRP for an IoT enclosure maker, live in eight weeks.
Restrap
Ahead of the deadline
Odoo MRP, planning and quality, live ahead of a 12-month deadline, with daily production reports.
Witham Group
Off Dynamics AX
Odoo instead of a costly Dynamics 365 upgrade, with blending and batch tracking automated.
The switch you keep putting off is smaller than you think
Here’s what engineering businesses say first, and what actually happens.
“We can’t stop production in the season.” We go live in phases, planned around your calendar: engineering and production first, accounts after.
“Our process is too specialist for an off-the-shelf system.” The gap analysis shows exactly what fits as standard and what needs configuring, before you commit.
“Our data lives in spreadsheets and an old MRP.” Data migration is planned in the gap analysis, so you start with your parts, BOMs and history.
Step 1 · Systems review
Free
45 minutes with a manufacturing consultant, on your own parts and process.
Step 2 · Gap analysis
Fixed quote
A written fit/gap, rollout plan and migration plan before you commit.
In England? Made Smarter Adoption can part-fund technology for SME manufacturers with 10–249 staff. We’ll show you what qualifies.
The things engineers ask before they switch
Something we missed? Ask us, a consultant answers.
Built for speed? Run like it.
Book a free systems review. We’ll map how changes, production, quality and costs move through your business today, then show what one system would change.
Free, 45 minutes Online or on site Written summary afterwards
