Ledgr/Documentation/Production

Production

Watch the lesson: Run a work order on the Production screen (2:12).

Where the work actually happens. Material planning proposes work orders; Production owns them — releases them, books the hours, issues the material, and tells you afterwards what the difference cost.

Set up in this order

The tabs are Work orders, Work centres, Routings, Capacity, WIP & standard costs and Scrap. Work orders comes first because it is where the day's work is; setting up goes in this order instead, and skipping a step leaves the next with nothing to work from.

1. Work centres

   A machine, a bench, a line or a subcontractor. Each carries a labour rate per hour, an overhead rate, its capacity for a working day and which days it works. This is where the cost of an hour is decided — every labour figure downstream reads it from here.

2. Routings

   How a product is made: the ordered steps, which work centre each runs on, the setup and run hours for each, and the expected yield. The routing is what a work order is measured against, so a product with no routing can still be built — you simply cannot be told whether it took longer than it should have.

3. Work orders

   The commitment to build a quantity by a date. Raised here with New work order, or converted from a material planning recommendation. For a product that comes in variants, choose the variant: the job is made by that variant's own recipe if it has one (the family recipe if not), draws the parts that recipe names, and its finished goods are that variant's stock. Make to order on a quote raises one job for each variant its lines ask for.

4. Capacity

   Four weeks of planned hours against available hours per centre, with overloads highlighted. Public holidays come from the Public Holidays Act, including the Sunday rule; your own shutdowns go in as date ranges.

Running a work order

1. Release it

   Planned becomes released. The routing's steps are copied onto the order at that moment, so later edits to the routing do not rewrite an order already on the floor. The quantity to start is scaled by the routing's yield — build 100 good units at 96% yield and the order starts 105.

2. Start an operation, then book hours against it

   Hours add rather than replace, so a step worked across two shifts is booked twice and a mis-keyed entry is corrected by booking the negative. An operation nobody has booked reads "not booked" — it is never quietly assumed to have taken its planned time.

3. Issue material

   Issue material on an open work order picks the recipe's requirement for however many units you say — the whole outstanding quantity if you leave it blank — and moves all of it from stock into work in progress at what the batches actually cost. Or leave it, and Complete backflushes the material then. Either way, if any component is short the whole issue is refused, naming each short component, rather than costing the shortfall at catalogue price and carrying on.

4. Complete it

   Enter the good quantity and choose whether to close the order or leave it open for a second run. Finished units are received into stock at standard cost. When the order closes, the difference between standard and actual belongs to the goods while you still hold them: the share for units still on the shelf is added to their cost in stock, and only the share for units already sold (and any scrap) is posted to the variance accounts.

An order can be cancelled while it is planned, released or in progress; anything already issued or booked to it is written off from work in progress to Manufacturing Scrap / WIP Write-off (5078). A completion can be reversed while the units it received are still in stock — after they have been sold, the correction is a stock adjustment, not an unwind.

The shop floor, for the person at the machine

Shop floor in the sidebar is the screen for whoever is doing the work. It shows the steps waiting on the floor, the planner's instructions and drawing for each, and three things to press: Clock on, Pause and Finish. Nothing else in Production is there, because nothing else is theirs to change. Give someone the Operator role and they can work the floor without being able to re-cost a job or edit a route.

• The clock keeps the hours. Clocking on starts the time against that step and that person; Pause stops it; Finish asks how many units were made and whether any were scrapped, and books the clocked hours. Several people can be on one step at once, and the step says who is on it and since when.
• Hours belong to a person. A booking made from the office can name who worked it (Worked by); left blank, it is whoever is signed in. The Capacity tab shows each person's hours and efficiency over the last 30 days.
• A machine that stops is marked down. Machine down records when and why a work centre stopped — a breakdown, a power outage, waiting for material, a changeover, no operator or planned maintenance — and Back up ends it. The lost hours come off that centre's capacity, and the Capacity tab shows availability, performance, quality and OEE for each centre, with the mean time between breakdowns (MTBF) and the mean time to repair one (MTTR).
• A machine can record its own stops. Press Connect machine on a machine in the Capacity tab, and Ledgr makes a key for it, shown once. A gateway on the line, or the machine's own controller, uses the key to send running, stopped or fault, with its own numbering and the good and rejected parts it counted. The key can send signals for that machine and nothing else, and it cannot read anything. A stop that lasts two minutes (or the threshold set on the work centre) becomes a stop under Stops marked Not said yet, and capacity and OEE count it. Someone then chooses why it stopped. A shorter stop is counted as a micro-stop, and the same signals sent twice are counted once. When the machine counts its parts, OEE's quality uses its count instead of the bookings. Ledgr does not supply hardware: anything that can send an HTTPS request will do.
• A machine's service is planned. Press Service on a machine in the Capacity tab and add a plan: the service, who does it (a supplier, or your own maintenance team added as a contact), how much downtime it takes, and when it falls due. That can be after a number of hours run, after a number of units made, or on a calendar. Hours and units are counted from what is booked on the machine since its last service. When a plan falls due, Ledgr raises a job card for whoever services it, booked for the next morning, and those hours come off the machine's capacity. Completing the card starts the count again. The check runs every night, and Check now runs it straight away. Plans raise job cards, so they need Job Cards on your plan.

Instructions, checks and holds

• Instructions and files reach the step. What the planner writes on a route step, and the drawings filed against it, are copied onto the work order at release and shown on the step, in the office and on the shop floor.
• Checks are recorded before a step closes. A route step can carry checks — a measurement with limits, a pass or fail, or a note. They are copied onto the order at release, and a step with a check still unrecorded cannot be closed. A check need not run on every order: it can fall on every n-th order (every 5th batch is weighed) or on a random sample (a tenth of orders), and the same order is always picked the same way.
• Periodic checks are the HACCP log. The Checks tab keeps readings the clock calls for rather than an order — a cold room every four hours, a fryer's oil once a day. Each falls due on the plant's clock from midnight, is recorded once (a pass or fail, or a reading judged against its limits), and is marked missed if nobody records it before its time is up. A late reading can still be entered; it stays marked missed.
• A failed check holds the job. The order cannot be completed while a hold is open. Someone decides it: release it as good, rework it (which adds a rework step to the order), or scrap it. Every decision keeps its note.
• Non-conformances name the job and the lot. Raise NCR on a hold or a completion opens an item on your Workflows non-conformance board that names the work order and the finished lot, and the order lists every NCR raised against it.
• Rework is its own order. Rework on a completion sends some of that lot back: a rework order draws exactly those units, says why, and returns them as a new lot when it completes. From the booking dialog, Rework them instead does the same for units you were about to scrap.

Codes, travellers and labels

Print on a work order produces its traveller: the header, a code for the order, every step with its own code and a place to sign it off, and the pick list. Labels on a completion prints a label for the lot it made. Scanning any of those codes — with the Scan button in Production or on the shop floor — opens the order, opens the step ready to book, or finds the lot. A product barcode scanned in the Issue dialog picks that item.

Labels a retailer can scan (GS1-128)

Give a product its GTIN — the number GS1 South Africa issued for it — on the product in Inventory, and Labels prints a GS1-128 barcode on an A6 label as well as Ledgr's own code: the GTIN, the lot's expiry and the lot number, with the same line in words underneath. Choose Case to add how many units the case holds, or Pallet to add a code that names that one pallet (an SSCC), numbered from your GS1 company prefix in Settings → Company. Every pallet label gets a new number, a reprint included, and no number is used twice. A GTIN whose last digit is wrong is refused with the right one, and a GS1-128 scanned in the Issue dialog picks the item and the lot on the label.

Sending your own material to a subcontractor

When a coater, plater or toll processor works on your material, open the order's Outside work card and press Send material on the step. Choose the parts from the job's recipe and how much goes. The material moves to a location in that supplier's name and stays your stock, so your stock value does not change and nothing is posted. When their work is booked in, Ledgr uses the recipe's share for the units that came back from their location, not from your store. The card shows each part as sent, used, back and still with them. Bring back unused returns whatever is left to your store.

Two or more plants

Give each work centre the location it stands in. When work centres stand in two or more locations, Capacity, OEE and the Schedule show a Site choice, and each plant plans its own hours. A work order made at a plant (its location) runs every step on that plant's work centre of the same name, so one routing serves both plants. If the plant has no centre of that name, the release is refused and tells you which one to add. A step you add by hand must use one of the plant's own work centres. An order with no location, or made at a store with no work centres, runs where the routing says, so a business with one site sees no change.

Changing an order on the floor

• Move it. Any open order's dates and priority can be changed after it is created, and the Schedule tab shows each work centre as a lane with its steps across the days ahead. It can lay work forward from today, or back from each job's due date so nothing starts before it need be, and it allows for each centre's queue days. Drag a bar sideways to move its order by whole days — its start and due date move together — or tap it to type the dates. A move that would take a work centre past its hours on any day says so and asks first. Capacity lists what each centre takes next, by priority and then date.
• Edit or skip a step. A released order's own step can have its hours or work centre changed, or be skipped with a reason, which is what the order's history shows in its place. This changes that job only; the route is untouched.
• Issue something else, or send it back. The Issue dialog has three choices: For units picks the recipe's requirement; One item issues a single item — the recipe's own, a substitute or something the recipe does not list; Return to store gives back what the job holds, at the price it was charged.
• Choose the lot. With One item, you choose which lot it comes from. The lot that expires first is offered first. If the lot you choose holds less than you are issuing, the issue is refused rather than topped up from another lot, so the lot you named is the only lot the job used. Choose No particular lot and stock draws its lots the way the item is costed.
• Send a step out. On a step the route marks as outside work, Order outside work raises the requisition for the supplier from the step itself; receiving the purchase order books the step.
• Make what is short. When a sub-assembly the job needs is short, the order's Sub-assemblies section offers Raise for what is short: a work order for each, linked to this one, which finishes before this order starts.

What a completion receives

• Everything the recipe makes. When a recipe makes more than one thing — a main product and a by-product — completing the order receives each into stock, splits the cost between them the way the recipe says, and shows what else was made beside the completion. Each output lot traces back to the lots that went in.
• A lot number and an expiry. The goods go into stock under the lot number you give on the completion, or the work order's number if you leave it blank. A product with a Shelf life (on its product form, in days) makes lots that expire that many days after the day they are made — or the date you choose on the completion. A made lot then expires exactly like a bought one: issued first when it expires first, warned about before it expires, and printed with its use-by date on the lot label.
• A recall names the customers. Trace a lot on Work orders follows a lot forward to every lot made from it, and then to who received them: each customer, the invoice, delivery or job card, the lot and the quantity, net of anything the same document took back. Download recall list saves it as a spreadsheet with each customer's email and phone, ready to send on. A lot that has not left the business says so. Goods a customer returned on a credit note stay on the list, so a recall errs towards telling someone rather than missing them.
• Serial numbers, one per unit. An item tracked by serial number is completed with a serial for every unit made, and a serial-tracked part is issued by naming the serials that go in. Trace a serial on the order shows the job that made a unit and the serials built into it. Reversing a completion removes the serials it created.

WIP and standard costs

The WIP & standard costs tab is account 1315 in detail: what has been issued and booked to open orders and not yet received into stock. It should equal the ledger balance exactly. If it does not, the difference is a posting error somewhere else and this tab is where you will see it first.

The same tab holds the standard cost per item and the roll-up that produced it. The roll-up walks each bill of materials from the bottom up, so a change to a component's cost reprices everything above it in one pass — and it reports a recipe that refers to itself rather than looping. A bought part is valued at its planning cost, then its cost price, and if neither is set, at what the stock you hold of it cost — so a job released before anyone has rolled up a standard still puts its goods into stock at what they cost.

It also shows how the floor is doing over the last 90 days: On time (orders finished by their due date), Output vs plan, Labour efficiency (planned hours against booked, on closed steps), the money in WIP by how long ago each job was released, and the orders finished each week.

The variances

When an order is closed, the gap between standard and actual is split by cause rather than landed as one number, because each has a different owner and a different fix, and each posts to its own account. A positive figure is unfavourable — it cost more than standard. The table shows the whole variance of the job; what reaches the variance accounts is the part that belongs to units already sold, because the rest is the true cost of goods still in stock. Rolling up standards names any bought part whose stock now costs more than 5% away from its standard, so the standard can be reviewed.

Scroll the table sideways to see every column.

Scrap

Scrap by reason, work centre, product and operator, ranked by what it cost rather than by how often it happened — the cheap frequent one is rarely the expensive one. Reasons are bucketed into what you control and what you do not, and load shedding is broken out on its own, because a cycle cut mid-process is not a quality problem and should not be counted as one.

A scrapped unit is costed as a unit the job started, at the step that scrapped it: the material drawn by then, the run hours of the steps up to it, and the charge of any outside step it had already been through. On a 92% route that starts 44 to deliver 40, the cost is worked per unit of the 44, not of the 40.

Lots in, lots out

Every work order records which supplier batches went in and which finished batches came out. That is what makes a recall answerable in the direction you actually need it: start from the supplier's lot number on their notification and get the list of your own finished batches affected, through however many levels of sub-assembly sit between them.

It works because the batch is captured at the moment of issue, with its supplier and expiry — see inventory for how batch layers move and are costed.

Why the URL says "shop floor"

This screen used to be called Shop Floor. The address kept the old word so that links people already had carry on working. The screen, the guide and the app's sidebar all say Production.

Common problems