Analyzing the Master Data Relevant to Create Production Orders

In order to be able to create production orders, various master data must have been created beforehand. The main master data required are:

• Materials
• Bills of material (BOM)
• Routings
• Work centers
• Production resources/tools (PRT)
• Production versions

Material master records must be created for the materials that are produced and procured in a company. In our bicycle company, for example, material master records were created for the finished bicycles, for the required assemblies that are produced in-house, such as frames or wheels, and for raw materials to be procured via purchasing, such as chains or metal tubes. In the material master record of each item, planning data, procurement data, execution-relevant data, and so on, are maintained.

The material components required for finished products and assemblies are to be defined via bills of materials (BOMs). The bill of material for a bicycle manufactured in our bicycle company can, for example, consist of the material components frame, wheel, chain, and further components. Assemblies, such as the frame of a bicycle, themselves have a BOM, which results in multi-level BOM structures.

You furthermore define in a BOM how many components are required to assemble a product. For example, one bike requires the assembly of two wheels, front and rear wheel, respectively.

Routings define in detail the operations to be carried out to manufacture a finished product or an assembly. For example, a routing for the production of a bicycle can consist of the operations Pre-assembly, Assembly, and Quality Inspection.

A work center is assigned to each operation to define the physical location where this operation is to be processed. By assigning a work center, you also specify costing- and planning-relevant parameters for the individual operations since the master record of a work center contains essential information that is used for capacity planning, scheduling, and costing of production orders. In our example, the Pre-assembl of the bike is executed at work center Assembly I, the operation Assembly is executed at work center Assembly II, and so on.

Furthermore, production resources/tools (PRTs) can be assigned to an operation. A production resource/tool assigned in the operation Assembly can be, for example, a detailed Assembly Instruction illustrating the main assembly steps to the worker.

A production order for a finished product or an assembly is always created with reference to a production version of the corresponding material. A production version defines which routing in combination with which bill of material is to be used for the production order. A suitable production version is automatically selected when the order is created according to criteria such as production quantity and production time.