Planned order conversion turns planned orders into production orders. Production supervisors manage these orders. This process communicates the need to produce materials or assemble installation kits from planning to supervision.
Planned orders are usually converted automatically into production orders if they reach the opening period. The opening period should be short. The later a planned order is converted, the longer the system can automatically adjust planned orders to reflect changes of BOM, network activity dates, customer preferences, and so on.
Planned order conversion replaces planned orders by production orders.
Production planners can use transactions CO41 and MD02 or the Convert Planned Orders app to convert planned orders.
Release Network Activity
Production planners release network activities if they consider an activity feasible and if there is nothing more important or more urgent to do on the required resources.
By releasing the network activity, the production planner communicates to the production supervisor that production planning is complete and production execution may be started.
Production engineering releases BOMs and routings. Production planning releases network activities and converts planned orders.
A stepwise release provides more control over what can be started in execution. For long-lasting projects, individual network activities should be released, not the complete project.
- Select a network activity.
- Choose Edit → Status → Release.
This implicitly partially releases the parent network and WBS element(s).
Basically, production planners determine the start date of every network activity. Production planners of course do not only have to consider the work center capacity and the priority of the different projects but also technical sequence constraints between the network activities of a project. Production engineers use activity relationships to define the sequence in which network activities shall be performed. To make the production process more robust, it is useful to check on release of a network activity if the predecessor activities have been completed. The error message will display that you must also release the predecessor activities before saving the project.
Summary
This lesson covers converting planned orders to production orders for seamless project execution.
- Convert planned orders using transactions CO41 or MD02 to transition planning into actionable production orders.
- Automatically convert planned orders during the opening period to allow system adjustments for BOM changes.
- Release network activities selectively for controlled execution and resource prioritization.
- Ensure predecessor activities are complete before releasing new network activities.
- Communicate readiness for production by releasing BOMs, routings, and network activities.