“Where is heat 84213?”
A customer or a mill flags a heat and you need to know which parts came from it. Without a record, every part shipped that month becomes suspect.
Built for metal forging shops
Know where every heat number is, from receiving to shipping.
Ongoing Forge is inventory software for forging operations. It follows your material through cutting, forging, heat treatment, machining and shipping — so on-hand quantities are always right and any part can be traced back to the melt it came from.
A 30-minute call about how material and heat records move through your shop. No cost and no obligation.
Trace — heat number
H24-08812
AISI 4140 · 2-1/2" round · Midwest Steel Supply
| Stage | Document | In | Out | Balance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Receiving | RCV-1042 | 4,120 | — | 4,120 |
| Cutting | CUT-0318 | — | 1,650 | 2,470 |
| Forging | FRG-0219 | — | 1,480 | 990 |
| Heat treat | HT-0177 | — | 640 | 350 |
| Shipping | SHP-0091 | — | 350 | 0 |
The problem
Spreadsheets lose the thread
Material changes shape five times between the loading dock and the shipping bay. Every one of those steps is a chance for the paperwork and the metal to disagree.
“How much is in WIP?”
Material sits between forging and heat treat, or waiting on machining. If nobody can say how much, planning is guesswork and stock counts drift.
“Where did the weight go?”
Cut loss, end pieces, scale and burning loss all consume material. If they are estimated rather than recorded, input never reconciles with output.
How it works
Six stages, one connected record
Each stage consumes stock from the one before it and produces stock into the next. Nothing is keyed twice, and the heat number never gets dropped along the way.
-
Stage 1
Receiving
Heat number in
-
Stage 2
Cutting
Cut loss out
-
Stage 3
Forging
Scale loss out
-
Stage 4
Heat treat
Burning loss out
-
Stage 5
Machining
Swarf out
-
Stage 6
Shipping
Linked by document
The heat number H24-08812 is recorded on every stock movement from receiving through forging. Heat treatment, machining and shipping documents link back to it, so the part you ship can be traced to the melt it came from.
1
Enter it once
Log a receiving line with its heat number, supplier, QC result and quantity.
2
Post to commit
Nothing moves your inventory until you post. Drafts are safe to leave half-finished.
3
Trace it any time
Every posted movement is written to a ledger you can read back, line by line.
What you get
Built around how a forging shop actually runs
Heat-number traceability
Enter a heat number and see every document it touched, in order, across all six stages — with a running balance and a forward chain through to shipping.
Draft-to-post control
Stock moves when you post, never when you save. A half-finished entry cannot corrupt your on-hand numbers.
Append-only ledger
Every movement is written once and kept. Balances are derived from the ledger, so a number can always be explained.
Print-ready reports
Receiving detail, inventory on hand, WIP by process and item, movement detail and scrap analysis — each with a print view.
Who it is for
A fit, or not — worth knowing early
A good fit if
- You run open-die or closed-die forging and track material by heat
- Customers ask you to prove which melt a shipped part came from
- Mill certificates need to sit against the heat and be handed back on request
- Inventory lives in spreadsheets, or in an ERP that does not model your process stages
- You need to record cut loss, scale and burning loss rather than estimate them
- You want WIP visibility between stages, not just raw and finished totals
Not a fit if
- You need certificates issued or revision-controlled — we store the mill certificate for each heat, but we don't issue certificates
- You need a NADCAP, AS9100 or IATF 16949 document-control system — we keep the material-origin evidence those audits ask about, not the whole quality manual
- You need accounting, costing, invoicing or supplier purchasing — we track customer POs through dispatch, but not billing or buying
- You want a full MES with machine-level data capture
We would rather tell you this now than after you have loaded your data.
The vocabulary, defined
Plain definitions of the terms this all runs on — useful whether or not you use the software.
Country of Melt and Pour
Where raw steel was first melted and poured into its first solid shape, why US importers must report it, and what that means for a forging shop's records.
EN 10204 Inspection Documents
The four types of inspection document defined by EN 10204:2004 — 2.1, 2.2, 3.1 and 3.2 — and what distinguishes specific from non-specific inspection.
Heat Number
The identifier a steel mill assigns to one batch of metal poured from a single melt, and the unit material properties are guaranteed against.
See it against your own heat numbers
Book a free 30-minute readiness review and we will walk through how your heat records move today.
Creating an account is free and needs no credit card.