Understanding Work Order or Rate Schedule Creation
You can create work orders or rate schedules in several different ways. You can enter a work order header manually. You can also create a work order as a result of master production scheduling or material requirements planning. Finally, when you create a sales order line with line type W, the system automatically creates a work order.
After creating a work order header, you attach the parts list and routing instructions, as well as the co-products and by-products list, if applicable. You can perform these steps manually, interactively, or by using the Order Processing program (R31410). This batch program enables you to process multiple work orders or rate schedules. It performs these actions:
Updates the status of each work order or rate schedule.
Supplies the date to use for effectivity checking.
Issues inventory.
Prints shop paperwork.
Calculates standard costs for configured items.
enables substitute items to be used.
Generates a purchase order for an outside operation.
Usually, you enter all of the work order or rate schedule headers and then attach the parts lists, routing instructions, and list of co-products and by-products to create the work order or rate schedule, using the Order Processing program. However, you can either attach this information to the work order or rate schedule interactively or revise it manually after you run the batch program. For example, to change a part on the parts list or specify substitutes, you can do so manually after you run the batch program. When you attach routing instructions to the work order or rate schedule interactively or revise them manually, you can identify the percent of run time that a sequence can overlap the previous operation.
Regardless of the method that you use to attach the parts list, routing instructions, and list of co-products and by-products, you use the processing options for the Work Order Entry (P48013) and Order Processing programs to define information, such as the unit of measure to use for backscheduling the work order or rate schedule.
After you determine the resources that are required to produce the items requested, you can schedule the work order or rate schedule and begin the work. As you complete items on the work order or rate schedule, you report:
Items completed.
Materials used.
Quantities scrapped.
Hours of machine and personnel time expended.
You can report completions by operation to track work order or rate schedule activity as it is in process. Using the feature cost percent for configured items and the resource percent for process items, you can also calculate costs by operation and track inventory throughout the production process.