Quoting and RFQs
Take an RFQ, scan the print, get an AI-suggested quote with material, stock, and op time. Win it, lose it, or convert to a job — without retyping anything.
AI quote engineWhat ForgePlan actually does
Not "an operational model that unifies value streams." Just the actual things you'd open the app to do today. Twelve workspaces, all sharing one set of jobs and parts.
The schedule
Forward, backward, hybrid, or a real constraint solver. Run "what if I push this job?" without touching live data. See which jobs are at risk of missing their due date, with confidence numbers.
CP-SAT solver + Monte CarloThe floor
An Electron kiosk and an Android app for operators. PIN sign-in, job list, setup sheets, tool list, fixture locator, tool crib, clock in and out. Designed by watching real operators, not by guessing.
Kiosk + Android operator appQuality and FAI
Drop a CMM file into a folder — Zeiss, Hexagon, Mitutoyo, Renishaw, or Verisurf — and FAI reports build themselves. SPC charts, NCRs, CAPA, calibration logs, cert packages, and a vault that auditors can actually walk through.
AS9102 + SPC + multi-vendor CMMTooling and machines
Tool crib with checkout, tool catalog with life tracking, tool kits and assemblies, machine PM schedules, corrective maintenance, MTConnect dashboards, and a shop floor map you can actually point at.
Tool crib + machine PMMaterials and warehouse
MRP that explodes BOMs and nets against on-hand. Receiving with quality holds. Lots, locations, putaway rules, picking, shipping, transfers, cycle counts. Lot trace that runs both directions.
Real MRP + full WMSPurchasing and vendors
POs, vendor scorecards by composite grade, vendor capabilities, vendor sourcing across multiple suppliers, outsource job tracking, Xometry integration, and cXML PunchOut for vendors that want it.
Vendor KPI + PunchOutPLM and engineering
Part revisions, BOM control, ECO workflow with approval steps, routing revisions, document control. Engineering changes that actually walk through approval before they hit the floor.
ECO with approvalsAccounting
Real double-entry GL. AP with aging, AR with aging, bank reconciliation. Two-way QuickBooks sync if you still want it, or run it standalone. Multi-currency for shops with overseas customers.
GL + AP + AR + bank recPayroll
Pay runs with federal, FICA, FUTA, and state withholding calculated in-house. NACHA files for your bank's direct deposit. End-of-year W-2s, 1099-NECs, and quarterly 941s — generated, not outsourced.
941, W-2, 1099, NACHAHR
Employee lifecycle, benefits, leave tracking, onboarding, training records that auto-bump operator skill levels on completion. Skill matrix that the scheduler actually uses to pick who runs what.
Training drives skill matrixSupervisor mobile
Approve quotes, override the schedule, sign off NCRs, take a second four-eyes signature — all from your phone. Biometric unlock, live updates from the floor. Not a read-only dashboard.
Write actions from a phoneThe hard parts most ERPs skip
Every job-shop ERP says it has "scheduling" and "quality." Here's the work nobody else bothered to ship, that actually changes a shop floor.
A scheduler that re-plans itself
When a PO slips, a customer changes a due date, a machine alarms, or an operator clocks out sick — the schedule reshuffles automatically and shows you what moved and why. Per-row reasons, not a black box.
FAI that builds itself from your CMM
Point ForgePlan at your CMM's output folder. Calypso, PCDMIS, Measurelink, Modus, or CMMX files get parsed and the FAI form fills its own measurements. You sign it. Done.
Confidence numbers, not promises
Monte Carlo simulation runs every job's history through the solver to give you a real probability of hitting each due date. "P(on-time) 73%" beats "we should be fine."
Skill matrix that gates assignments
Operators have skill levels per machine type. The scheduler won't put a level-1 on a job that needs level-3 unless a level-3 signs off in supervised mode. Training completion auto-bumps the level.
Payroll that runs your payroll
Tax engine computes federal, FICA, FUTA, and state withholding. NACHA writer drops a file you hand to your bank. Year-end forms generate themselves. No ADP. No Paychex. No QuickBooks Payroll subscription.
An AI that lives on your machine
Oscar reads your jobs, your CMM history, and your shop data from inside your own server. It does not call out to OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, or anyone else. Ever. Your blueprints, tolerances, and CAD never leave the building. Period. ITAR-friendly by design.
Approve from the floor, not the office
The supervisor app on your phone isn't a dashboard. Approve a quote, override a schedule, sign off a NCR, take a four-eyes second signature — biometric, live, audit-logged.
It belongs to you
Self-hosted on your server. Your customer data never crosses the property line unless you say so. No SaaS contract. Per-fingerprint licensing means a stolen license file can't run on a different machine.
Who this is for
ForgePlan is built for shops with real production, real customers, and real audit pressure. Five to a hundred employees, mixed work, regulated work, work that breaks if a spreadsheet gets out of date.
Precision machine shops
CNC, mill-turn, EDM, fab. Job tracking, tool crib, MTConnect, and a scheduler that handles real changeover times.
Aerospace suppliers
AS9100D-friendly out of the box. FAI per AS9102, traceable lots, cert packages, NADCAP pyrometry, controlled documents.
Medical device manufacturers
ISO 13485 workflows. DHF, post-market surveillance, FDA UDI, electronic signatures, four-eyes approval.
Defense contractors
CMMC L2 / NIST SP 800-171 controls baked in. Self-hosted. AI runs entirely on your machine and never calls out. No vendor data residency questions.
Fab and assembly shops
Mixed-mode work — discrete jobs and repeatable batch flow under one schedule. Multi-site for shops with more than one building.
Shops escaping QuickBooks + Excel
You've outgrown the spreadsheet but you can't justify a six-figure Epicor or Kinetic implementation. This is where you land.
How we stack up
Honest comparison. This isn't a marketing chart that puts checkmarks in every box. We're better at some things and behind on others. Here's where.
| What you'd compare | Tier-1 ERP SAP, NetSuite, Kinetic |
Job-shop ERP ProShop, JobBOSS², MIE Trak |
Standalone QMS MasterControl, Greenlight Guru |
ForgePlan |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scheduler depth | Heuristic, complex setup | Finite-capacity board | Not in scope | CP-SAT solver + Monte Carlo + reactive recompute |
| Quality in the core | Module add-on | Partial, often bolt-on | That's the whole product | FAI auto-pop from CMM, SPC, NCR/CAPA, DHF, UDI, CMMC |
| Supervisor mobile | Read-only dashboard | Mobile-responsive web | Approvals web app | Native app, write actions, biometric, live updates |
| Real payroll in-house | Yes, enterprise-grade | Usually outsourced (ADP) | Not in scope | Tax engine + NACHA + 941/W-2/1099 |
| Deployment model | SaaS or on-prem (heavy) | Mostly SaaS now | SaaS-only | Self-hosted, single-tenant, on your hardware |
| Time to value | 6 to 18 months | 2 to 6 months | 3 to 9 months | Weeks for a focused pilot |
| Implementation cost | $50K to $1M+ | $15K to $80K | $30K to $200K | A fraction of the above |
| Where they beat us | Partner network, audit history, EDI scale | Long track record, audit references | FDA validation paperwork | We're newer; certifications in progress |
Scheduler
Most job-shop ERPs ship a finite-capacity Gantt board. We ship a constraint solver, Monte Carlo confidence numbers, and a reactive loop that reshuffles when the floor changes.
Quality
FAI builds itself from your CMM output. SPC has every alarm the standards expect. AS9100, ISO 13485, CMMC L2 are in the box, not a separate suite.
Mobile
Approve quotes, override schedules, sign NCRs, take a four-eyes second signature — from your phone. Biometric. Live. Audit-logged.
Payroll
Federal, FICA, FUTA, state withholding, NACHA direct deposit, year-end W-2 and 1099 generation. No ADP, no Paychex, no QuickBooks subscription.
Deployment
Your server. Your data. No SaaS bill. Per-fingerprint licensing. One-click upgrades through the admin console.
Where the big tools beat us: partner networks, decades of audit references, EDI wire transport at scale, and certifications like SOC 2 and ISO 27001. We're working on the certs. The rest is honest trade-off.
Built by a machinist, not a startup
ForgePlan started because I was running my own shop on a stack of spreadsheets, a copy of QuickBooks, and a whiteboard nobody wanted to touch. I tried ProShop. I tried JobBOSS. I looked at Kinetic and Plex. All of them wanted six figures up front and gave me back a tool that didn't speak the way my floor speaks.
So I built one. Every label in the app uses machinist words, not developer words. Every dropdown can edit its own list — no admin trip to update a part number. The schedule re-plans itself when the world changes, because the world always changes. The CMM dumps a file and the FAI form fills itself, because retyping measurements off a printout is how mistakes happen.
Today ForgePlan runs production at two shops including ours. We're opening it up to a handful more in 2026. If you're a shop owner who's been waiting for a real alternative — get in touch. A live demo is available on request.
— Mark Lotfy, founder
Why you can trust it on day one
Self-hosted doesn't mean you're on your own. Here's what we ship to make running it boring in the best way.
Encrypted in transit and at rest
Every byte going in or out runs over TLS. Every byte sitting on disk — database, backups, sensitive fields — is encrypted with AES-256, aligned to NIST cryptographic guidance. Your data is never readable from a stolen drive or a sniffed network.
Passwordless and MFA
Sign in with a WebAuthn / FIDO2 security key — no password to phish. TOTP multi-factor as a backup. Operator PINs on the floor. Every sign-on, signature, and approval ends up in the audit log.
Per-machine license envelope
Cryptographically bound to the server's hardware fingerprint. Steal the license file, it won't run anywhere else.
Admin console that never dies
Stays up even if the license breaks or the main app is down. That's how you fix a license problem — without phoning the vendor at 2am.
Backups built-in
Scheduled PostgreSQL dumps, GPG-encrypted backups, replication paths, and runbooks for the bad days. Tested, not theoretical.
Oscar lives on your machine
Our AI assistant runs entirely on your server, on your data. Oscar does not call out to OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, or anyone else. Ever. Your blueprints, your CMM data, and your customer files never leave the building. Period.
Electronic signatures
SHA-256 HMAC signatures with a tamper-evident audit trail. Four-eyes dual-approval for sensitive QC actions. Aligned with 21 CFR Part 11 patterns.
One-click upgrades
Open the admin console, click Upgrade, walk away. The system fetches the new signed release, migrates the database, and restarts itself. You're a shop owner, not a sysadmin.
Proof, not slogans
We don't have fake testimonials and we won't put up logos from companies we don't have permission to use. Here's what's actually true.
In production at two shops
One is ours. One is my brother's, also a working precision machine shop. Real jobs, real customers, real audits — not demoware.
Verifiable on requestSecurity audit closed
9 of 9 critical pre-launch findings remediated and verified in code and at runtime. The audit report is available under NDA.
Internal launch readiness reportThe code is the proof
1,378 API endpoints across 255 routers. 72 licensed modules. 149 database migrations. A 2,200-line user manual. Nothing on this page that isn't shipping.
Verified at runtime on 2026-05-21Get an early look
Tell us about your shop. We'll come back with whether ForgePlan is a fit, what a pilot would look like, and what we'd need from you to make it work. No sales call ambush.
Common questions
Is this really in production, or is it demoware?
In production. My own shop runs on it daily. My brother's shop runs on it. Both are real working precision machine shops with real customers and real audits. We're not selling vaporware.
Do I have to be on the cloud? I have ITAR / DFARS data.
No. ForgePlan runs on your server, on your network. Self-hosted, single-tenant, no SaaS data residency questions. Oscar — our AI assistant — runs entirely on your machine and never calls out to OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, or anyone else. Period. Your blueprints, your CMM data, and your customer files never leave the building.
What does it actually cost?
We license per-module — pay for what you use, not for a one-size-fits-all bundle. Order of magnitude: a fraction of what ProShop, JobBOSS, Kinetic, or Plex would charge for comparable scope. Real numbers come on the fit call once we know what you need.
Can I keep using QuickBooks?
Yes. We have a two-way QuickBooks sync (Web Connector protocol). Or you can use ForgePlan's built-in GL, AP, AR, bank rec, and payroll and skip QuickBooks entirely. Your call.
How does payroll work?
It runs your payroll. Federal income tax, FICA, FUTA, and state withholding (NJ today, more states on request). NACHA direct deposit files for your bank. Year-end W-2s, 1099-NECs, quarterly 941s — generated for you. No ADP subscription needed.
What about AS9100, ISO 13485, NADCAP, CMMC?
Workflows for all four are in the platform. AS9102 FAI, traceability, NCR/CAPA, calibration, pyrometry for NADCAP, design history file and post-market surveillance for ISO 13485, and CMMC L2 controls. We're not the cheaper option to MasterControl or Greenlight Guru — we're the option that doesn't make you run two systems.
What CMMs are supported?
Zeiss Calypso, Hexagon PCDMIS, Mitutoyo Measurelink, Renishaw Modus, and Verisurf CMMX out of the box, plus generic CSV. Point ForgePlan at the output folder and FAI reports build their own measurements.
Custom modules? Integrations?
Yes. We ship an API gateway and webhooks so your other systems can talk to ForgePlan over clean, documented endpoints. If you need something the platform doesn't do yet, we build it for you as part of the pilot — that's how features get prioritized. Custom work ships back to you as a signed release through the same one-click upgrade.
What's the catch?
Three honest ones. (1) We're early — partner network is small, so most implementations go through us directly. (2) We don't have SOC 2 or ISO 27001 yet — both are on the roadmap. (3) Multi-state payroll tax is currently federal + NJ; other states come as customers ask. We say what we don't have, not just what we do.