GoSmarter vs Katana and Fiix for Metals Inventory and MTO Planning

GoSmarter is the purpose-built inventory management platform for metals manufacturers. Katana and Fiix are popular options that will almost certainly come up in your research. Neither was built for steel.

This is not a knock on Katana or Fiix. They are excellent tools for the problems they were designed to solve. But metals manufacturing has a specific set of requirements that generic platforms consistently fail to address: mill certificate traceability, EN 10204 compliance, heat number management, long product cutting optimisation, and traceability from incoming material through to finished cut piece.

This post breaks down exactly what Katana and Fiix do, where they fall short for metals, and where GoSmarter fills the gap.

What Katana Is Built For

Katana is a cloud-based manufacturing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system designed for small and medium manufacturers doing make-to-order (MTO) or make-to-stock (MTS) production. Its core strengths are:

• Bill of materials (BOM) management
• Production scheduling and shop floor control
• Real-time inventory tracking against open orders
• Purchasing and supplier management
• Integration with e-commerce platforms (Shopify, WooCommerce) and accounting software (Xero, QuickBooks)

Katana is excellent for businesses making discrete products: furniture manufacturers, food producers, electronics assemblers, cosmetic brands, craft breweries. The workflow is designed around recipe or BOM-based manufacturing where the same finished product is made repeatedly from consistent inputs.

A metals stockholder or structural steel fabricator works differently. Your inputs are not consistent. Every coil, bar, or section comes from a different mill, with a different heat number, a different chemical composition, and a different mechanical test certificate. The material identity matters at every step, and it has to follow the material through the supply chain. Katana has no concept of this.

What Fiix Is Built For

Fiix is a computerised maintenance management system (CMMS). Its job is to track and schedule equipment maintenance: planned preventive maintenance, reactive work orders, spare parts inventory for maintenance consumables, and asset lifecycle management.

Fiix is used in factories to keep machines running. It is not an inventory management system for raw materials or finished goods. It is not a production planning system. If someone has suggested Fiix for metals inventory management, there has been a category error somewhere in the research.

Fiix can genuinely help metals manufacturers, but for the maintenance side of the operation: tracking when your bandsaw blades need replacing, scheduling preventive maintenance on your overhead crane, managing consumables for your welding stations. That is a real problem worth solving. It is just a completely different problem from managing your steel stock.

Where Both Fall Short for Metals

No mill certificate handling

Neither Katana nor Fiix has any concept of an EN 10204 mill certificate. When steel arrives from a mill or stockholder, it comes with a certificate confirming the chemical composition and mechanical properties of that specific heat of material. That certificate is a compliance document. For many structural applications, retaining and being able to produce it on demand is a legal requirement. Neither platform stores, parses, or links these documents to inventory.

No heat number or cast identity tracking

Every batch of steel has a heat number: a unique identifier for the cast or melt it came from. Traceability in metals means being able to say “this specific piece of steel came from heat number X, which was delivered with certificate Y, on date Z.” Katana tracks materials by Stock Keeping Unit (SKU). Fiix tracks assets by asset tag. Neither tracks material by heat number.

No long product cutting optimisation

When you cut a 12-metre length of section steel into multiple pieces for an order, you need to minimise waste, track remnants back into stock, and link the cut pieces back to their source material and certificate. This is a specific operational workflow that generic inventory systems do not handle.

No EN 10204 compliance workflow

EN 10204 defines the types of inspection documents required for steel products. A 3.1 certificate is issued by the manufacturer’s inspection body and is the standard requirement for structural steelwork. Managing incoming 3.1 certs, linking them to stock, and retrieving them for customer orders or audits is a daily operational requirement in metals. It is not a feature in Katana or Fiix.

Generic material model

Katana’s inventory model is built around SKUs with attributes like colour, size, and material type. Steel is far more complex: a single “product” might have dozens of valid heats in stock simultaneously, each with different properties and certificates, all of which need to be individually traceable. You cannot force this into a SKU-based system without breaking the traceability model.

GoSmarter’s Metals-Specific Advantages

GoSmarter was built specifically for metals manufacturers and stockholders. The entire data model starts from the assumption that every piece of material has an identity: a mill certificate, a heat number, a grade, a size, and that identity has to be maintained throughout the inventory lifecycle.

See GoSmarter’s Inventory Management in action:

Mill certificate processing. GoSmarter reads incoming EN 10204 (the European standard for mill test certificates for metallic materials) certificates (PDF or email) and extracts the relevant data automatically: heat number, grade, chemical analysis, mechanical properties, test results. The cert is stored against the material it covers. No manual data entry required. See the full mill certificate documentation.

Traceability from delivery to cut piece. When material arrives, it is logged against its certificate. When it is cut, the cut plan records which bar went into which pieces. When material is sold or used, the traceability chain is maintained. If a customer calls six months later asking for the cert for a specific piece of steel, you can retrieve it in seconds.

Long product cutting optimisation. GoSmarter’s Cutting Optimiser calculates the optimal cut plan for long product cutting (rebar, sections, tubes): minimising waste, tracking remnants, and linking cut pieces to their source material. This is a complete workflow, not a feature bolt-on.

Pricing and deployment suited to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). GoSmarter starts at £400/month and is live in days. No IT project, no dedicated server, no professional services engagement. Katana starts at similar price points but requires significant setup time to configure for metals, and even then the traceability gap remains.

Proven results. Midland Steel, a long-product service centre, achieved a 50% reduction in scrap after deploying GoSmarter’s Cutting Optimiser. At 30 tonnes per week of bar stock, that recovered around 3 tonnes per month: roughly £2,400 per month at current S355 prices.

Vendor trust and data security. GoSmarter is EU-hosted and GDPR compliant. Your data is exportable as CSV at any time. No exit fees. If you cancel, you have 30 days to export everything. Your data belongs to you.

Pricing Comparison

Katana’s pricing looks similar to GoSmarter at the entry level, but the configuration overhead to adapt it for metals is significant. Some requirements (heat number traceability, cert management) cannot be met regardless of configuration.

Who Should Use Each Tool

GoSmarter is right for you if:

• You are a metals stockholder, service centre, or structural fabricator
• You buy and sell steel with EN 10204 mill certificates
• You cut long products (rebar, sections, tubes) to customer requirements
• Traceability to heat number and cert is a customer or compliance requirement
• You want to be operational within a week without an IT project

Katana is right for you if:

• You are a manufacturer making discrete products from consistent inputs
• BOM-based production management is your primary need
• You need Shopify or WooCommerce integration
• Mill certificate traceability is not a requirement
• Your inventory model works on SKU-based tracking

Fiix is right for you if:

• You need to manage equipment maintenance and asset lifecycle
• You are tracking work orders, spare parts, and maintenance schedules
• You want to improve equipment uptime and reduce reactive maintenance
• You are not looking for a production or inventory management system

Can You Use GoSmarter Alongside Katana or Fiix?

GoSmarter + Katana: Possible for businesses where Katana handles the finished goods / production side and GoSmarter handles the raw material traceability and cutting side. Some businesses use Katana for production scheduling and GoSmarter for the steel-specific operations: buying, certificate management, and cutting. There is no native integration, but both systems can export data if needed.

GoSmarter + Fiix: A reasonable combination. Fiix handles equipment maintenance (crane inspection schedules, saw maintenance, safety checks); GoSmarter handles inventory and cutting. These solve genuinely different problems in the same business and do not overlap.

Frequently Asked Questions

Try GoSmarter

If you are a metals manufacturer dealing with mill certificates, heat number traceability, or long product cutting: GoSmarter is built for your operation. Generic platforms will cost you more time than they save.

Start your free trial →

Or book a demo and we will show you the traceability workflow from incoming cert through to cut piece.

Related Reading

• GoSmarter Inventory Management product page — features, pricing, and free trial
• GoSmarter MillCert Reader product page — AI-powered mill certificate extraction and EN 10204 traceability
• GoSmarter vs Excel for Metals Inventory Management — the spreadsheet comparison
• GoSmarter vs Epicor for Metals Operations — the full ERP comparison
• Mill Certificate Automation for Metals Manufacturers — how cert traceability works end to end
• GoSmarter for Metals Operations — the full platform overview

GoSmarter is made by Nightingale HQ, a UK-based AI company building practical tools for metals manufacturers.