Bulk documentation

Bulk is a manufacturing execution system (MES) — the software your plant uses to run day-to-day production and the work around it. In one place, your team plans and tracks manufacturing orders and jobs, runs workstations on the shop floor, records quality and safety, manages inventory, schedules work, trains people, and reviews performance — instead of spreading that across spreadsheets and separate tools.

This documentation explains what each part of Bulk does and how to use it. It is written for the people who run manufacturing: operators at a workstation, supervisors and managers on the floor, quality and safety teams, people and training coordinators, finance, and the administrators who configure the system.

What you see when you open Bulk

When you open Bulk you land on the Home page for your site — the Hub. It is a set of cards that summarize the plant at a glance and link into each area. The cards include:

• Production — raise and track orders and jobs, and open Workstations, where operators book work on the shop floor.
• Dashboards — follow live performance such as OEE (overall equipment effectiveness, a standard measure of how productively equipment runs).
• Quality and Safety — log issues and incidents, run risk reviews, and keep a record of what happened and what you did about it.
• Scheduling — plan jobs and watch on-time delivery.
• People and Training — manage your team, absences, skills, and training records.
• Teamboards — share visual-management boards for the floor.
• Audits — run 5S, pre-use, and compliance checks.

The header shows the site you are in, a Search pages, settings… box for jumping anywhere in the app, notifications, and your account. From the navigation you also reach other modules — such as Inbound for capturing supplier documents, Inventory for stock and consumables, Files, Tasks and Projects, and Finance for invoicing — and, for administrators, Settings, where the master data behind everything (customers, parts, routings, resources, assets, and pricing) is configured. The Getting started guide walks through this interface screen by screen.

How this documentation is organized

You can approach the same material in whichever way fits what you are doing:

• Getting started — create or access your account, sign in, choose your site, and learn to navigate the interface. Start here if Bulk is new to you.
• Workflows — end-to-end journeys that cross several modules, such as taking customer work through production or closing the commercial loop. Use these when you want the whole path, not a single screen.
• By role — the workflows and reference pages that matter most to administrators, managers, operators, quality and safety teams, people and training teams, and finance.
• Product reference — the canonical, task-by-task guides for each module, grouped by stable business area. This is where each feature is documented in full; workflow and role pages link here rather than repeat the steps.
• Administration — how to configure your organization, sites, master data, access, and other settings.
• Integrations — how to connect Bulk to other systems, such as the REST API and Microsoft Dynamics 365.
• What's new — the release history of user-facing changes.

The cards at the bottom of this page link straight into getting started, the workflows, the roles, and the product reference.

Key terms to know

A few terms appear throughout Bulk and this documentation:

• Organization — your company in Bulk. An organization can contain more than one site.
• Site — a single plant or factory, and the context you work in. The header shows the site you are in — for example, Leeds Fabrication Plant — and Switch site moves you between the sites you have access to. Some settings screens call a site an entity.
• Workstation — a place on the shop floor, tied to equipment, where operators book jobs and record what they produce.
• Role — the set of permissions that decides what you can see and do. An owner or administrator sees everything and configures the system; other roles are scoped to their work.

A quick tour with Granite Peak Manufacturing

Granite Peak Manufacturing, a precision-fabrication company, runs Bulk across its plants. An administrator sets up the Leeds Fabrication Plant site — its assets, routings, and team — from Settings. A production supervisor raises orders and jobs, and operators book those jobs at their workstations during a shift. Through the day, the quality and safety teams log any issues and complete their risk reviews, while managers watch OEE and on-time delivery on the plant dashboards. At month-end, finance turns completed work into invoices. Each of those people uses a different part of Bulk, but they all share one set of records for the same plant — which is the point of an MES.

Feature states and Beta areas

Most of Bulk is generally available. Some newer areas are marked Beta in the product: they work, but they are still being refined, and their behavior may change. This documentation labels every article with its feature state and calls out Beta limitations where they apply, so you always know what to expect. One integration — the Dynamics 365 setup — is still being verified, and its guide says so plainly. Do not assume a Beta or still-being-verified area behaves like a fully released one.

Can't find a site or a module?

What you can see depends on your access. If the plant you expect is missing from Switch site, you may not have been granted access to it yet — ask an administrator, or use your organization's access-request process to request it. If a whole area is missing from your navigation, your role may not include it. Administrators manage sites, roles, and access from Settings.

New to Bulk?

Begin with Getting started. It walks you through signing in, choosing your site, and navigating Bulk. Otherwise, use the cards below to jump into a workflow, your role, or a product area.

Getting started

Browse workflows

Follow end-to-end journeys across Bulk modules.

Browse by role

Find the workflows and references most relevant to your work.

Browse product reference

Explore modules grouped by stable business areas.