Production work orders have a special feature to enable the user to create multiple work orders based on the planned requirements as calculated by the system. Thus even in complex and large volume manufacturing it is possible to create work orders very easily.
This feature is an alternative to using the Open work order automatically feature of the sales order line, or of opening individual work orders manually.
As well as just opening work orders in bulk, this tool can force the maximum work order size to a certain number, typically 1. This is used in lean manufacturing system to organise production of work orders of one product at a time, to get smaller work orders with higher volume throughput. This feature is often used together with use of the work cell screen and barcodes in production. The maximum work order size is set on the product's item card.
This tool can also be used to create work orders for meet requirements for minimum free stock level.
Licensing
The optional module "Bulk processing facilities" is required to access this feature. (See the Admin->Licensing section for more details)
Using
First open the screen. There will be no lines added to the grid for processing yet, so press Add lines to open a popup to see all planned work orders and mark the ones to be processed at this time. For instance it is possible to collect all work orders that should be started this week (time criteria) or certain item families. Select the records that are required (or select all) and press Add selected to close the popup and show the records ready for processing.
After collecting the lines check that the planned start dates are to your requirements. It is possible to select the lines and press Start date = today to set all start dates to today’s date.
If necessary check the Combine needs check box. This will combine different requirements of the same product into one work order. Alternatively the system will create multiple work orders for the same product if the start dates are different.
Note that on the item card, manufacturing tab, properties sub tab, there is a field called Maximum batch size. If this field is set to any other number than zero, it will cause this process to limit the number of products in the created work orders and if necessary create multiple work orders. For instance if there are 10 of a product on order and the maximum batch size is 2 then 5 work orders will be created, each with a product quantity of two.
Finally, press the Create button. This will create multiple production work orders. They will either be queued at the first cell or under work at the first cell depending the setting on each product's route template.