Today’s post covers setting up default values in manufacturing and how they influence the process of creating and finishing production orders. We will start by demonstrating the setup and then run through a production order process, posting the Production Journal. We will finish by looking at the resulting entries. I will be demonstrating this using a Location without Basic or Advanced warehousing configured. The item I will be manufacturing is the Black Keyboard. Please ignore the spelling error that comes up later, I’d only noticed after finishing! Let’s start!

Setting up a Components at Location value

When it comes to production, you can set the default Location where components will be consumed. To do this, go to the Manufacturing Setup page. Here you can find the ‘Components at Location’ field. On the Released Production Order, the Production Journal’s Location Code value is determined by what you set in the Manufacturing Setup.

Defining the Default bin

Users can also default the bin that to pull components from, before they reach the shop floor. This is defined for each individual component. To do this, on the component’s Item Card, click ‘Related’, ‘Warehouse’ and ‘Bin Contents’. On the line with the relevant Bin Code value, you can use the check box in the ‘Default’ field to establish that this bin is the default for this item. Setting the default values in manufacturing setup screens will save you time and prevent users from forgetting to input, or putting in invalid data.

The Bin Contents page allows users to define whether the Bin Content records are 'Fixed', meaning when the quantity of a specific item in that specific bin reaches zero, it will still exist.

What we are focusing on is the 'Default' value, which allows users to set a

On an Item’s Bin Content page, it’s possible there’ll be no lines showing. This is because the lines aren’t set to Fixed. Where a Bin Content line is Fixed, it won’t disappear when the quantity in the bin reaches zero.

The Production BOM page

To utilise the default values, users must first have a production BOM. Users can define the production BOM beforehand. To do so, on the Production BOM page, create a new record. Each line on the page here consists of a component. Notice the Unit of Measure Code is a mandatory field here. Once you have inputted the components in the lines, make sure you add the quantities required. As well as this, the Status field is set to ‘New’.

When you are first in the Production BOM card, New will be the default value. However, leaving it as this will prevent the Production BOM from being utilised. When you have finished setting up the BOM, change the Status to ‘Certified’. If you wish to amend the record at any stage after setting it to Certified, you must change the Status to ‘Under Development’. If not, the record will error and not allow changes to be made.

This shows the mandatory Unit of Measure field on the Production BOM page.

Work Centers and Machine Centers

We need a Work Center to run our manufacturing in. Remember we defined the Components at Location field on the Manufacturing Setup page earlier. As well as this, on the Production Order itself, you will define the Location Code in the Header. If you’re interested in learning about the setup, take a look at our post specific to Work and Machine Centers. This goes into greater detail on details like calendars and capacity.

To complement the Work Center, we also need a routing. This indicates the necessary stages to create the item and dictates how long each will take, as standard. We recently updated one of our posts on the topic, adding extra detail with relation to Serial and Parallel lines.

Posting the Production Journal

Before posting any Production Journal lines, let’s have a look at the Bin Contents. I have filtered by Location Code, Bin Code and Item No. There’s only three items here as I haven’t created the Black Keyboard yet. See below:

This shows the items and quantities in the BM-WH Location, Production bin, prior to posting any consumptions.

Remember, to access the Production Journal, on the production order, click ‘Line’ and ‘Production Journal’.

On the Production Journal, we can see the Components at Location value and Default Bin Code value pulling through. These are the values we set towards the start of the post.

We can see from this image that default values we set for the Location and Bin Code came through automatically onto the Production Journal. We set the Components at Location value on the Manufacturing Setup page and the Default bin value on the Bin Contents page.

After posting the Production Journal, we can see the Bin Contents values look like this:

The Bin Contents results have changed since posting the consumption on the Production Journal for our production order. We can now see a line which wasn't there before, containing Item 1070, the Black Keyboard. This shows the item was manufactured as expected. — Note, in this screenshot, I haven’t filtered by Bin Code. That’s because the Black Keyboard that’s created is placed in the Storage bin. So to show the quantity has increased, I have only filtered by Location and Item No.

This lines up with the component quantities in the Production BOM set up originally.

Item Ledger Entries

After posting consumption on the Production Journal, you can click ‘Related’, ‘Order’, ‘Entries’ and ‘Item Ledger Entries’.

The Item Ledger Entries indicate the result of posting the production journal. You don’t have to access the Item Ledger Entries from the production order. However, the advantage of doing it from here is it automatically applies the filters relevant to the specific order. You can post multiple Production Order entries, indicating different times of consumption. Remember, as soon as the status of an order changes to ‘Finished’, the order will no longer be in the Released Production Orders list.

The Item Ledger Entries shows us which items have been consumed and which have been outputted. This includes the quantity of these particular items. These are all posted entries and so can't be edited or deleted.

To change the status of an order, click ‘Process’ and then ‘Change Status’.

This image displays how users can change the Status of a Released Production Order. In our case, once the components have been consumed and the parent item is manufactured, we can set this to 'Finished'.

Closing remarks

Production is a massive element of Business central, and one that is multi-layered. However defining default values in manufacturing increases will hopefully help you run your production processes more efficiently. As we mentioned earlier, the other two linked posts linked will help create a clearer image of how manufacturing works in Business Central.

We greatly appreciate you taking the time to read this. If you’d like to get in contact with us, feel free! Make sure to follow us on LinkedIn to never miss when we post!