Manufacturing & Industrial Operations
MizanA Unified Enterprise Resource Platform
An Arabic-first ERP exploration that brings finance, procurement, inventory and production planning onto one operational record for a multi-site manufacturer.
01
The challenge
Many multi-site manufacturers run on a patchwork: a legacy accounting system customized beyond safe upgrade, spreadsheets for production planning, and separate tools for warehousing and purchasing. A single number, such as the stock of a raw material or the cost of a work order, ends up with several versions, and nobody fully trusts any of them.
The friction peaks at month-end: manual intercompany reconciliations, purchase requests waiting on email approvals, and inventory that is only known for certain after a physical count. With e-invoicing now mandatory in Saudi Arabia, tying invoice issuance to the underlying operational event is no longer a nice-to-have; it is a design requirement.
Global ERP suites often treat Arabic as an afterthought: literal translations, grids that ignore reading direction, Hijri dates missing or bolted on. Teams export to Excel to get work done, and the fragmentation quietly returns.
02
Proposed solution
Mizan proposes a single operational core built as a modular monolith with explicit domain boundaries: general ledger, payables and receivables, procurement, inventory and warehousing, and material requirements planning (MRP). It ships as one deployable that is simple to operate, and any module can be extracted later when load justifies it, and not before.
Every operational event (a goods receipt, a material issue, a closed work order) produces its journal entry through configurable posting rules and is published via a transactional outbox to an event backbone. Reporting and integrations consume those events without coupling to the primary database. Multi-level approvals run on a durable workflow engine that survives restarts and keeps the full state of every request.
E-invoicing is a dedicated adapter shaped around ZATCA Phase 2 (Fatoora) integration requirements: UBL 2.1 XML generation, cryptographic stamping, QR encoding, and both clearance and reporting flows, with signing keys isolated in a hardware security module. These are design considerations for the concept, not a claim of certification.
03
Design rationale
Arabic is the primary design language, not a translation layer. Grids are built logically for RTL while numeric columns keep an alignment that makes digit-by-digit comparison easy, and Latin SKU and batch codes are bidi-isolated so they never flip inside Arabic text. Every date field shows both Umm al-Qura Hijri and Gregorian, with the user choosing which one leads.
A professional ERP user lives in the same screens all day, so we favor deliberate density over decorative whitespace: data grids with three density levels, full keyboard navigation, a command palette and saved views per role. On the shop floor the interface becomes a tablet PWA with large touch targets, barcode scanning and condensed task lists.
Dark and light themes both meet WCAG 2.2 AA contrast, and approval or alert states never rely on color alone. Each pairs an icon with text. Every sensitive action has an explicit confirmation and lands in an append-only audit log.
04
Example architecture
An illustrative layering of the system, from the screens people use down to the infrastructure. A starting point we would validate during discovery, not a final design.
Layer 01
Experience
- Next.js role-based workspaces
- Shop-floor tablet PWA with barcode scanning
- Command palette & saved views
- Bilingual PDF document rendering
Layer 02
API & integration
- GraphQL BFF for web clients
- Versioned REST API & webhooks
- Transactional outbox → Apache Kafka
- Debezium CDC for legacy coexistence
Layer 03
Domain modules
- Multi-entity general ledger
- Procure-to-pay with approval matrices
- Inventory, lots & batch traceability
- MRP & work-order costing
- Temporal durable workflows
Layer 04
Compliance & e-invoicing
- UBL 2.1 XML invoice generation
- HSM-backed cryptographic stamping
- QR (TLV) encoding
- Clearance & reporting queues with retries
Layer 05
Data
- PostgreSQL partitioned by legal entity
- ClickHouse operational analytics
- Redis caching & distributed locks
- Object storage for documents
Layer 06
Infrastructure
- Kubernetes in an in-Kingdom cloud region
- Terraform & GitOps delivery
- OpenTelemetry tracing
- Keycloak SSO with role-based access
05
Relevant technologies
Tools we would consider for this concept. They indicate engineering ecosystems, not partnerships or certifications.
- TypeScript
- Next.js
- NestJS
- PostgreSQL
- Apache Kafka
- Debezium
- Temporal
- ClickHouse
- Redis
- Keycloak
- Kubernetes
- Terraform
- OpenTelemetry
06
Key features
Multi-entity general ledger
Double-entry postings generated from operational events, with intercompany eliminations and consolidated statements.
Configurable approval matrices
Approval routes by amount, cost center and authority limits, with temporary delegation and automatic escalation on timeout.
Lot traceability, supplier to finished good
End-to-end genealogy of raw materials and batches, enabling precise, narrowly scoped recalls when a quality issue surfaces.
Material requirements planning
Purchase and production suggestions derived from demand, stock levels and lead times, reviewed by a planner before release.
E-invoicing by design
Invoices issued from the operational event itself through an isolated adapter aligned with Fatoora requirements, with resilient retries.
Append-only audit trail
Every change to financial data or permissions records who, when and why, and can be replayed on a timeline.
07
Potential benefits
These are design goals the solution is built toward, not measured results.
Designed to reduce reliance on manual month-end reconciliations
A single trusted source for stock balances and production cost
Faster approval cycles with clear accountability at every step
E-invoicing built into the process rather than bolted on later
A foundation that can absorb new plants or entities without a rebuild
Related services & industry
Industry
Industry 4.0 systems that connect machines, production, inventory and quality in one operational view.
Services involved
ERP, CRM, HR and finance systems shaped around how you work: integrated, adaptable and built to grow with you.
Reliable pipelines, governed warehouses, and executive dashboards that turn scattered data into decisions.
REST and GraphQL APIs, payments, webhooks, and event-driven integrations that make separate systems work as one.
Secure, scalable cloud foundations, automated delivery pipelines and full observability on AWS, Azure and Google Cloud.
Research-led product design, from user journeys to production-ready design systems for complex enterprise interfaces.
This is a concept project created by AMA GROUP to demonstrate our approach. It is not a client engagement: the interface uses sample data, and no client, logo or result is implied.
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