Routings and Work Centers
This chapter discusses the elements associated with routings, including departments, standard operations, and work centers. Many of these concepts are also common to process definitions.
IntroductionOutlines routing operations, their uses, and when they are or are not necessary.
DepartmentsDefines departments, department codes, account numbers, and their uses.
Work CentersDefines work centers and explains how they are used by the system.
Standard OperationsDescribes how to create standard operations with Standard Operation Maintenance in order to save time and work.
RoutingsDefines routings, discusses their relationship to operations, and introduces Standard Routing Maintenance.
Lead TimesDescribes components that are used to describe manufacturing and operation lead times.
Subcontract OperationsDescribes how to set up work centers and departments to incorporate outside subcontractors.
YieldDescribes how the system calculates total yield for an item using Yield Percentage and Operations-Based Yield.
Introduction
To manufacture an item or product, you must complete one or more activities or operations. The list of required operations is called a routing, which basically defines the process needed to make the item. If a product structure is the list of ingredients in a recipe, a routing is the directions. The routing operations indicate the machines, expected times, and instructions for completing specific tasks.
For example, in manufacturing sunglass lenses, there might be a routing with four operations with instructions to grind, polish, tint, and coat the lenses. These would be separate operations because they involve different machines, tools, skills, and tasks.
In the Shop Floor Control and Repetitive modules, you record actual statistics on what happens during production. This might include how long it takes to produce items, what quantities are produced and by whom, whether there was downtime or some other interruption to production, and so on. These statistics are always recorded against a routing operation. Routings are required if you use the Repetitive module.
In addition to providing manufacturing instructions, routings contain data used as a standard for evaluating production, operation times, yield percentages, the number of machines normally needed, and so on. The department and work center codes associated with routing operations link actual production results with capacity planning, cost accounting, and other programs.
Specifically, routings can be used to:
• Calculate the cost of producing an item.
• Calculate the time it takes to manufacture an item.
• Schedule operations for work orders and repetitive schedules.
• Backflush components in the Repetitive module.
• Calculate work center and department load.
• Print routings for work orders.
• Obtain operation feedback using programs in Shop Floor Control, Repetitive, and Advanced Repetitive.
Some of these capabilities are especially important when there is a combination of medium to long operation lead times, a significant labor component of cost, many operations, and bottleneck operations.
Routing operations may not be necessary when:
• Item lead times are very short.
• Total item costs consist mostly of material and overhead and the labor component is relatively small.
• Capacity can be easily managed.
• Repetitive module is not used.
Routing Setup Workflow summarizes the steps required to set up routings.
Routing Setup Workflow
Important: Work centers and operations work in conjunction with the shop calendar, which determines the work days and hours for the plant. Use Calendar Maintenance (36.2.5) to add work center-specific calendars. Before you begin defining the elements needed to create routings, make sure you set up the shop calendar. See User Guide: QAD System Administration for more information on calendars.
