Manufacturing
“Which document actually takes stock out?” In manufacturing, none of them. The job order and the packing order move nothing and post nothing: every line they write carries a quantity sign and an amount sign of 0. Stock moves only when a supervisor takes one process instance (one step of a job) to FINAL, and when it does, no cost travels from the materials used to the item made — the accountant sets the finished item’s cost with Reset MA before it is sold. This section is for the production planner, the floor supervisor, the packing supervisor and the accountant who has to value what came off the line.
Start here. Set up the recipe in Process Maintenance first: every job order needs it. Then follow a job through all four applets — what each writes, which tool to choose, where each production figure comes from, symptoms and the one-minute check — on Production Planning and Monitoring › The four manufacturing applets together. The module view, with the cost and ledger story in full, is Manufacturing Module. A worked job follows below.
What each applet writes, and the one step that moves stock
The four applets share one set of production records and are used in this order.
| Applet | Whose screen | Use it for |
|---|---|---|
| Process Maintenance | Whoever owns the production recipe | Machines, process and job templates: how a product is made, once. Planned quantities only |
| Production Planning and Monitoring | The production planner | Job orders and their process instances; production requests from sales-order lines |
| Manufacturing Operations | Operators and the floor supervisor | Work logs and bins; the supervisor’s FINAL on a process instance is the one step that moves stock |
| Packing Order (Internal) | The packing desk and its supervisor | Packing against a sales order; it moves no stock, except on its Auto Coil screens |
A job at the GadgetSphere Distribution workshop
GadgetSphere Distribution (GSD) assembles a house-brand braided charging cable in a workshop at its Klang Valley warehouse, GS-KV-01. A corporate customer orders 2,000 on a sales order. Sales sets the line’s MRP tab to REQUESTED, and the planner sees it under Production Request. Marking it APPROVED writes a status on the sales-order line and nothing else, so the planner raises a job order for 2,000 in Master List and picks the group named after the cable, Braided cable 2 m-OPT-1. The drop-down lists every item’s groups, and another item’s group would quietly give the job another item’s steps. The planner adds the sales-order line on the Sales Order Link tab and presses Generate Process Instance: three instances, cut, coil and pack-test, with inputs planned at ratio × 2,000.
On the floor the operator opens the cut instance and chooses bins of bulk cable. One drum on the shelf offers less than it holds, because another job’s instance still holds a lock on part of it. The operator logs the shift, and the supervisor approves the log, checks that every line has its bins and actual quantity, and presses FINAL. The bulk cable leaves GS-KV-01 at its running average; 2,050 cut lengths arrive at RM 0, because this is the first run at that location. The coil step turns READY. Before anyone invoices the cables, the accountant sets the finished cable’s cost with Reset MA; otherwise the sales invoice’s cost of goods would read RM 0.
When the last step is finalised, the supervisor moves each instance from FINAL to COMPLETED, and only then does the planner set the job order COMPLETED. The packing desk raises a packing order knocked off from the sales order and finalises it. The line appears in the Operator Queue, the operator records the packed quantity and a length marking, and the supervisor approves it. That approval releases the whole stock reservation held for the sales order, so a second line waiting to be packed is no longer held either. Nothing moved in stock at the packing desk; the cables were already in stock from the last FINAL.