Work orders are the business objects used to track work in process across the factory floor. They are generally created by Enterprise Resource Planning systems (ERP) as the result of a demand created by customer orders or a scheduled production cycle. When the ERP generates work orders, they can be automatically created in the InSite system by an automated interface such as InSite LiveConnect, or created manually using the Order Create function.

Creating Work Orders:
A work order is created by selecting a product from the list of available production products, selecting a quantity of units to be produced, and supplying appropriate information about the work order. Examples of this information are create date, due date, owner of the order, customer order number, and priority.

What is a production product?
InSite allows you to define many products in its database, but not all of these are appropriate to be production products. Many represent intermediate products that only exist for a short time during the manufacturing process. Others are the product identifiers for raw material or components that are consumed during manufacturing. To be a production product, the product description in InSite must have a Target Device assigned to it. All products with a target device listed are, by definition, production products.

Workflows:
All products have an associated workflow. A workflow is the set of steps (the specification for an operation) used to manufacture a product. For production products, this may be the entire production line. For temporary products, it may be just a few operations. One product may actually be able to use one of many workflows, but only one will be the default workflow. At Work Order, the Create the Order workflow is automatically assigned as the default. This can be changed in the next step (Scheduling).

Bill of Material:
Production products generally have a Bill of Material (BOM) that is used to make the product. This Bill of Material may come from the ERP system, but it is enforced and implemented by InSite in each operation where the materials are consumed. Work Orders by default use the Bill of Material associated with the production product, but this may be overridden by the automatic Work Order create from InSite Live Connect to give the work order a specific Bill of Material.

Bill of Process:
While the Bill of Material describes the components to use during manufacturing, the Bill of Process (BOP) specifies unique processing requirements. By default, the work order will use the Bill of Process associated wit the production process.