Managing sales, manufacturing, and outsourcing processes based on order priorities is essential for operational flexibility.
If a situation changes (e.g., a customer requires a product sooner, or materials arrive late), you can drag-and-drop Sales and Manufacturing orders or change the Expected arrival date of Outsourced purchase orders to adjust their priority. Your production schedule, tasks, materials, and products will recalculate automatically based on the new priority.
Understanding how the priorities of sales, manufacturing, and outsourced purchase orders affect product and material commitments might take a few minutes to fully grasp, but once you do, it's good to know and easy to apply.
Orders with priority levels
In Katana, sales orders (Sell screen), manufacturing orders (Schedule tab of the Make screen), and outsourced purchase orders (Outsourcing tab of the Buy screen) have priority levels.
Depending on the situation, changing the priority of an order on the Sell screen also affects the priority level on the Make screen (and vice versa).
Understanding the link between a Sales and Manufacturing order
There are two types of Manufacturing orders in Katana — Make-to-Order and Make-to-Stock. Both are found in the Schedule tab of the Make screen so that you can manage production priorities from a single view.
Learn more about creating manufacturing orders.
A Make-to-Order manufacturing order (MO) is permanently linked to a specific sales order (SO). The priority of these MOs is automatically synced with their linked SO—changing the SO's priority automatically updates the production priorities in the Schedule tab and vice versa.
A Make-to-Stock MO isn't linked to an SO. Changing the SO priority won't affect the priority of these MOs and vice versa.
How priorities affect sales item availability
Sales items availability shows if the required product for a specific SO is In stock, Expected, or Not available. The priority of SOs in the Sell screen has a different effect on the Sales Items availability of an SO depending on if the products required by the SO are Made-to-Order or Made-to-Stock (Manufacturing orders don't have a Sales Items availability status).
If you create a Make-to-Order MO for products required by a SO, the Sales Items availability status won't be dependent on the SO priority. These SOs expect products from a linked MO and don't reserve products available In stock or being Made-to-Stock.
If you haven't created a Make-to-Order MO for a SO, the Sales Items availability for this SO is calculated based on the priority of the SO. Higher priority SOs reserve products in your stock or products expected from Make-to-Stock Manufacturing orders or outsourced purchase orders (OPO) first. This means that even if you have some quantity of the required product In stock, the Sales Items availability for this particular SO may show Not available if another higher priority SO has already reserved the same product.
Learn more about Sales items availability.
How priorities affect Ingredients availability
Ingredients availability displays whether the required ingredients for a product on a SO, MO, or OPO are In stock, Expected, or Not available.
Ingredient availability is displayed for sales, manufacturing, and outsourced purchase orders. Ingredient availability on an MO provides stock information to the production floor. On a SO, this information is especially relevant for Make-to-Order businesses because it gives immediate information about the availability of materials required for making customer-ordered products. On an OPO, Ingredient availability tells you if there's a sufficient quantity of ingredients available at the contractor's location.
The status of Ingredient availability is calculated based on order priority. Materials aren't permanently linked to any order, so even if you have the required ingredients in stock, the Ingredients availability for a particular order may show Not available if a higher priority order already reserved the same ingredient.
Both SOs and MOs reserve materials you have In Stock or Expected but are displayed in separate lists (Sell screen and Make screen > Schedule tab), which don't always match.
For example:
You didn't create a Make-to-Order MO for all existing Sales orders
You have a Make-to-Stock MO for the product(s) that no current SO requires.
How Katana combines all order priorities to display relevant Ingredient availability statuses
How are the order priorities from the Sell screen, Make screen > Schedule tab, and Buy screen > Outsourcing tab combined to display relevant Ingredient availability statuses?
Katana uses the following principles for Ingredients availability calculations:
Stock transfers are the highest priority orders (above SOs) for committing stock. The stock transfer priority between each location is decided by the Expected dispatch date (the earlier the date, the higher the priority). In the Destination location, the items and quantities will be shown as expected.
All open sales, manufacturing, and outsourced purchase orders in the same location (Track ingredients in location for OPOs) are evaluated as a single queue
If Sales Items availability for a product on an SO is In stock, the Ingredients availability for this product is Processed, and materials are no longer committed to this product (this product doesn't take part in Ingredients availability calculations)
If Sales Items availability for a product on an SO is Expected and a Make-to-Order MO produces the product, the Ingredients availability is calculated based on the SO priority in the queue (i.e., all higher orders reserve materials first)
If Sales Items availability for a product on a SO is Expected and a Make-to-Stock MO or OPO produces the product, the Ingredients availability for this product displays the Ingredients availability status of that MO or OPO
In the queue, existing Make-to-Stock MOs have a priority position in your Schedule tab relative to any Make-to-Order MO behind or in front of them. Make-to-Stock MOs will always have a priority over Sales orders that book ingredients directly from stock (i.e., SOs with Not available Sales Items availability)
All MOs have priority over OPOs in the same location. The priority of different OPOs is determined by the Expected arrival date, where the earliest date is the highest priority
If Sales Items availability for a product on a SO is Not available, the required ingredients for making the missing product are booked directly to the SO. This gives you information about Ingredients availability before adding the related MO to the Schedule tab. It is important to note that all open Manufacturing orders prioritize reserving ingredients before any such SO. In other words, manufacturing always has a priority on ingredients over Sales orders that don't have scheduled production
In the Schedule tab, the Ingredients availability for a Make-to-Order MO is displayed based on the Ingredients availability for the products on the underlying SO in the queue.
Learn more about Ingredients availability.
Order priority for subassemblies
Orders that require the final product are allocated higher priority than orders with items that can be used in the final product.
Here’s the availability priority calculation order:
Stock transfer rows: prioritized by date
SO rows / MO recipe rows: prioritized by a shared ranking system
PO recipe rows (OPO ingredients): prioritized by date
SO recipe rows (ingredients for unavailable sales items): prioritized by ranking
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