Every unit you build is effectively a prototype, so there is nothing for a forecast to extrapolate from. Hull 12 has a different lamination schedule than hull 11, and the rig on the lift has a one-off harness. Arda puts a scannable card on every item you stock, from resin and fairing compound to wire, vinyl and hardware, so a scan fires the reorder and the bay never stops.
Your first 10 cards are free. Works alongside your ERP, no rip and replace.
Trusted by builders including Rossmonster, Fat Fender, and Assembly Industrial.
A stockout is a reorder that fired too late, or never fired at all. Count-based systems leave that trigger to a person, and people are busy. Arda makes the trigger physical: the card on the bin is the reorder, sized to your supplier's lead time, so replenishment starts the moment stock runs low and the shelf refills before the second bin runs dry. That works the same on a drum of laminating resin, a rack of core stock, or a bin of rivnuts.
Scanning the empty bin is the fastest way to get more, so the reorder fires on its own, every time.
Reorder point and safety stock are set to your real burn rate and lead time, so the second bin always covers the wait.
When a job changes what you burn, you resize the card once. Nobody recalculates a min/max by hand.
"When we started with Arda, we were almost a year behind on fulfilling orders."
Adam Ward · Inventory Manager, Fat Fender Garage
Custom vehicle and boat shops run high variety at low volume, so the item that stops a build is different on every build. A $60 box of longboard paper and a $200 gallon of high-build primer do not cost $260 when they run out on a Thursday. They cost Monday's booth slot, and the next one is a week out.
MRP forecasts forward from what you consumed last quarter. Last quarter was a different boat with a different lamination schedule and a different harness, so there is nothing to extrapolate from and the forecast is wrong before the first layer goes down.
A rig sits at 97 percent waiting on a bag of rivnuts and one Deutsch connector. Nobody takes delivery at 97 percent, so the lift stays occupied and the crew opens a second build they cannot finish either. The shop is now running two half-builds instead of making one handover.
Bay two gives up its rivnuts and its last gallon of resin so the hull in bay one can leave on Friday. The shortage does not disappear, it moves. The boat in bay two now misses its own launch date, and two builds are late instead of one.
You cannot forecast a build that has never been built. You can replenish it. Arda's inventory replenishment software for custom vehicle and boat builders puts a scannable card on every item you stock, sized to your real burn rate and your supplier's lead time, so a scan fires the reorder on its own. Nothing has to be predicted, reported or typed. Scan a card, the material shows up.
The off-BOM half hurts most, because catalyst, bag consumables, fairing compound and activator never appear on a lamination schedule or a build sheet, so nothing is watching them. The same card works on the on-BOM half too, from resin and cloth to core stock, vinyl and tank hardware. Card it, and it stops being the thing that holds a delivery.
Every stocked item gets a durable card with a QR code, from a drum of laminating resin to a bin of rivnuts to a rack of core stock. A laminator or fabricator scans it with any phone, no extra hardware, no login friction.
The scan hits Arda's backend, which places the reorder at the right quantity from the right supplier. No purchase order to type.
Purchasing and the owner watch which cards are pulled, on order, or restocked across parts and locations, without walking the floor.
Each card encodes a proven loop sized to your real consumption: reorder point, the two-bin system, min/max levels, and safety stock. The math lives on the card, not in someone's head. The same loop runs in every trade Arda serves, and the parent page on inventory replenishment software covers how it applies across manufacturing.
Card it today, scan it tomorrow, and see the reorder fire on its own. Expand across the bays when it has proven itself.
Count-everything tools fail because they add a task. Arda removes one. That is what holds compliance past week one.
The card is the replenishment signal, on every item you stock. Nobody tallies stock or runs a cycle count to make the numbers real.
The simplest way to do the job is to scan the card, so compliance sticks where badge-in ERP screens lose the floor on day one.
No scanner gun, no new login, no training day. A fabricator scans with the phone already in their pocket, so nothing new stands between them and the reorder.
Reorder point, min/max, and safety stock are baked into the card at the point of use, not buried in a back-office sheet that drifts the moment demand shifts.
One scan when a bin runs low, and the refill is already moving. Same motion for every item in the bay. No software to learn.
Orders fire at the right quantity with no stack of manual POs, and every card's status is in one place.
"It gives the team a voice. They bring the card over to us, and we scan it, and then it gets right to the purchasing team." Adam Ward, Inventory Manager, Fat Fender Garage
Hands off reordering for good and gets the hours back for quoting, with real consumption data across the whole shelf instead of gut feel.
One-off builders who put a card on what they stock, from resin and fairing compound to wire, vinyl and hardware, and got their delivery dates back.
Builds and supplies high-performance custom parts and full restorations for classic Ford and Chevy trucks, after two failed ERP implementations. The oldest open order went from 365+ days to 20, and kit throughput went from one a week to five at roughly $8k each.
Read the Fat Fender case study →Designs and builds rugged custom trucks and metalwork for industrial applications. Capacity went from four trucks at a time to eight, and ordering went from two or three hours a week down to ten minutes a day.
Read the Assembly Industrial case study →Colorado builder of premium van conversions and the Baja truck-camper line, every unit configured to the customer. Owner Luke Farny: "Before Arda, we held inventory levels at 25+ for most of our critical components. Now, we hold inventory levels at 5 and make 6x as many vehicles."
Read the Rossmonster case study →For the items that actually stop a build, here is how the three common approaches stack up on the floor.
| Arda | ERP / MRP | Spreadsheet / memory | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Signal to reorder | Scan a card, order fires automatically | Manual entry, then a planning run | Someone remembers to look |
| Covers every stocked item | Yes, on-BOM and off, same card | On-BOM only, misses the rest | Only if updated by hand |
| Handles a build mix that changes every job | Yes, the card reacts to consumption | No, the forecast assumes repetition | No, it assumes someone remembers |
| Shop-floor compliance | High, scanning is the easy path | Low, floor skips data entry | Low, depends on one person |
| Setup time | Start with one part in a day | Months of implementation | Fast, but breaks as it grows |
| Works with your existing ERP | Yes, splices in, no rip and replace | It is the ERP | Disconnected from it |
| Cost to get started | $0 for your first 10 cards | High license and rollout cost | Free, until a stockout costs a day |
Weighing specific tools rather than whole approaches? The Arda Comparison Hub has side-by-side breakdowns against eTurns, Fishbowl, Katana, Cin7, Fastenal, Odoo, Sortly, and more.
No implementation project. Card a single item and the loop is running.
Free plan, no card required to try it. Paid plans add a 7-day trial.
Splices in alongside QuickBooks, NetSuite, Odoo, Xero and more. No rip and replace.
Priced per card, not per seat, so the whole floor can scan from day one.
Assembly Industrial put cards on its floor and went from four trucks at a time to eight. In Anthony Olivas's words, "The stress in the shop is gone, and everything just flows." Start where it hurts most, on us, and let the shelf reorder itself.
Free plan, unlimited users, no ERP rollout.
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