Introduction
If you're in facade fabrication, you already know your operation is different. You've probably felt this when evaluating software: the vendor listens to your requirements, nods along, then tries to show you how their system handles 'manufacturing'. It becomes clear within five minutes they think you're making the same panel 500 times, not 500 different panels.
Here's why that matters when choosing software: most manufacturing tools were built for companies that make the same thing over and over. You don't. And that fundamental difference changes everything.
You're Not Making Widgets. You're Managing Projects.
Walk into most factories, and you'll see production lines churning out identical products. A beverage company bottles the same soda thousands of times a day. An auto parts supplier machines the same bracket in batches of 10,000. Their manufacturing is repetitive, predictable, and optimized for volume.
That's called make-to-stock manufacturing; produce standard products based on forecasts, stock them in a warehouse, and ship them when orders come in.
As a facade fabricator, your world is the opposite. You're doing engineer-to-order manufacturing. Every facade project is custom-designed after the contract is signed. Each building has unique dimensions, architectural requirements, and specifications. The panels you're fabricating for a hospital tower have nothing in common with the curtain wall system you're building for a university, except that they both require the same painstaking attention to detail.
This isn't a small difference. It's foundational. In engineer-to-order work, every item will have a different Bill of Materials. You can't optimize for repetition because there is no repetition. You have to optimize for getting the most usage out of your sheet material. You're essentially running a new manufacturing project every single time.
Think about what that means for your planning: No template BOMs you can reuse. No standard routings. No historical data saying "this product takes exactly 4.2 hours to fabricate." Every project starts from scratch, with engineering work happening before you can even order materials.
Traditional manufacturing software assumes you know what you're making and can plan accordingly. You often don't know the final design until weeks into the project; after the architect responds to RFIs, after shop drawings are approved, after the structural engineer signs off on connection details and stiffeners.
It's Not Just Production. It's Coordination.
If you only had to manage fabrication, your life would be simpler. But facade work is fundamentally about coordination across multiple parties who all have different priorities, timelines, and expectations.
The Architect: Design Intent Meets Reality
The architect designed a beautiful building envelope. Your job is to figure out how to actually implement it, and make it work within structural constraints, budget realities, and building codes. You're often brought in during the design phase, providing input on what's feasible and what isn't.
Then comes the submittal process: shop drawings, material samples, mock-ups, calculations. Everything goes to the architect for approval. And everything has dependencies. You can't finalize material orders or start fabrication until the architect reviews and approves the shop drawings.The back-and-forth on submittals and RFIs can stretch for weeks or months. A single outstanding question about flashing details can hold up production on an entire elevation.
The General Contractor: The Schedule Master
The GC controls the overall construction schedule, and you have to fit into it. They tell you when the building structure will be ready for facade installation (and they're often optimistic about that date). They allocate crane time, coordinate other trades, and manage site logistics.
When they say "we need the west façade panels installed by the end of the month so roofing and window trim can follow" that becomes your problem to solve.
The GC also acts as the gatekeeper for information. Questions go up through the GC to the architect. Approvals come back down through the GC to you. Any miscommunication in that chain becomes your delay.
The Installation Reality: Shop to Field
Unlike most manufacturers who ship a product and forget about it, you're tracking components through installation. Your panels need to fit a building that was constructed by someone else, to tolerances you don't control. The structural steel might be off by an inch. Floor elevations might vary. Concrete edges might not be where the drawings say they should be.
Installation crews are working at height, in weather, with a dozen other trades competing for the same space. They need real-time information: Which panels go in which location? What's in each crate? Have the anchor embeds been installed yet? Did the painting get done?
This coordination between your shop and your field crews is constant. A question from the site might require pulling someone off the production floor to check a detail. A dimension discrepancy might mean cutting new parts. You're managing two operations simultaneously (fabrication and installation) and they have to stay in sync.
The Last Trade Trap
Here's the part that keeps you up at night: You're almost always one of the last trades on-site. The facade can't go up until the structural frame is complete, floor slabs are poured, and major MEP rough-ins are done. You're installing the building envelope, which means everything before you has to be finished first.
But here's the trap: When earlier trades run late (and they almost always do) the project completion date rarely changes. The building owner has a lease commitment. The financing has a deadline. The CEO promised a grand opening date.
So where does the schedule compression land? On you.
A project that gave you 16 weeks for fabrication and installation suddenly becomes 12 weeks because structural steel was delayed by weather, or concrete work took longer than expected, or the MEP contractor had supply chain issues. You're still expected to deliver on time, which often means adding crews, running overtime, working weekends, or splitting your installation team across multiple elevations simultaneously.
This creates cascading pressure. Rushed work increases error risk. Compressed schedules mean less flexibility when problems arise. And problems always arise: a crate arrives damaged; a panel doesn't fit because the structure is out of tolerance; weather shuts down installation for three days.
This timing pressure is so fundamental to facade work that it shapes everything: how you bid jobs, how you staff projects, how much contingency you build into schedules, and how you prioritize which work gets done when. It's not just a scheduling challenge, it's a business model challenge that standard manufacturing operations never face.
You Don't (Usually) Ship and Forget
Most manufacturers have a clean handoff point: product leaves the loading dock, responsibility transfers to the shipping company, and they move on to the next order. Your situation depends on how the contract structures site dimensions.
Guaranteed Dimensions (GD): The GC provides guaranteed site dimensions early. You design and fabricate strictly to those numbers. If actual field conditions differ, that's the GC's problem, not yours. You largely do ship and move on, but you need rock-solid documentation proving you built exactly to spec. Precise labeling, crate maps, elevation drawings that reference the exact revision you fabricated to. If a dispute arises months later, you need to prove "We built Panel A-237 to Drawing Revision C, dated March 15th" in minutes, not days of digging through file servers.
Field Measurements (FM): More commonly, you work with field measurements taken after the structure is ready. The GC provides actual site dimensions, you adjust shop drawings accordingly, and you're responsible for fit. Buildings rarely match architectural drawings perfectly, so your involvement extends well beyond shipment. You need to track which panels are in which crates, which truck is going where, what's been installed versus staged, and whether field conditions required modifications.
Your installation crews are your eyes and ears. When the structure is off by an inch, your engineering team needs to see it immediately. When weather delays installation, you adjust shop priorities for other projects. When the GC re-sequences zones, your shipping plans flex accordingly. This means your systems need to bridge two worlds: the controlled environment of your shop and the chaotic reality of a construction site.
Why this matters for software: GD projects demand design control and traceability: locking revisions, maintaining clear build records, generating compliance documentation. FM projects demand live coordination: barcode tracking through installation, mobile access for field crews, real-time status updates, photo documentation tied to products.
Standard manufacturing software wasn't designed for either scenario. Generic ERPs assume you ship and you're done. They don't contemplate two fundamentally different contractual approaches requiring different workflows. They don't bridge shop and site, help you prove compliance, or coordinate real-time field changes.
This extended responsibility (whether driven by contract type or good project management) is yet another way facade fabrication differs from standard manufacturing. And it's another reason why tools built for making widgets don't work for managing projects.
Why Standard Tools Break Down
Spreadsheets can't handle this complexity. You might track production in one file, inventory in another, shipping in a third, and installation progress in yet another. Keeping them synchronized is a full-time job, and the minute something changes, you're manually updating multiple files and hoping you caught everything.
Disconnected software creates the same problem, just in different systems. Your project management tool doesn't talk to your inventory system. Your production schedule doesn't connect to your shipping coordinator. Your field crews are sending text messages and emails instead of updating a central system.
If you missed our last article, we discuss The Hidden Cost of Spreadsheets and Disconnected Tools in greater detail.
The fundamental issue is this: standard manufacturing tools assume you're making products. You're managing projects. Standard tools assume a linear flow: design → produce → ship → done. Your flow is iterative and dynamic: design → RFI → redesign → procure → fabricate → stage → ship → install → adjust → complete.
Standard tools assume one location (your shop). You're managing work across multiple locations: engineering offices, your fabrication floor, external service providers, and installation sites. Standard tools track completion. You need to track coordination: Has the architect approved this? Is the GC ready for installation? Are the anchor embeds in place? Did the anodizing come back from the service provider?
Generic ERP systems were built for companies making the same product repeatedly in a controlled environment. They excel at inventory optimization, production line balancing, and supply chain efficiency for standard products. Those strengths don't translate to project-based, custom fabrication where every job is different and coordination matters more than optimization.
What's Next?
Now that you understand why facade fabrication is fundamentally different from standard manufacturing, the natural question is: what about the big ERP systems like SAP or Oracle? They're powerful, they're proven, and they're used by major manufacturers worldwide.
Can they handle the project-based complexity of facade work?
Read: Why SAP and Oracle Don't Work for Facade Fabricators (And What Does) →
Or if you're ready to see what a purpose-built solution for facade fabricators looks like:
Learn how Spectr solves these specific challenges →
