Stop ranking your suppliers from memory.

If a product has only one active manufacturer source, that product is single-source. The platform flags this in three places: on the product row in Products > Catalog (red “1” in the Suppliers column), on the manufacturer profile in the Risk Assessment section (“You depend on this factory for 4 single-source products”), and in the Strategic Management dashboard as a portfolio KPI. The Sources/Suppliers tab also surfaces a diversification recommendation — “Consider adding a second source for Nitrile exam gloves to reduce dependency on Suzhou Mfg Co.” Recommendations are based on existing manufacturer capability matching, not arbitrary.

Every manufacturer has a weekly capacity number maintained per product or in aggregate. When an order draft is created, the system calls ManufacturerService.checkCapacity() with the order quantity, the manufacturer, and the requested ship date. If allocating this order would push the manufacturer above 100% weekly utilization in any week of the production window, the system warns the order owner upfront and suggests alternatives (a different manufacturer with available capacity, or splitting the order across two factories). Capacity above 80% surfaces as constrained, capacity at 95%+ surfaces as red. Allocations release back to available when an order is cancelled, downsized, or completes production.

They track different things on different documents. Products > Compliance tracks product-level certificates — CE marking on a specific glove, FDA 510(k) for a device, ASTM D6978 for chemo gloves. These prove the product itself is legal to ship to a market. Manufacturers > Compliance tracks factory-level qualifications — ISO 9001 quality management, ISO 13485 medical device manufacturing, BSCI/Sedex social audits, customer-specific audits. These prove the factory is qualified to make products at all. When a factory’s audit expires, the system flags every active order with that factory and surfaces it in Products > Sources too (“Factory audit expired” on the relevant manufacturer × product row).

Adding a manufacturer to the directory takes about 10 minutes — name, country, primary contact, status set to Onboarding. The Onboarding checklist then drives completeness: required items (legal company info, at least one primary contact, capacity number, currency, base payment terms) must be complete before the system allows you to move the manufacturer from Onboarding to Active. Optional items (factory photos, audit reports, ESG report, multiple contacts) can be added over time. Most operators complete a manufacturer’s full profile within a week of first contact. Until a manufacturer is Active they don’t appear in order dropdowns or sourcing recommendations.

No. Sales role has RBAC restrictions on the pricing tables — Sales can see the Directory and Performance tabs (they need to tell clients “our factory has a 96% quality rate”), but the Pricing tab and the cost columns in Sources are hidden. Admin, Manager, and Finance see everything. Ops sees operational data (capacity, factory contacts, certifications) but no pricing. The Viewer role sees directory and performance only. The pattern matches Products — sell-side visibility for Sales, full visibility for Finance, operational visibility for Ops, restricted view for Viewer.