MRP software helped Montreal-based contract manufacturer KS2 connect bills of materials, purchasing, production planning, quoting and invoicing as its product range and team expanded. In a customer story published by EE Times in 2024, KS2 reported faster product setup and 24–48-hour quote turnaround. Those are customer-reported results in sponsored content—not independently measured proof that software caused the company’s growth.
Why spreadsheets became harder to manage
Spreadsheets can be workable when a manufacturer has a small product range and a few people coordinating production. The strain grows as assemblies multiply, bills of materials (BOMs) change more often, purchasing expands and several departments need the same current information. KS2 said it began looking beyond spreadsheets in 2016 as it became harder to manage a growing range of assemblies.
In that setting, disconnected files can create conflicting BOM versions, manual material calculations, delayed purchasing decisions and repeated data entry between quoting, production and invoicing. Those are common risks of spreadsheet-led workflows; the case does not establish that KS2 experienced each one. The underlying issue is coordination: engineering, purchasing, customer service, production and finance need to act on accurate, current data.
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What kind of manufacturer is KS2?
KS2 is a Montreal-based Canadian contract manufacturer founded in 2007. The EE Times profile describes it as producing automotive assemblies and subassemblies and providing engineering services; by the article’s publication in September 2024, the company had grown to about 40 employees. It also works on RV- and EV-related solutions.
KS2’s company website describes capabilities spanning vehicle connectivity, industrial automation, green-energy systems, lithium-battery management, remote diagnostics, monitoring and sensor control, and industrial controls. That gives context to the company’s technical work, but does not establish that every capability was managed in MRPeasy.
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What KS2 selected—and what MRP means
KS2 sought an intuitive system for a small manufacturer. Its owner reportedly evaluated MRPeasy against four other systems and chose it partly for its price point and perceived ease of use. The sponsored EE Times article does not name the other products or provide a comparison matrix.
MRP (material requirements planning) focuses on coordinating materials, purchasing, inventory, BOMs and production planning. ERP (enterprise resource planning) generally refers to a broader system that can connect manufacturing with functions such as sales, finance, HR or quality. The EE Times story sometimes calls MRPeasy an ERP system, but KS2’s account is chiefly about MRP and connected business workflows.
The article is labeled Partner Content and lists MRPeasy as its author. Its account is useful as a customer case study, but its performance claims should be read as KS2’s testimony rather than independent product testing.
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How KS2 used the system
KS2 used MRPeasy to bring several operational records and workflows together:
- Product data: parts, BOMs and revisions.
- Materials and production: purchasing, inventory visibility, stock statistics and production planning, including planning for long-lead-time items.
- Commercial work: quotes, invoices and transactions in multiple currencies.
KS2’s engineers took responsibility for BOMs and revisions in the system, while access expanded beyond the initial users to include customer service, engineering and supply-chain personnel. That cross-functional adoption matters: a shared database is only useful when the people who create, approve and act on its information maintain it consistently.
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MRPeasy’s current product website markets functions such as production planning, inventory, procurement, sales, workforce tracking, finance, lot and batch tracking, serial numbers, barcode workflows and reporting. This current feature list is vendor information, not evidence that KS2 used every function. The case was published in 2024, so its interface and product details should not be assumed to describe the current version.
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The figures below come from KS2’s account in the sponsored EE Times profile. The article does not provide independent measurements or a controlled before-and-after comparison.
| Area | KS2’s reported result | What the article does not establish |
|---|---|---|
| Quoting | Quotes returned within 24–48 hours of a request. | Previous turnaround, quote volume or win rate; whether all requests or engineering reviews were included. |
| New-product setup | Creating BOMs and linking them to production planning took hours instead of days; new products could be prepared for manufacturing orders and invoicing in the same day. | Product complexity, BOM depth, or whether routings, work instructions, tooling and quality checks were included. |
| Adoption | Use grew from two initial users to 15 active users by the time of the article. | How usage was defined or how frequently each user worked in the system. |
| Company size | The profile described a team of about 40 people. | That the software caused the company’s growth. |
| Inventory and purchasing | KS2 reported better access to stock statistics and improved planning for long-lead-time items. | Changes in stock-outs, excess inventory, expedite costs, inventory value or working capital. |
| Invoicing and cash flow | KS2 said faster invoicing helped cash flow and valued multi-currency transactions for Canada–U.S. business. | A measured cash-flow effect, days-sales-outstanding change or size of any improvement. |
The most defensible conclusion is that connected workflows helped KS2 manage growing operational complexity. The article does not disclose revenue growth, margins, on-time delivery, defect rates, implementation cost or payback period, so it cannot show that MRPeasy alone propelled growth or quantify a financial return.
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What the case suggests about implementation
KS2’s experience points to an incremental rollout: start with a painful workflow, establish reliable product data, then connect more teams and processes. A comparable manufacturer could approach the work in this order:
- Choose a first problem to solve. Identify whether the main bottleneck is purchasing, inventory visibility, BOM control, production planning or quote-to-order handoffs.
- Clean and assign ownership of master data. Standardize part numbers and units of measure; designate who creates, reviews and approves BOMs and revisions.
- Control revisions before connecting production. Confirm that the system can maintain approved versions and prevent obsolete components from flowing into new work orders.
- Connect the core manufacturing workflow. Link current BOMs to planning and purchasing, and confirm how the system handles lead times, substitutions, rework and partial completions.
- Expand access deliberately. Bring in engineering, purchasing, customer service, production and finance with role-based permissions and clear approval responsibilities.
- Validate commercial and reporting workflows. Test quote costing, order conversion, invoicing, currencies and reports with realistic examples before relying on them.
The case says KS2 considered the software usable without expensive implementation consultants, and MRPeasy provides documentation, how-to videos and context-sensitive help. That is not a guarantee of consultant-free deployment: data quality, process complexity, integrations and traceability requirements can make outside implementation support worthwhile.
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What another manufacturer should evaluate
A product demonstration should use the buyer’s own operating scenarios, not only a vendor’s sample data. Work through the following areas before choosing an MRP or ERP system.
Manufacturing and engineering fit
- How many active products, SKUs and BOM levels must the system support?
- Can it manage frequent engineering changes, customer-specific revisions and effective dates?
- Does it support make-to-stock, make-to-order, configure-to-order or engineer-to-order work as needed?
- Are routings, work centers, labor, capacity, scrap, rework, substitutions and partial completions handled at the level your operation requires?
- Do you need lot, batch or serial traceability, and can the system provide an audit trail?
- Will a basic MRP revision workflow suffice, or does engineering need deeper PLM capabilities for document control, change approvals and product configuration?
Data ownership and controls
- Who owns part numbers, supplier lead times, BOM quantities and revision status?
- Can engineering and production work from the same approved revision?
- Can permissions distinguish who may create, edit, approve or release records?
- Can obsolete components be blocked from new orders, and can customer-specific versions be preserved?
- What audit history, backups, recovery options and data-retention controls are available?
Quoting, inventory and purchasing
- Can material, labor, overhead, subcontracting, scrap, tooling and freight assumptions flow into a quote?
- Can the system preserve quote assumptions and convert an accepted quote into sales and manufacturing orders without re-entering data?
- Can it calculate feasible lead times from material availability and production capacity?
- Does it support demand-based purchase suggestions, safety stock, supplier lead times, alternate parts, cycle counts and customer-owned or consigned stock where needed?
- Can it generate invoices from completed work and handle the currencies and customer-specific pricing your business requires?
Integration, usability and total effort
- Test the required links to accounting, CAD or PLM, shipping, barcode scanning, payroll, customer portals and other systems; verify API and import/export needs.
- Assess shop-floor and mobile usability, reporting flexibility, user roles and training for the people who will use it daily.
- Ask about data migration, sandbox access, support response times, implementation responsibilities and whether external consultants are likely to be needed.
- Include subscription, implementation, integration, training and ongoing administration in the total-cost estimate; the EE Times case provides no implementation or subscription figures.
- Check hosting location, confidentiality, security permissions and any quality, export-control or sector-specific obligations that apply to your work.
Where MRP fits—and where it may not
A small manufacturer moving beyond spreadsheets may benefit from an MRP-first system when its main needs are BOMs, inventory, purchasing and production planning. A broader ERP may be more appropriate when manufacturing must share tightly integrated workflows with accounting, CRM, ecommerce or service operations. Engineering-heavy businesses may also need PLM for controlled documents and product changes, while a shop-floor-focused operation may require MES capabilities for execution and production data capture.
These categories can overlap, and a single product may not cover every need deeply. Compare the actual workflows, integrations, governance and implementation effort rather than relying on the label “ERP” or “MRP.” A basic manufacturing system may be insufficient for a multinational or highly regulated producer with complex quality, compliance or multi-site requirements.
For KS2, the reported benefit was bringing more of its operating information into a shared system as the company and its product range grew. The case is most useful as an example of workflow integration and broader access to production data—not proof that one software product will produce the same growth or results for every manufacturer.
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