Production
Production turns a released definition into work the floor can run: planned orders, work orders carrying their own operations and materials, a schedule accepted as a scenario, and labor reported at the terminal. It ends at a finished unit and a job cost.
The gap most shops live with is between the plan and the floor. A job is promised, the sequence lives in a spreadsheet, the hours land on an attendance clock, and what the job actually cost is reconstructed after it ships. Production closes that gap on one set of records. Releasing a work order copies the released bill of materials and routing onto it, so the operations and materials belong to that order rather than to a document that can move underneath it. Scheduling runs as a scenario against real resource capacity and shift calendars, and accepting one writes the dates. Every labor ticket and every material issue posts against the Job it belongs to.
The Job As Cost Object
A Job is the record every posting is stamped with. Work orders hang off it, journal lines carry it, jobs nest under a parent, and the cost screen breaks accumulated material, labor and burden down by whichever grouping you ask for.
Work Order Release
Releasing a work order copies the released routing into its own operations and the released bill of materials into its own materials, pinned to the item revision it was released against. The order owns its structure from that moment on.
Schedule Scenarios
Solving never touches a work order. A scenario records the horizon, the solver answer and its metrics, so several sit side by side on the Scenarios screen for comparison. Accepting one writes scheduled dates onto the operations and supersedes the rest.
Capacity And Shift Calendars
The scheduling document covers every released and in-process work order at a site, each resource with its capacity, and shifts expanded with their exceptions. Load comes from the setup and run minutes on the operation, not from a lead time.
Planned Orders From Demand
A planning run explodes open demand through the bill of materials and writes planned order rows on the Planning screen, each carrying gross requirement, on hand, allocated, inbound and net requirement, and each pegged to the sales order lines that asked for it.
Labor At The Operation
An employee clocks on to a work order operation as setup, run, teardown or indirect time. The ticket takes its rate from the resource, computes a cost, rolls completed and scrapped quantities up to the operation, and posts to work in process.
Shop Floor Terminals
Four terminals run at the point of work: a machine station, an operator station, a time clock and a warehouse station. The operator reports quantities completed and scrapped against the operation in front of them rather than on a traveler keyed in later.
Operations are dispatched to terminals at the machine, and the operator records quantities, scrap and clocked time against the operation rather than on a paper traveler.
APSWork orders schedule against resources with real capacity and shift calendars, using setup and run minutes from the routing, and a planner compares a proposal before accepting it.
MRPOpen demand explodes through the bill of materials into planned order rows showing gross requirement, on hand, allocated, inbound and net requirement for every level.
The item revision, bill of materials and routing a work order is released against and copies onto itself.
InventoryThe balances a work order issues material from, and where finished quantities land when the order completes.
QualityInspection against the operation flagged for it, and the nonconformance raised when a part fails on the floor.
WorkforceThe employees who clock on, and the shifts and exceptions that decide when a resource has capacity at all.
What is the difference between a job and a work order?
A Job is the cost object. It is the thing you want to know the margin on, and every posting carries it. A work order is one quantity of one item to be built, with its own operations and materials, and it belongs to a job. A job can hold several work orders and can itself sit under a parent job.
Can I compare two schedules before committing to one?
Yes. Solving produces a scenario rather than touching any work order, so a scenario holds the horizon it covered, the solver answer and its metrics. Several can sit beside each other and be read against what is on the floor. Accepting one writes the scheduled dates onto the operations and supersedes the others.
Where do planned orders come from?
From a planning run over open demand. It walks the bill of materials down level by level, nets each requirement against on hand, allocated and inbound quantities, offsets the start date by the lead time, and writes a planned order for the shortfall marked make or buy. Each one keeps the sales order lines that caused it.
How does labor time reach the cost of a job?
An employee clocks on to a specific work order operation. The ticket records minutes, completed and scrapped quantities, and takes a rate from the resource that ran the work, which gives it a cost. That cost posts into work in process stamped with the job, so the job cost grows as the work proceeds rather than after it ships.
Does a work order change when engineering revises the routing?
No. Release copies the routing operations and the bill of materials lines onto the work order itself and records the item revision, the bill and the routing it came from. A later revision in Engineering produces a new version for the next order. Work already on the floor keeps the structure it was released against.
One database, every module.
Tell us how a job moves through your shop today, from release to the last operation, and we will walk you through the same path as work orders, scenarios and labor tickets.