Managing production orders created in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central

The Produce / Manager production orders list provides an overview of open production orders. To access it, select Production orders from the main menu on the left.

The table covers all data related to production orders that you have picked for display in the Column selector. On top of the list, there is a quick filter that allows you to display all orders (which is the default setting) or those that have not been started yet.

The All orders option of the quick filter lists all the production orders if there is no column filter set. If, however, any column filter(s) are set, the list will be filtered accordingly. The Not started orders only option displays a list of orders that have none of their operations started yet. Again, any column filter setting also applies.

Production orders specified with multiple lines in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central are displayed with a badge indicating the number of further lines belonging to the order. When the user clicks on the badge (shown in a red frame in the first screenshot), a new tab is opened showing (only) all the lines of the given production order (as shown in the second screenshot). This feature comes handy when you sort your production orders table by any other column than order number. In the examples below, the list is sorted by item code.>

The columns that may need some explanation in the production orders list are Status (the very last column), Operation status, Visible to operator and Priority.

The Status and Visible to operator columns cannot be hidden by using the Customize table / Column chooser.

Status

You can check and set the overall status of a production order in the rightmost column which cannot be hidden. It may have the following values:

The order is waiting for your approval and cannot be seen by operators on the shop floor. It is in firm planned status in Business Central. This is the default status of production orders. Approving an order (by clicking the button) will release it in Business Central and will make it available on the shop floor in the operation list of Produce / Operator.

Released production orders are listed separately from firm planned ones in Business Central and use their own numbering range. Therefore, if you sort your table of production orders by order number in Produce / Manager, as soon as you approve an order, it may disappear from your screen and may show up on a different page of the table.

You have approved the order (or released it in Business Central), thus it is in released status in your ERP system. Approved orders are displayed on the operation list on the shop floor in Produce / Operator, unless you uncheck the corresponding checkbox in the Visible to operator column. However, no operator has started working on the order yet.

At least one operator has started working on at least one operation of the production order. The order is visible in Produce / Operator, and it remains in released status in Business Central.

All operations in the production order have been completed. If you press this button, and then the subsequently displayed tick () symbol, the order will be finalized, i.e. pushed to closed status, with the registered time and material data saved in Business Central. It will be taken off the list of production orders. Closed production orders are not listed in Produce / Manager or Produce / Operator.

Operation status

Produce processes production orders by operations, which are the equivalents of the routings specified in Business Central. Therefore, to get a production order processed in Produce / Manager or Produce / Operator, it is mandatory to specify at least one routing line in it in Business Central.

It is not recommended to change or delete a routing in a production order in Business Central after the production order has been released. However, if this is necessary, and transactions have already been entered (i.e. materials and/or resource time have been issued for an operation), the best practice is to close the production order and create a new one. Transactions are not lost, as they can be viewed in the production order in Business Central.

The Operation status column shows the progress of each operation in the production order. The circles indicate the following:

- Not started

- Started (in progress)

- Partially completed

- Completed

The Operation status filter shows production orders that contain at least one operation with the selected status.

Visible to operator

As soon as you approve (release) a production order, it will be displayed to shop floor workers in Produce / Operator, unless you untick the checkbox corresponding to the given order in the Visible to operator column. If you do so, the operation(s) of the given order will disappear from Produce / Operator. If at least an operation of a production order is already being processed by an operator, the checkbox belonging to the order is disabled (and checked). Completed orders have their checkbox disabled and unchecked.

Priority

In this column, you can check the priority of a production order (based on automatic or manual priority assignment) or change the priority manually. By default, priority is assigned automatically.

When using the filter of the Priority column, the system displays production orders with both automatic and manual priority assignments.

Automatic priority assignment
The system automatically sets the priority of each production order to low (), medium () or high () based on the Priority settings.

Automatic priority is calculated or recalculated in the following cases:

• A production order is created.
• If the Start date or Due  date of the production order is changed.
• Every night.

Manual priority assignment
The priority of the production order can be changed manually by clicking in the corresponding cell in the table. You can toggle through the priority settings low (), medium () and high () - each represented by the same symbol as their automatic counterparts, but on a colored background.

When you click on a cell that is set to manual high priority (), it will push the production order from manual to automatic priority setting, indicated by the symbol which, in a couple of seconds, will be replaced by the symbol of the priority that is automatically calculated for the production order based on the Priority settings in Produce / Manager.

Yet another click will switch the order back to manual low () priority, etc.

To change the priority of multiple production orders at the same time, select the necessary production orders and click Change priority on the bar displayed on the top. In the drop-down menu select the desired priority.

Production order detail view

Production order numbers displayed in the list have a link on them. Clicking on that link will open a detail view of the selected production order.

On the left, the detail page contains the following data about the order:

• status (Not started, In progress, Completed, Closed)
• processing period
• customer
• quantities (planned, completed, remaining, scrap)

On the right, the page provides the same details about each operation contained by the production order. Clicking the Show details label (in red frame below) expands the box to display the resources and materials used for the operation, as well as the transactions associated with it. You can see the percentage of difference between the expected and actual (issued) resource and material usage.

As you register work for an operation, you can see the operation's status and the quantities updated accordingly.

After finalization, the page will show that the order has been closed by a green banner notification.

At this point, the order will disappear from the list of production orders.