Work centers and bins
Work centers define the area where a production operation takes place within the business (for example, a specific workshop, room or section of the shop floor). A work center should contain all of the components needed for the production operation.
Within a work center, bins help further organize where you take components from, and where you store output finished products or semi-finished items. This can be as simple as taking components from and delivering outputs for all operations to your shop floor without using bins at all, or as complex as using separate bins for the consumption and output of each work center.
Prerequisites
Advanced Manufacturing must be included in or added on to your subscription.
You will need the Advanced Manufacturing: Capacity Planner permission to use work centers.
You should have defined your shop floor and logistics path.
You should know how to add or edit locations and bins.
Add work centers
Before you can create production BOMs and start carrying out production orders, you will need add work centers.
Select Production from the main menu and go to the Setup section.
Select theWork centers tab.
Click the + Add button to add a new work center.
Enter a unique work center Code to identify your work center.
If this is a co-manufacturing location, specify Co-man or Purchase co-man. This will also allow you to choose the Mode of co-manufacturing procurement.
Enter the work center Name.
You can choose a color for your work center (optional). Type in the hex code or use the palette to select your color. This will affect the how production operations taking place in that work center are displayed in the Scheduler.
If you use consumption and output bins, select the relevant bins for this work center. If no bins are selected, the work center will use the shop floor to pick components or place production outputs.
Set the work center State. Production operations can take place in operational work centers, and can't take place if the work center is non-operational.
Save your changes.
Consumption and output bins
In a busy shop floor with many different work centers, you’ll likely move components, semi-finished products, and finished products around different areas at the same shop floor location. On the other hand, your operation might be small enough that it’s easier for all of these things to be stored in the same area. In Cin7 Core you can use two types of bin to organize your production inputs and outputs:
Consumption bins: The work center will pick components from this bin to use in the production operation. Each work center can pick from multiple consumption bins. This includes semi-finished components that have already gone through some stages of the production process.
Output bins: The work center will store any finished products or outputs of the production operation in this bin. Each work center can only have one output bin.
Here we'll explain which setup is likely to work best for your business. We recommend starting simple while you get used to the Advanced Manufacturing module and adding complexity as and when you need it.
Work center with no bins
If you choose to have no bins for your work center, all production activities will use your shop floor. So, all components are taken from your shop floor and all finished products (and semi-finished components) are output to your shop floor. As everything is coming from and going to the same place, Cin7 Core won't generate any transfers or register any stock movements.
If your manufacturing operation is small, or you only have a few people working on your shop floor, keeping everything in one place is likely to be the best option.
Consumption bin only
If you need some more organization between where you store components and other material at your shop floor, start by mapping a Consumption bin to one or more of your work centers. You can then either:
Leave the Output bin blank to deliver any operation outputs or finished products to the shop floor
Select the same bin for Consumption bin and Output bin to deliver and store all components, semi-finished components, and finished products for this work center in the same bin.
Cin7 Core will generate transfer orders when items are moved to a bin or from a bin to the shop floor.
Consumption bins and output bins
If you have a large shop floor with many work centers, a complex production process, and many handovers of production inputs and outputs, you might need even more separation. In this case, map a Consumption bin and Output bin to your work centers. Cin7 Core will generate transfer orders when items move between bins, which provides a detailed and transparent trail of stock movements.
Add bins to your work centers
You need to create the bins before you can add them to your work centers. The same consumption bin can be added to multiple work centers.
You can add bins to your work centers in two ways:
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From the main menu, select Settings, then Reference books.
Select Locations and pick your shop floor location.
Add a Consumption bin to a work center from the Bins tab.
Add Consumption bins and Output bins when you add a work center.
Add suspend reasons
Production might stop for a period, for example, maintenance or mechanical failure. When suspending production (while carrying out a production operation, you must select a reason from a predefined list of suspend reasons. This reason will appear in the Cin7 CoreActivity logs and Audit report. Suspended work centers will display the reason for suspension for any other users accessing the operation.
Select Production from the main menu and go to the Setup section.
Select the Suspend reasons tab.
Use the settings Gear
to change the table display, including which work centers are visible.
Click + Add to add a new suspend reason and enter a name.
Select whether this type of downtime is Planned, Unplanned, or Undefined. For example, you can have a suspend reason for planned maintenance and unplanned maintenance.
Use the check boxes to make a suspend reason available for a work center.
Save your changes.
Delete a work center
You can delete a work center by clicking X Delete next to the entry. Work centers can only be deleted if they have not been used in any production operations. You can undo production orders that have used that work center in the past and then delete the work center.
Alternatively, you can hide the work center from production operations by changing the State to Non-operational.