From Craftsmanship to Code: Digitizing Custom Radiator Manufacturing
From workshop to warehouse, we built a custom production management platform. It was useful in unifying specifications, logistics, and quality control. It was also helpful in transforming complex, multi-country radiator manufacturing into a streamlined, real-time operational system.
Project Background
Background and Goals
Castrads designs and manufactures cast-iron radiators. They mainly target customers in the UK and North America. The need for a purpose-built digital platform arose with the increase in the order volumes and customization. The main reason was the fragmented systems and manual coordination slowed production, visibility, and cross-border operations.
Global Inventory Sync:
Track raw materials and goods across multiple international warehouses in real-time with a central hub.
Bespoke Order Management
Translates customer aesthetic choices (color, size, finish) directly into manufacturing instructions.
Logistics Automation
Coordinate communication between warehouses globally and optimize logistics of incoming and outgoing shipments.
Ideation
We mapped the entire radiator lifecycle.
This involved UK manufacturing, Poland finishing, and US showroom operations. Our focus was on ensuring all production, specifications, logistics, and quality workflows moved seamlessly across locations. It also involved eliminating information silos.
Discovery Workshops:
In-depth discovery workshops to document specification logging, order handoffs, and finishing dependencies. Identified several manual entry gaps and operational delays across manufacturing and showroom workflows.
Stakeholder Alignment:
Translated real operational needs into measurable outcomes, balancing daily usability with executive visibility and ROI expectations.
Agile Roadmap:
Defined an agile delivery roadmap without disrupting active manufacturing operations. It included enabling phased releases, real-world testing, and continuous refinement of production, logistics, and quality workflows
Creative Design
Design to ensure ease of recording updates, tracking orders, and monitoring workflows with minimal friction. Web-interface design optimization for desktop and large-screen use across offices, warehouses, and factory floors. Design focus prioritizes clarity and speed rather than visual flair.
Challenges
Complex Customization Management
Each radiator carried unique specifications, sizes, finishes, valves, and historic styling notes. Capturing, storing, and reusing this data accurately across departments was operationally challenging.
Cross-Border Logistics Coordination
Shipping radiators between the UK factory, the Poland finishing facility, and the New York warehouse required precise timing. Lack of system-level coordination caused misalignment between production readiness and logistics planning.
Limited Role-Based Visibility
Showroom teams, factory staff, and leadership needed different views of the same data. Delivering tailored access without duplicating information or creating reporting blind spots was a key challenge.
Our solutions
To meet Castrads' operational goals, Acquaint Softtech delivered a centralized, web-based manufacturing platform. This was useful in unifying production, specifications, logistics, and quality workflows across all global locations.
Centralized Production Platform
End-to-end visibility into every work order and production stage. This custom production management system connects UK manufacturing, Poland finishing, US warehousing, and showrooms.
Unified Data Architecture
A single system design to ensure teams across regions worked from the same accurate, up-to-date information. This includes data of all radiator specifications, order details, and workflow updates.
Real-Time Collaboration Enablement
Instant coordination for showroom, factory, and logistics teams on order status, production readiness, and shipment planning. The integrated workflows eliminated email dependencies.
Automated Order & Workflow Management
A structured workflow system that automatically routes orders through each stage of production, finishing, quality checks, and shipment preparation.
Custom functionalities
To support Castrads’ highly bespoke manufacturing model, Acquaint Softtech implemented purpose-built functionalities aligned with real-world production, finishing, and logistics scenarios.
Custom Production Management Platform
Assignment, tracking, and real-time updates of work orders across manufacturing and finishing stages. This ensured full traceability from raw casting to final dispatch.
Centralized Product Specification Module
Captured every radiator detail, size, finish, valve, custom control, and historic styling note. This was helpful in eliminating manual cross-checks and reducing specification errors.
Logistics & Warehouse Coordination Tool
Streamlined communication between the New York warehouse, UK factory, and Poland finishing facility for inbound materials and outbound shipments.
Role-Based Dashboards
Tailored views for leadership, showroom teams, and operations staff, balancing executive oversight with task-focused daily workflows.
Quality-Control Workflow Management
Embedded inspection and finishing checkpoints into the system. This was to ensure every radiator followed the correct drying, inspection, and approval sequence before shipment.
Maintenance
We provide ongoing post-launch support for the custom manufacturing software. This includes security updates, performance tuning, and continuous enhancements. This is useful in ensuring the system evolves with changing production, logistics, and business requirements.
Performance Optimization
We actively monitor system performance, gather user feedback from operational teams, refine workflows.
Third-Party Support
As operational needs evolve, we support integrating new third-party services and optimizing existing integrations to keep production, logistics, and reporting workflows connected.
Consultation
Castrads was supported by a dedicated point of contact for regular reviews, roadmap planning, and post-launch guidance, ensuring long-term platform stability and alignment with business goals.
Project outcome
Delivering Measurable Impact Across Global Manufacturing Operations
The custom web platform transformed how Castrads coordinates its global operations. Showrooms, factories, finishing units, and warehouses now work from a single system. This was useful in enabling instant order handoffs, accurate specifications, and faster issue resolution.
The custom finishing challenges are flagged early, preventing production delays and rework.
Acquaint Softtech’s proactive project management, rapid feedback incorporation, and clear communication ensured on-time delivery and strong user adoption.
India (Head Office)
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USA
7838 Camino Cielo St, Highland, CA 92346
UK
The Powerhouse, 21 Woodthorpe Road, Ashford, England, TW15 2RP
New Zealand
42 Exler Place, Avondale, Auckland 0600, New Zealand
Canada
141 Skyview Bay NE , Calgary, Alberta, T3N 2K6
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