Work Orders

Get ready first
It is best to spend some time understanding and setting up work centers and tools, workflows, and bills of material before you start with work orders.

Creating a manufacturing work order
Click on the Work Orders link in the OfficeBooks menu bar, then click on the New Work Order button in the top-right hand corner of the work order list.

This is an example of a work order (give it a click to enlarge).
Note the workflow at the top and bill of materials at the bottom.

You will be prompted to select an item to create with the work order.  OfficeBooks pre-filters the list of possible items to include only items with bills of material.  You can uncheck the "Show only BoM items" checkbox to display all items.

After selecting an item, the screen will refresh and display the workflow at the top of the screen, some work order configuration fields (build qty, instructions, notes, etc), and the bill of materials associated with the item you selected.  Complete the configuration fields as required.  The "Qty to Build" is important as it will drive your material requirements for this work order.

Click update.  This will change the material requirements displayed in the bill of materials (at the bottom of the page) to reflect your build quantity.  Shortages will also be highlighted.

The checkboxes on the workflow steps allow you to actively manage and track your production progress.  At first, the work order is in an "initialized" state.  This allows you to tweak it as necessary before it creates any demand on your supply chain.

You can also assign steps in the workflow to individual employees (the employees must have their own OfficeBooks accounts see User Management for help).

When the first checkbox in the workflow is checked, the work order becomes active and shortage alerts are created to prompt you to buy any required subcomponents, and create work orders for subassemblies.

As manufacturing steps are completed (according to your defined workflow), check off the associated boxes in the workflow section.  When the final check box is checked, the work order is complete and inventory transactions will occur automatically (subcomponent inventories will decrease in accordance with the bill of materials, and the product inventory will increase by the build qty on the work order).

Variances

If you consume more or less sub-components than planned on the bill of materials, you can edit associated lines on the work order to reflect your actual consumption.   This process helps ensure that your inventory levels remain accurate and will provide with a more precise unit cost for your finished goods.

Click the chart icon on the Work Order list
to view a variance report for completed work orders

If you build more or less product than originally planned, you will be prompted to enter a final build quantity when the work order is completed (the last checkbox in the workflow is checked).

Once the work order is complete, you can run a variance report to review unit costs.  If the item built is a product with a list price, this report will also display your profit margin based on the actual unit cost from this work order.



Confused? Want more help? Just email us at support@officebooks.com We like to help.

Workflows

Workflows are part of the Bill of Materials record related to an item.  They allow you to define the steps to follow when manufacturing your product.

After setting up your work centers, you can add, edit, delete, and re-arrange the workflow steps on the Bill of Materials screen.  The estimated hours field is useful for you to get a sense of how long a batch of parts should take to run through the manufacturing step.  When OfficeBooks introduces its production scheduling tools, they will rely on the estimated hours in your workflow definitions as well as the "Daily hours" you define by work center to map out your production plan.

After you define your workflow, you can link subcomponents on your Bill of Materials to specific steps in your workflow.  This will be reflected on the PDF copy of your work orders.

Work Centers and Tools

What are Work Centers?


Conceptually, Work Centers are possible steps in your manufacturing process.  Typically work centers are defined as specific machines, or processes.  In the image above, you see an example of a typical set of Work Centers.  Work Centers are the basic building blocks for workflows.

In the work center definition, you can set the number of hours the work center is available per day.  This information will be used by the production scheduling component of OfficeBooks (which will be available in a later release).

Tools
Tools can be assigned to steps in a workflow.  By identifying all your tools and assigning them to steps in  workflows, you can reduce the set-up time at workstations and increase your manufacturing efficiency.  Defining tools is optional.  If it overcomplicates things for you, skip it!  You can always define them later (or never, it's up to you).

Creating a Bill of Materials (BOM)

Note:  Looking for a way to sell a group of products at the same time?  Product bundles (or packages) is a feature that is in development.  Bills of Material are mainly for manufacturing operations.  Read about the plan for Product Bundles here.


A Bill of Materials (BOM) is a list of parts required to build an assembly of some kind.  The ingredient list in a  recipe is a good everyday example of a BOM.

To specify a bill of materials in OfficeBooks, you must first add an item within your OfficeBooks account.  See Creating an Item in OfficeBooks if you need help.

To build your bill of materials:

1. Select the item record of the product
2. Click on the "Bill of Materials and Revision Control" tab to expand that section.
3. Click on the View/Edit button
4. You can define a workflow in the workflow section.
5. Near the bottom of the screen, you will find the components list, click New Item
6. Select the part to add to the BOM from the selection window.  You can add a new item record from the selection window if required.
7. Define the quantity required to build one of the product
8. Click the checkmark to save that item
9. Repeat steps 6 and 7 until you have completed building the components list
10. You can add details to the Manufacturing Instructions or Notes fields before saving your work.

This bill of materials has a multiple step workflow and a simple, 2 item component list.