Short answer: in a manufacturing company that is not replacing its ERP, the processes usually automated are the admin processes around production: moving orders from emails into the production plan, stock level alerts, issuing invoices, quality control records and supplier orders. They are connected to the tools already in use (Excel or Google Sheets, Rivile or Pragma (Lithuanian accounting software), email) through Make or n8n. An ERP is worth considering when you need one system for production planning, cost of goods and the warehouse, and spreadsheets and integrations are no longer enough. How I run a project like this: (Process automation).
Many Lithuanian manufacturing companies in furniture, metalworking, food and building materials work with an IT setup that functions but is inefficient: Excel for orders, a paper warehouse log and Rivile or Pragma for accounting. Rolling out an ERP looks like the logical way out, but the reality is different: a full ERP project often costs tens of thousands of euros, takes many months and demands the whole team's attention. The good news: business process automation for manufacturing companies does not have to start with an ERP today. In this article I show five specific automations that can help a manufacturing UAB (private limited company) save a good number of working hours a week, on a budget far smaller than an ERP. Read more about business process automation in general here (Business process automation in Lithuania 2026).
Why do Lithuanian manufacturers still run on Excel and paper?
The answer is not technological backwardness: it is a rational economic choice. When a company produces 50–200 orders a month and has 15–40 employees, the existing system "works well enough": orders are entered in Excel, the storekeeper knows where everything is, and accounting sorts it out in Rivile at the end. But the hidden cost of "works well enough" is time: roughly 10–30 working hours a week of repetitive manual work: transferring orders from email to Excel, checking stock levels by phone, printing and sending invoices, filling in quality protocols on paper. Added up over a year, that is 500–1,500 employee working hours, equivalent to the cost of 0.3–0.8 of a full-time position for admin alone.
An ERP rollout is a barrier for three reasons. First, cost: an ERP project for a mid-sized manufacturing company often costs tens of thousands of euros including consultants' work, licenses and data migration. Second, time: often more than six months of active project work, during which the team works in two systems in parallel, which means a dramatic drop in productivity. Third, risk: a considerable share of ERP projects go over budget or take longer than planned. The alternative, targeted process automation with no-code and low-code tools (Make, n8n, Google Workspace, AppSheet), solves specific pain points without replacing the whole system and often pays for itself much faster.
5 automation scenarios for a manufacturer without replacing the ERP
Scenario No. 1: order intake and building the production plan. The typical situation: customers send orders by email or through a website form, and the operations manager re-enters them by hand into an Excel production plan. A Make workflow automates the whole chain: email or form → structured data in the Google Sheets production plan → automatic confirmation to the customer. In a 30-employee company, this process alone can take roughly several to a dozen or more hours a week. The setup cost is about €800–1,200 one-off, with a monthly running budget of €15–25. This is one of the first processes I suggest automating for manufacturing companies: it directly reduces the likelihood of errors and speeds up the response to customer enquiries. Read about the business process automation service here (Process automation).
Scenario No. 2: monitoring stock levels without an ERP. Storekeepers scan barcodes with a mobile phone (AppSheet or Google Forms), the data updates Google Sheets automatically, and a Make workflow sends an alert to the manager when a material reaches its minimum level. The system works on any Android phone or iPhone: the phone itself is the barcode scanner, and no extra equipment is needed. For a manufacturing company with 10–30 employees, this costs €1,000–2,000 to set up and €20–40 a month, far cheaper than the warehouse module of a typical ERP. Scenario No. 3: generating invoices from production orders. An order marked "Completed" → Make generates an invoice PDF from a template → automatically emails it to the customer and exports a line in the Rivile import format.
Scenario No. 4: quality control logs with a mobile form and an automatic summary. The inspector on the production line fills in a Google Forms form on a phone instead of a paper log. Every day, Make automatically generates a summary with the number of defects and the most frequent deviations and emails it to the manager. Historical data is available in real time through Google Sheets filters, not from a paper archive. Scenario No. 5: supplier communication and deadline tracking. The system tracks active production orders and supplier delivery deadlines: three days before a deadline, Make automatically sends a reminder to the supplier and a notification to the purchasing manager. This removes the need for someone to send reminders by hand and reduces the risk of delays in the production supply chain.
- 1The customer sends an orderEmail · website form
- 2The order appears in the production planMake · Google Sheets
- 3The customer gets a confirmation
- 4The order is marked "Completed"
- 5Invoice PDF to the customer, a line to accountingMake · Rivile import
Scenarios No. 1 and No. 3 in one flow. The accounting software stays the same.
Example scenario: a furniture manufacturer (illustration)
Illustrative scenario: the company and the numbers are built from typical processes and rough assumptions; these are not a specific client's results. Your numbers may differ.
Say a UAB making made-to-order office furniture (24 employees) faces a classic problem: order intake is manual and slow, invoices are written semi-manually, and stock levels are checked by phoning the storekeeper. Manual work adds up to 12 hours a week, a large share of admin time. The manager knows something has to change, but fear of a traditional ERP and a limited budget hold things back. The solution could be built from three components: Make + Google Sheets for the production plan, Pipedrive for order management and a Make workflow for generating invoices automatically. Rough setup time: 3 weeks; setup cost: about €2,500 one-off.
What would change: orders would reach the production plan without re-typing, invoices would be sent automatically once the order is confirmed, and stock levels could be seen without calling the storekeeper. How much time this would free up depends on the number of orders and invoices; that is calculated during the process audit, before the proposal.
Which tools suit the manufacturing sector?
Two criteria matter especially in manufacturing: mobility (warehouse and production line workers do not have a desktop computer) and reliability (production cannot stop because of system errors). Make (formerly Integromat): visual workflow building without code, integrates with hundreds of systems from Google Workspace to Pipedrive and Rivile; paid plans start at ~USD 9/month (prices change). n8n: a self-hosted alternative, especially suited to more GDPR-sensitive data processing: it can be installed on the company's server or in an EU cloud without transferring data outside the EU. Read about the criteria for choosing Make and practical scenarios here (Make automation for business): it will help you decide based on your technical capacity and budget.
AppSheet or Google Forms: mobile data collection tools for warehouse and production line workers; a phone is a sufficient device, and no extra equipment is needed. Google Sheets: the central data store for small manufacturing companies, integrates with practically every tool, and everyone knows the interface. Pipedrive: order and customer management with automatic email workflows, especially suited to active sales teams and B2B manufacturing. Bitrix24 is a broader alternative with a project management module, suited to companies that want to track production projects and sales in one tool.
- 1The storekeeper scans a barcode with a phoneAppSheet · Google Forms
- 2The stock level updates in the sheetGoogle Sheets
- 3At the minimum level, the manager gets an alertMake
Scenario No. 2: no separate scanner needed; an Android phone or iPhone is enough.
Where to start: a 4-week plan
Automating manufacturing processes in four weeks without an ERP: a structured plan that works. Week one: identify the three processes that take the most manual time. Ask yourself: what repeats more than three times a week? Where are the most errors? Write down the three processes with the time in minutes: that is your baseline ROI estimate. Week two: measure each process precisely: how many minutes a day, who does it, what the frequency of errors costs in accounting terms. Week three: choose one process (the one that takes the most time or carries the biggest risk) and build the first MVP workflow with Make or n8n.
Week four: launch the MVP with real data, monitor it for a week and collect feedback from the people who use the system every day. After four weeks you will have a working automation, a measured ROI and clarity on whether it is worth continuing with other processes. The most important rule: one fully working workflow is better than five half-built ones. Start with the process whose rules you understand best: you can only automate what you can describe clearly in words or as a flowchart. Each additional process gets easier, because the team already knows how the system works.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to drop my current accounting system (Rivile, Pragma, B1)? No. Automating production processes with Make or n8n runs alongside your existing accounting, not instead of it. A typical integration model: Make generates the invoice PDF and at the same time exports a CSV line in the Rivile import format, so the accountant imports one file instead of entering 20 by hand. The accounting system stays the same; only the data entry process is automated. Before any integration with an accounting system, talk to your accountant or system administrator: the import format has to meet the system's requirements and must not break the logic of the tax reports.
How long does process automation take to pay off for a small manufacturer? Roughly: with a typical setup cost of €1,500–3,000, saving 10–20 h/week and valuing a working hour at €10–15, it pays off in about 1–7 months; with a smaller scope, it takes longer. Fewer errors and extra capacity without hiring new staff can speed up the payback, so it is worth calculating with your own real data. Want to calculate the ROI for your manufacturing company? Send me (free consultation) a few numbers: how many hours a week manual tasks take and what a working hour costs. I will read them and reply by email with the payback you can expect; we will arrange a call if one is needed.