Production orders - functional overview

A production order comprises the order to produce an item and the conditions under which manufacturing takes place, such as the routing that is used, the delivery date, and the order quantity.

A production order can be used for:

Origin of production orders

A production order is usually generated by a planning algorithm, such as MRP, and is subsequently transferred to the Shop Floor Control module. You can also manually create production orders.

Processing new production orders

When a new production order is created, all data that is necessary for the execution of the production order is set up. This data includes the estimated materials, planning of operations, warehouse orders, and other data.

Duplicating production orders

Click Duplicate in the menu or the toolbar to duplicate the production order, which means that the production header information is copied. The production order's original material and operations are not copied for a number of reasons:

  • Some materials in the bill of material (BOM), or some operations may be invalid because of engineering changes.
  • Master data such as warehouse, item, cost price, and so on, may be changed, which can lead to inconsistent orders.
  • Information such as operation texts or drawings can be linked to the production order. LN cannot determine which data must be copied because this can differ for every occasion. LN cannot make a distinction between original and modified data.
  • Production order costing can be different for the original and the duplicated production order.
  • All warehouse orders and related data must always be regenerated anyway.
Order status

Production orders go through a number of order statuses, such as:

  • Planned
  • Documents Printed
  • Released

The order status determines which actions can be performed on a production order.

Estimated and actual costs

The estimated costs for a production order are based on the BOM and the routing (estimated costing). During production, the hours that are actually spent and the materials that are actually used are posted (actual costing). When the production order is closed, the result of the production order is calculated.