Using Work Centers

After defining the product structure through the Bill of Materials (BOM), the manufacturing process must be planned. This includes determining which Work Centers, machines, and personnel are required to perform the production and assembly operations for the forklift.

Based on the manufacturing requirements, existing Work Centers can be reused or new Work Centers can be created to support specific production activities. The resulting production resources form the basis for routing creation, capacity planning, scheduling, and efficient manufacturing execution.

A Work Center represents a location where production activities are carried out using available resources. These resources can include:

• Machines
• Personnel

Work centers are used in:

• Task lists (such as routings, inspection plans, or maintenance plans)
• Production and maintenance orders

A Work Center can represent either a physical location or a specific machine within a plant and is always assigned to a plant.

The data maintained in a Work Center is used for several key purposes:

• Scheduling

  Stores operating times and formulas required to calculate the duration of operations.

• Costing

  Defines formulas to calculate operation costs and assigns the Work Center to a cost center.

• Capacity Planning

  Contains available capacity and formulas to determine capacity requirements.

You can define default values in the Work Center for use during routing maintenance. These include:

• Default texts
• Control key
• Standard time values (for example, setup time, queue time, or interoperation time)

The control key is particularly important. It determines whether an operation:

• Is relevant for costing
• Is considered in capacity planning
• Is included in scheduling

In this task, Master Data Specialist Maria creates a new work center for the forklift production line to support upcoming manufacturing activities. The work center represents a production resource and serves as a key element in production planning, scheduling, costing, and shop floor execution. By maintaining the required operational and capacity data, Maria ensures that the new work center can be used in routings and production orders, enabling accurate planning and efficient execution of the manufacturing process.

In this task, Master Data Specialist Maria creates a new work center based on an existing standard template defined in Customizing.

By using the template, she can quickly inherit predefined settings and ensure consistency with existing production resources.

After creating the work center, Maria adjusts the required capacity data to reflect the specific requirements of the forklift production line.

You now have an impression of how to work with a work center.