Production Orders and Assembly Orders are internal orders
About Production Orders (Job or Work Orders)
Production orders are used to manage the conversion of purchased materials into manufactured items.
Production orders route work through various work or machine centers (facilities) on the shop floor.
Before proceeding with production, most companies perform supply planning, typically once a week, to calculate how many production orders and purchase orders to execute to fulfill that week’s sales demand.
Purchase orders supply the components that are required according to the production BOM to produce the end items.
Production orders are the central components of the program's manufacturing functionality and they contain the following information:
Products planned for manufacturing
Materials required for the planned production orders
Products that have just been manufactured
Materials that have already been selected
Products that have been manufactured in the past
Materials that were used in previous manufacturing operations
Production orders are the starting points for:
Planning future manufacturing
Controlling current manufacturing
Tracking of finished manufacturing
Limitations on Production Order Creation
Production orders are automatically reserved and tracked to their source when:
Created from the Planning Worksheet
Created with the order function in the Sales Order Planning window
Created from the Order Planning window
Using the Replan function on Production Orders
About Assemble to Order
An assembly BOM defines which items and resources are required to assemble the parent item. A resource cannot be a machine or work center.
You do not need to have a resource defined, meaning the assembly BOM will simply contain a list of sub-components. If a customer requests a slightly different version of an item, you have the flexibility to modify the assembly order on a per-sales order basis. This is a good option if you only need to plan for the combination of simple components, without the need for manufacturing.
You typically use assemble to order for items that you do not want to stock because you expect to customize them to customer requests or because you want to minimize the inventory carrying cost.
The supporting Business Central functionality includes:
Ability to customize assembly items when taking a sales order.
Overview of availability of the assembly item and its components.
Ability to reserve assembly components immediately to guarantee order fulfillment.
Function to determine profitability of the customized order by rolling up price and cost.
Integration to the warehouse to make assembly and shipping easier.
Ability to assemble to order at the point of making a sales quote or a blanket sales order.
Ability to combine inventory quantities with assemble-to-order quantities.
In the assemble-to-order process, the item is assembled in response to a sales order and with a one-to-one link between the assembly order and the sales order.
When you enter an assemble-to-order item on a sales line, an assembly order is automatically created with a header that is based on the sales line and with lines that are based on the item’s assembly BOM multiplied by the order quantity. You can use the Assemble-to-Order Lines page to see the linked assembly order lines to support you in customizing the assembly item and in a delivery date that is based on component availability information.
