1. Functional Overview

Dairy Factory Manager turns Dolibarr into a genuine Dairy Industry ERP Suite. The module covers the whole activity of a company that collects, processes and sells dairy products, so a specialised industrial ERP is no longer required alongside Dolibarr.

Target users

·       Industrial dairies and milk processing units

·       Cheese factories

·       Yogurt manufacturers

·       Butter and cream producers

·       Fresh dairy product industries

·       UHT plants

The covered chain

Milk producers -> Collection -> Laboratory reception -> Processing -> Production -> Packaging -> Cold storage -> Distribution -> Customers

Functional engines

Engine	Scope
Dairy Collection Engine	Producers, contracts, collection, tanker trucks, routes, producer payments
Milk Quality Engine	Physical, chemical and microbiological analyses, criteria and conformity
Dairy Production Engine	Versioned recipes, manufacturing orders, lines, thermal treatments, fermentation, packaging
Cold Chain Engine	Tanks, cold rooms, IoT sensors, temperatures, use-by and best-before dates
Traceability Engine	Lots, upstream / internal / downstream traceability, one-click search
Cost Management Engine	Material, processing, energy, labour and maintenance costs, unit cost price and margin
Reporting Intelligence Engine	KPIs, analytics, reports, industrial AI assistant

Main menu

Dashboard - Producers & collectors - Producer contracts - Producer payments - Milk collection - Tanker trucks - Collection routes - Raw milk reception - Quality laboratory - Storage tanks - Production lines - Recipes & formulations - Recipe ingredients - Dairy production - Thermal treatments - Fermentations - Packaging - Lot traceability - Traceability search - Cold storage - IoT sensors - Distribution - Equipment - Maintenance - HSE & food safety - Industrial costs - AI assistant - Industrial reporting - Setup

 

2. Architecture

The module is a standard Dolibarr external module installed under htdocs/custom/dairyfactorymanager. It never alters a native table: all its data lives in its own llx_dfm_* tables.

Business objects (24)

Object	Table	Role
Producer	llx_dfm_producer	Breeder, cooperative or partner farm supplying milk
Contract	llx_dfm_contract	Collection contract: price per liter, quality bonus, committed volume
Producer payment	llx_dfm_payment	Monthly settlement: volume, price, bonus, penalty
Collection	llx_dfm_collection	One milk pickup: volume, temperature, density, acidity
Tanker truck	llx_dfm_truck	Tanker fleet, capacity, tank cleaning, mileage
Route	llx_dfm_route	Collection round: zone, truck, distance, frequency
Reception	llx_dfm_reception	Raw milk intake, tank assignment, lot code
Analysis	llx_dfm_analysis	Laboratory analysis (physical / chemical / microbiological)
Tank	llx_dfm_tank	Raw milk, maturation, fermentation or storage tank
Production line	llx_dfm_line	Pasteurization, UHT, yogurt, cheese, butter, packaging line
Recipe	llx_dfm_recipe	Versioned formulation with target yield and process
Recipe line	llx_dfm_recipe_line	Recipe ingredient with quantity and unit cost
Production	llx_dfm_production	Manufacturing order
Thermal treatment	llx_dfm_thermal	Pasteurization, UHT, sterilization, thermization
Fermentation	llx_dfm_fermentation	Ferment, duration, temperature, pH
Packaging	llx_dfm_packaging	Filling/packing run, scrap, yield, use-by date
Lot	llx_dfm_lot	Traceability lot (milk / intermediate / finished)
Cold room	llx_dfm_coldroom	Chilled room, refrigerator or freezer
Sensor	llx_dfm_sensor	IoT sensor with thresholds and alert state
Shipment	llx_dfm_shipment	Temperature-controlled delivery to a customer
Equipment	llx_dfm_equipment	Industrial asset (CMMS)
Maintenance	llx_dfm_maintenance	Preventive / corrective / predictive intervention
HSE record	llx_dfm_hse	Risk, incident, audit, food safety, training
Cost sheet	llx_dfm_cost	Industrial cost breakdown and margin

Dolibarr integration

·       Third parties: producers are linked to supplier records, customers to customer records

·       Products: recipes and lots can reference a native product

·       Stock, purchase and sales modules remain usable on the linked native records

·       Projects and Agenda: standard Dolibarr linkage

·       Home widget with the key dairy indicators

Technical notes

·       Every table carries entity, status, date_creation, tms, fk_user_creat, fk_user_modif and import_key

·       Schema self-healing at activation: missing columns are added on upgrade (Dolibarr only ever runs CREATE TABLE)

·       Every translation key is Dfm-prefixed, so no key can collide with another installed module

·       Five languages: French, English, Spanish, Italian, German

 

3. Dairy Processes

Collection

A collection records the producer, date, volume, temperature, density and acidity of the milk, together with the driver, the tanker truck and the zone. Its lifecycle is: planned -> collected -> in transport -> received, or rejected when the acceptance thresholds are not met.

Reception

The reception note materialises the milk entering the plant. It links the collection, the producer and the destination tank, and carries the lot code that becomes the key of the whole upstream traceability. The process is: reception -> control -> validation -> tank storage.

Tanks

Tanks are typed raw milk, maturation, fermentation or storage, with capacity, current level, temperature, stored product, location, last cleaning date and availability status.

Thermal treatment

Pasteurization, UHT, sterilization and thermization are tracked with the target scale, the temperature actually reached, the duration, the treated volume, the equipment, the operator and the conformity verdict. A gap between target and reached temperature raises a process deviation.

Fermentation

For fermented products (yogurt, fresh cheese, cream): ferment type, tank, duration, temperature, initial and final pH, final acidity.

Packaging

Bottles, pots, bags, cartons and bricks. Packaged quantity, scrap and line yield are recorded and the use-by date is applied to the lot.

 

4. Quality Management

The integrated laboratory covers the three analysis families required by dairy quality control.

Family	Criteria
Physical	Temperature, appearance, density
Chemical	Fat content, protein, acidity, pH
Microbiological	Total germs, coliforms, somatic cells, antibiotic residues

Each analysis carries a sample code, a date, a technician and a verdict: conform, non-conform or in progress. A non-conform analysis pushed through the API automatically places its lot in quarantine.

Acceptance thresholds

The setup page defines the thresholds that drive the alerts across the dashboard and the AI assistant:

·       Maximum milk acceptance temperature (default 6 degrees Celsius)

·       Maximum acceptance acidity (default 18 Dornic)

·       Maximum total germs (default 100 000 per ml)

·       Use-by alert window in days (default 7) and automatic blocking of expired lots

HSE and food safety

The HSE register covers industrial risks, incidents, audits, food safety and training, each with a severity, a zone, an owner, a description, an action plan and a closure date.

 

5. Traceability

Food traceability is the core value of the module. Enter a lot code, a sample code or a product name and the whole chain is rebuilt in one click.

Upstream traceability

The exact raw milk lots consumed, the farmers behind them, the precise collection and reception that fed the lot, and the corresponding laboratory analyses. The chain is resolved through the real keys (reception.lot_code = milk lot reference), never through an approximation such as 'recent collections of the same farmer' - which is what makes it usable during a product recall.

Internal traceability

The manufacturing order, the recipe and its version, the production line, the milk consumed, the achieved yield, the thermal treatment, the fermentation and the packaging run.

Downstream traceability

The cold room, the shipments, the carriers, the delivered customers and any derived lots.

Lot lifecycle

Available -> in quarantine -> blocked -> released -> recalled -> consumed. Use-by and best-before dates are carried by every lot and drive the expiry alerts.

 

6. Production

Recipes and formulations

The recipe library covers milk, yogurt, cheese, butter, cream and dairy desserts. Each recipe is versioned and carries a theoretical yield, a batch size, a process temperature scale, a duration and a target pH. A recipe is only usable in production once validated, with the validator and validation date recorded.

Recipe lines list the ingredients: milk, lactic ferments, sugar, fruit preparation, rennet, additives and packaging, each with quantity, unit and unit cost - which feeds the cost engine.

Manufacturing orders

A manufacturing order links a recipe, a production line and a finished lot. It carries the planned quantity, the produced quantity, the milk consumed, the achieved yield and the scrap.

Lifecycle: planned -> in preparation -> in processing -> in quality control -> in packaging -> completed, or cancelled.

Industrial costs

The cost sheet breaks down the milk material cost, ingredients, packaging, energy, labour and maintenance. Total cost, produced quantity, unit cost price, sale price and margin are computed per period and per product.

AI assistant

Every insight is computed from the plant's own data - no external service is called, so the figures are reproducible and auditable.

·       Collection forecast: 30-day projection by linear regression on the collection history, corrected by the seasonal index of the target month, with a confidence index derived from the dispersion

·       Production optimisation: idle lines while orders are queueing, lines below the average OEE, recipes whose actual yield drifts from the theoretical yield, scrap rate

·       Anomaly detection: producer quality drop beyond one standard deviation below the plant mean, milk over-consumption, cold chain excursion, low equipment availability

·       Quality assistant: conformity rate, antibiotic-positive analyses, germ threshold breaches, blocked lots and the worst-performing analysis family

 

7. API

The industrial REST API lets shop-floor equipment and IoT gateways push data, and lets external systems pull the plant's data. It requires the Dolibarr API module to be enabled and an api_key on the calling user.

Base URL: <dolibarr>/api/index.php/dairyfactorymanager/

Authentication: DOLAPIKEY HTTP header. An invalid key returns 401. Every route is gated by the module's own right groups.

Endpoints

Method / route	Right	Purpose
GET producers	producer/read	List milk producers (filter by zone)
GET collections	collect/read	List milk collections (filter by producer)
POST collections	collect/write	Record a collection from a tanker terminal; a collection above the acceptance temperature is flagged rejected
GET sensors	coldchain/read	List IoT sensors with thresholds and state
POST sensors/{id}/readings	coldchain/write	Push a reading; updates the sensor, re-evaluates its alert state, and propagates to its cold room
GET lots	traceability/read	List traceability lots (filter by type)
GET lots/{id}/traceability	traceability/read	Full upstream / internal / downstream chain of a lot
GET productions	production/read	List manufacturing orders (filter by status)
PUT productions/{id}/progress	production/write	Report shop-floor progress; recomputes the yield
GET analyses	quality/read	List laboratory analyses (filter by result)
POST analyses	quality/write	Push an analysis result; a non-conform result quarantines the lot
GET kpi	reporting/read	Plant KPI snapshot

Examples

curl -H "DOLAPIKEY: <key>" \
     https://<dolibarr>/api/index.php/dairyfactorymanager/kpi

curl -X POST -H "DOLAPIKEY: <key>" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d '{"value": 4.2}' \
     https://<dolibarr>/api/index.php/dairyfactorymanager/sensors/12/readings

curl -H "DOLAPIKEY: <key>" \
     https://<dolibarr>/api/index.php/dairyfactorymanager/lots/42/traceability

 

8. Security

The module ships 35 granular permissions spread over 11 object right groups plus reporting and administration. Read and write are granted by default so the module is usable straight after activation; delete and administration are not.

Right group	Covers	read	write	delete
producer	Producers, contracts, producer payments	default	default	no
collect	Collections, tanker trucks, routes	default	default	no
reception	Raw milk receptions	default	default	no
quality	Laboratory analyses	default	default	no
production	Tanks, lines, recipes, orders, thermal, fermentation, packaging	default	default	no
coldchain	Cold rooms, IoT sensors	default	default	no
traceability	Lots and traceability search	default	default	no
distribution	Shipments	default	default	no
maintenance	Equipment, interventions	default	default	no
hse	HSE and food safety records	default	default	no
cost	Industrial cost sheets	default	default	no
reporting	Industrial reporting, AI assistant, KPI API	default	-	-
admin	Module administration and demo data	-	-	-

Data protection

·       Every page and every API route is gated by its right group; admins are checked explicitly, never implicitly bypassed

·       Multi-entity aware: every query filters on the Dolibarr entity

·       All form posts carry a CSRF token validated by Dolibarr's own main.inc.php

·       SQL inputs are escaped; API sort fields are whitelisted against the table's real columns

·       Dolibarr's native audit trail records user actions; every record stores its author and last modifier

Demonstration data

The setup page offers two buttons. 'Install demonstration data' generates a realistic, FK-coherent dataset across the whole object graph. 'Remove demonstration data' deletes only the demonstration data - including records a user created under a demonstration parent, which would otherwise be left orphaned on a dead foreign key. The dataset is versioned, so an improved demo is re-seeded on module upgrade.