Technical Lab · 0010

BPMN templates for manufacturing discovery.

A starter pack of process maps I use in Week 1 of every engagement — Procure-to-Pay, Plan-to-Produce, Order-to-Cash, and the awkward in-between flows that always show up by Day 3.

Why these six

I've sat through enough discovery workshops to notice the pattern: every manufacturer I work with as a manufacturing consultant in Bangladesh has the same six flows. Names change. Departments change. The shape doesn't. So I keep these as blank scaffolds and walk into Day 1 with them on a wall.

What you get below isn't a finished BPMN diagram — it's a starting prompt. The lanes are right. The decision points are right. The actors are wrong on purpose, so the room argues productively about who owns what. This is the visual half of a structured discovery session.

Note · Discovery workshop · Cycle-parts manufacturerDay 1, first hour
We put the Procure-to-Pay scaffold on the wall with deliberately wrong actor names. Within ten minutes two managers were arguing about who signs off a purchase above BDT 50,000 — and discovered the approval limit in their written policy hadn't matched actual practice for three years. No requirements document would have surfaced that. A wrong diagram did, before the first tea break. That gap became a configured approval rule in Odoo instead of a post-go-live dispute.

Notation legend

Bare-bones BPMN 2.0. If your team has never seen this notation before, three glyphs cover 90% of what we need to draw on Day 1.

Event (start)
Task / activity
Gateway (decision)
End event

The templates

P2P · 015 lanes

Procure-to-Pay

From requisition to vendor payment, with the approval gateway and three-way match where they actually live.

procure-to-pay.bpmnGet template →
P2M · 023 lanes

Plan-to-Produce

MRP run, work order release, shop-floor execution, and the QC gateway that decides what flows back upstream.

plan-to-produce.bpmnGet template →
O2C · 034 lanes

Order-to-Cash

Quote, order, ship, invoice, dunning. With the boundary timer that catches receivables before finance does.

order-to-cash.bpmnGet template →
QC · 042 lanes

QC & non-conformance

Inspection, deviation, rework loop. Always more contested in the workshop than the actual production flow.

qc-ncr.bpmnGet template →
INV · 052 lanes

Inter-warehouse transfer

Pick, ship, in-transit, receipt. The "in transit" state is where most stock loss arguments begin.

inv-transfer.bpmnGet template →
WS · 061 lane

Stakeholder discovery interview

The 45-minute conversation flow. Use it as the agenda; mark it up live; ship it as the meeting notes.

discovery-interview.bpmnGet template →

Get the pack

The six diagrams above are workshop-ready starter scaffolds — lanes pre-named in English, decision points placed, actors deliberately wrong so the room argues productively. Print them straight from this page, or get the editable source files to adapt in Camunda Modeler or draw.io.

Want the editable pack?

The six scaffolds on this page are free to copy under CC BY 4.0. For the editable .bpmn / .drawio source files — sized for A3 printing — send me a note and I'll email the pack.

6 templates · CC BY 4.0
Request the pack
A blank canvas in front of ten department heads is a recipe for silence. A wrong diagram is a recipe for a real conversation.

Tip from the field: print the templates A3, lay them on the table, and hand out red pens. The first 20 minutes will tell you more about the business than any spreadsheet you'll be sent later. This is exactly how we approach our Odoo Partner consulting sessions. Once the maps are agreed, the same processes become the backbone of the UAT script that proves the configuration before go-live.

FAQ

What is BPMN and why does it matter for ERP implementation?

BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation) is a standardised diagram language for mapping business workflows. In ERP implementation it creates a shared visual language between business users and technical consultants, replacing ambiguous written requirements with precise process maps showing sequence flows, decision points, and system boundaries.

Which manufacturing processes should be mapped in BPMN before Odoo implementation?

At minimum, map procure-to-pay (purchase requisition to vendor payment), order-to-cash (customer order to receipt), plan-to-produce (MO creation to finished goods), and record-to-report (month-end close). For Bangladesh manufacturers, also map LC management, Mushak (VAT) invoice flow, and any industry-specific compliance processes.

What tools can I use to create BPMN diagrams for Odoo configuration?

draw.io (free, browser-based) is the most practical tool for Bangladesh ERP teams — it supports BPMN 2.0 notation, exports to PDF/PNG, and allows collaborative editing. Lucidchart and Bizagi Modeler are strong alternatives. Avoid PowerPoint flowcharts — they lack standardised notation and create ambiguity during configuration.