The companies that scale best aren’t the ones with the most equipment or the most staff. They’re the ones with the clearest view of their operation. And that starts with software that shows you everything—before it becomes a problem.
When growth becomes an obstacle
Small chemical manufacturers are in a unique position.
You’re nimble. You know your niche. You’ve carved out a customer base. Growth is on the
horizon—if you can keep your operations from tripping over themselves.
But here’s what most don’t realise until it’s almost too late: growth doesn’t just test your capacity. It tests your systems.
It starts with little things. A raw material runs out earlier than expected. A customer asks for batch-level traceability you can’t easily provide. You lose a day to hunting down data for a regulatory form.
These aren’t problems. They’re symptoms.
The real issue is usually invisible: your business is outgrowing its spreadsheets. And that’s exactly when the smart manufacturers make a different move.
A system that scales is vital
Take Stakam Industries, a craft chemical manufacturer based in Scotland. Their focus? Agile custom chemical solutions. They were growing fast—but their systems weren’t keeping up.
They tried an ERP. It was too complicated. Then they found MRPeasy—a lightweight, cloud-based manufacturing ERP tailored for small manufacturers.
What stood out wasn’t complexity—it was the opposite. Stakam didn’t have to overhaul
everything at once. They started with what they needed and added functionality as they went.
“In terms of implementation, our process is an evolving journey,” said Alistair Watson, Managing Director. “That’s the great thing about MRPeasy. You can make it work for you quite easily, then add more advanced functionality as you go.”
For Stakam, that meant smooth scaling—without drowning in unnecessary features or losing control of their processes.
The future is cloud-based
Now shift to the U.S., to Bernard Laboratories in Ohio. They’ve been producing and packaging industrial chemical products since 1948—lubricants, greases, sealants.
For years, they relied on a traditional on-premise ERP system. Then the pandemic hit.
Suddenly, remote access wasn’t a luxury—it was essential.
They needed a cloud-based solution fast. Enter MRPeasy.
With help from their VP, Alece Piper, they migrated a year’s worth of historical data and tested the new system alongside their old one. The transition paid off—big time.
“We implemented MRPeasy to deal with small inefficiencies,” Piper said. “But little did we know that it would drastically reduce the time we spend on administrative tasks.”
That’s the kind of result most small manufacturers don’t expect from ERP software. Because most of what we hear about ERP is geared toward big players with even bigger IT budgets.
Clarity becomes scalability
But the landscape is changing. Today, cloud-based ERP systems designed for small manufacturers are lightweight, affordable, and surprisingly easy to implement. And when tailored for chemical manufacturing, they come with the tools that matter most: batch tracking, expiration dates, compliance documentation, actual costing.
In other words: everything your business needs to grow without breaking under the pressure of complexity.
Here’s the reality: most chemical manufacturers hit a point where the old systems—manual
tracking, Excel sheets, and institutional memory—can’t keep up. The options are to scale up smartly, or stay small and hope nothing breaks.
The manufacturers who grow don’t wait until things fall apart. They make the shift when things are still manageable—when they still have the time and energy to implement change.
If you’re a small chemical manufacturer looking to grow, it might be worth asking: what’s your software really costing you?
Because the companies that scale best aren’t the ones with the most equipment or the most staff.
They’re the ones with the clearest view of their operation.
And that starts with a system that shows you everything—before it becomes a problem.
