When Odoo needs to obtain a product, to meet demand or replenish stock, something has to decide how: make it, buy it, or move it from elsewhere. That something is the route. This piece explains how procurement routes work for manufactured products in Odoo.
What a route is
A route, in Odoo, is a defined path that a product follows to be obtained, made up of rules. The standard routes correspond to the basic ways a product can be supplied: it can be manufactured, it can be bought, it can be dropshipped, it can be resupplied from another warehouse. A route is, in effect, the answer to "how do we get this product when we need it". Routes can be assigned at the level of an individual product, a product category, or a warehouse.
Routes for manufactured products
For a manufactured product, the relevant route is the manufacture route. Assigning the manufacture route to a product tells Odoo that, when this product is needed, the way to obtain it is to manufacture it: a manufacturing order is created, built against the product's bill of materials. This is what connects a product's need to its production. A product without the manufacture route would not be made when needed, even if it has a BOM; the route is what says "make this".
How routes propagate through the BOM
The interesting part is how routes work down a multi-level product. When a manufactured product is needed and its manufacture route creates a manufacturing order, Odoo explodes the BOM to find the components. Each of those components has its own route. A component that is itself manufactured has the manufacture route, so a need for it creates its own manufacturing order. A component that is bought has the buy route, so a need for it creates a purchase. A component resupplied from another warehouse has the resupply route. So the routes of all the products in a BOM, working together, determine the whole chain of manufacturing and purchasing that a single top-level need sets off. The routes are what make a need for a finished product cascade correctly into all the right actions.
Why this matters
Routes matter because they are how Odoo knows what to do to obtain each product. Setting them up correctly is what makes planning produce the right actions. If a manufactured product is correctly on the manufacture route, a need for it produces a manufacturing order. If a bought component is correctly on the buy route, a need for it produces a purchase. If a route is set wrong, the planning produces the wrong action, trying to buy something that should be made, or failing to produce something that should be manufactured. Correct routes are a quiet foundation of correct planning.
Setting routes up
The practical work is making sure every product has the route appropriate to how it is genuinely obtained. Manufactured products on the manufacture route, bought components on the buy route, products resupplied between warehouses on the resupply route. Because routes can be set at the category level, a manufacturer can often set a sensible default for a whole category of products and only set individual product routes where a product differs from its category. The aim is that every product, when needed, is obtained the way it genuinely should be.
Routes and the manufacturer's strategy
Routes also connect to the manufacturer's broader strategy. Whether a component is supplied make-to-order or kept in stock, whether a sub-assembly is manufactured on demand or stocked, these strategies are expressed partly through how routes and replenishment are set up for those products. Setting routes is therefore not a purely mechanical task; it is part of expressing how the manufacturer intends each product to be supplied.
The takeaway
Procurement routes in Odoo are the defined paths, made of rules, that say how a product is obtained: manufactured, bought, dropshipped, or resupplied. For a manufactured product, the manufacture route is what makes a need for it create a manufacturing order. Routes propagate down a multi-level BOM, so the routes of all the products in it determine the whole chain of manufacturing and purchasing a top-level need triggers. Correct routes on every product are a foundation of correct planning. For how we approach Odoo for manufacturers, see our manufacturing work.