Bills of materials and routings

A production bill of materials (for food: recipe) describes what a product is made of and how it is made – e.g. roasted coffee from green coffee and packaging. It is the basis for production orders and planning. Not to be confused with the Set bill of materials in the item, which describes a sales set made up of several items (see Bills of materials in the item).

The Production → Bills of materials page has three tabs: Bills of materials & recipes, Work centres & machines and Staff.

#Before you start

• Bills of materials, routings and work centres are maintained by anyone with the permission “Maintain bills of materials, routings and work centres” (owner, administration). Others can only view them.
• The product and components must exist as items.

#Creating work centres

1. Open Production → Bills of materials, tab Work centres & machines (or Production → Settings → Work centres & machines).
2. Click New work centre and enter the Code (e.g. ROEST-1), Name, Type, Cost rate per hour (station costs incl. staff) and Capacity per working day.
3. Optional: Staging bin – warehouse and Staging bin – bin (WMS warehouses only). The warehouse app brings the material for production there, and production takes it from there.
4. In the Staff tab you assign the people who work here (see Staff and working times).
5. Save.

#Creating a bill of materials

1. In the Bills of materials & recipes tab, click New bill of materials.
2. Choose the Product, enter a Name / variant and the Base quantity – the component quantities apply to this quantity.
3. Use Add component… to add the ingredients or parts: quantity per base quantity and Scrap in percent (increases the requirement).
4. Optional: under Routing, enter the Operations with Work centre, Setup time and Run time. Without a work centre, an operation counts without costs. For each operation you can create inspection steps – to tick off or as a measured value with unit and tolerance; they are recorded in the production app.
5. Turn on Default for the product if this variant is normally used (shown as “Default” in the list, otherwise “Alternative”). A product can have several variants; exactly one is the default.
6. Click Create bill of materials.

#Costing and structure

On the right, the editor shows live:

• Costing (target) – material incl. scrap × purchase price (preferred or cheapest supplier; self-made components recursively from their bill of materials) plus (setup time + run time) × cost rate. With Lot size for costing you spread the setup time over a lot size.
• Structure (multi-level) – all levels resolved. A Circular reference (a product contains itself) is rejected.

#Best-before rule of the product

On the Best before tab you define how allverto suggests the product's best-before date (add-on module Batches): Best-before base date – Manual, Production date, Earliest component best-before date or Latest component best-before date (from the issued batches) – plus Additional time in days. The date is then pre-filled when confirming; the production app posts it too if the order has no best-before date of its own.

#Partial quantities and recipes (kg, l, g)

Components with a divisible unit – kg, g, t, l, ml, cl, m, cm, mm, m², m³ (unit in the item) – are calculated with up to three decimal places. A recipe with 0.25 kg of flour per piece needs exactly 0.25 kg for an order of 1 piece and 0.75 kg for 3 pieces; scrap is added proportionally. Components counted in pieces (e.g. pcs) stay whole numbers and are rounded up to whole units. A smaller stock unit (g instead of kg) is no longer needed for this.

#By-products

On the By-products tab you enter items that are additionally created during production (co-products, e.g. whey, bran, offcuts), each with a quantity per base quantity. The product itself and components of the bill of materials cannot be by-products. Every completion books the by-products in proportion to the good quantity – see production order.

#Managing bills of materials

In the list (right-click): Open and edit, Create production order, Open item, Archive / Reactivate, Delete. Archived bills of materials can no longer be selected for new orders.