You can drag and drop a Manufacturing order (MO) in the Schedule tab to change its priority. A Manufacturing order's priority affects Ingredients availability and Production Deadline calculations. It enables managing tasks for the production team (i.e. production scheduling).
The priority of a MO that is linked to a specific Sales order (SO) affects the priority of that SO in the Sell screen. Read more about the types of Manufacturing orders.
Why is Manufacturing Order priority important?
1. It affects Ingredients Availability
Orders with a higher position have a priority in reserving required materials and subassemblies in stock. Materials are not directly linked to any MO or SO but are always reserved based on order priority. Even if you have the required ingredient in your inventory, the Ingredients availability for a lower-ranked MO may still show Not available if a higher priority MO or SO has already reserved the same ingredient. Reprioritizing orders can change Ingredients availability status.
Example:
You created 3 Manufacturing orders for products, each requires 4 pcs of "Material X" (i.e. include this material in their Product recipes with a quantity of 4 pcs). For simplicity, let's assume no other materials are needed for producing these products and there are no open Sales Orders for which those products are Not Available (as this can affect Ingredients availability if these Sales Orders are ranked higher).
The inventory list for "Material X" shows you have 5 pcs In stock and 4 pcs Expected. Also, the Committed column in the inventory list shows 12 pcs that are related to these 3 Manufacturing orders (read more about the Inventory tab).
The highest-ranking MO shows Ingredients availability as In stock since the quantity In stock is larger than required by this MO.
The MO with the 2nd highest rank shows Ingredients availability as Expected. Although the quantity In stock is 5 pcs, the MO with a higher rank has already reserved 4 out of 5 pcs, and there isn't enough left for this MO. 4 pcs have already been ordered and are expected to arrive.
The MO with the lowest rank shows Ingredients availability as Not available. Although the quantity In stock is 5 pcs and Expected is 4 pcs, the Manufacturing Orders with higher ranks have already reserved 8 out of 9 pcs (In stock + Expected), and there is not enough left for this MO. In this case, you should create a new Purchase order for "Material X".
If you change the order priority, Ingredients availability will be recalculated.
2. It affects the Production Deadline of Manufacturing orders
Manufacturing orders are assumed to be produced by order priority. If you enabled automatic calculation of Production Deadlines, the deadlines would be calculated based on the production time of Manufacturing orders and your average weekly throughput, taking into account the order priority. The Production time for a product can be set in Production Operations on the product card.
3. Enables managing production schedule and setting priorities for the manufacturing team
The team can organize their tasks according to MO priority.
If you are looking to manage the production tasks at a more detailed level, you can define Production Operations for each product and assign each step to a specific Resource and Operator.
Use the Shop Floor App and the Tasks tab in the Make screen to manage a more detailed task list for Resources and Operators. The production operations in the Tasks tab are ordered in the same priority as the connected Manufacturing orders in the Schedule tab.
How to change Manufacturing order priority
You can drag and drop a MO to a new position in the Schedule tab.
To recap, this is what happens when you reprioritize Manufacturing orders:
The Ingredients availability status is automatically recalculated based on the new priority.
If you change the position of a Make-to-Order MO (read more), the priority of a linked SO will also be updated in the Sell screen.
The production operations in the Tasks tab and tasks in the Shop Floor App are reprioritized based on the new order of Manufacturing orders.