Production

What it does

If you make or assemble what you sell rather than buying it finished, this is where that work lives: what a product is made of, what has to be done to it, and the record of actually doing it.

The manufacturing side is fully available. Subcontracting — sending work out to someone else to do — is an early-access part of it, newer and thinner than the rest, so treat it as somewhere to try rather than somewhere to depend on.

What a thing is made of. A bill of materials lists the components and quantities that go into a finished item, and can be nested, so an assembly made of sub-assemblies is described once rather than flattened by hand. Routings, operations, workstations and workstation types describe the work itself — the steps, where they happen, and how long they take. Two tools sit alongside: one compares bills of materials against each other, and one updates a component across every bill that uses it, rather than leaving you to find them.

Planning. A production plan works out what to make and what to buy to make it, from demand. Material requirements planning and the production planning report answer the question behind it — given what's ordered and what's in stock, what has to happen. A master production schedule and item lead times carry the timing, and sales forecasts feed the demand side.

Doing the work. A work order authorizes making a specific quantity of something. Job cards record the work done against its operations, including who did it and how long it took. Stock entries move the components out and the finished item in, which is how production shows up in your stock counts. Downtime entries record when a workstation wasn't running, and the downtime analysis reports on it.

Subcontracting, at early access: subcontracting bills of materials, orders and receipts, with reports tracking raw materials that need transferring out and finished items still to come back.

When to use it

• You sell something you assemble or make. The bill of materials is the starting point — nothing else here works well without it being right.
• A component changed. The update tool pushes it through every bill of materials that uses it.
• You need to know what to make and buy. A production plan, and the material requirements behind it.
• Work is starting. A work order authorizes it and job cards record it as it happens.
• You want to know why output dropped. Downtime entries and the analysis over them, alongside work order and job card summaries.
• Someone else does a step for you. Subcontracting covers it — at early access, so expect gaps.

Use Stock and purchasing for buying the components in and counting them; this page is about consuming them.

How to use it

Ask for what you need in a sentence and Rufio prepares the right document — that making a quantity of something means a work order, and that recording work done against it means a job card.

The bill of materials is what everything else leans on. A work order takes its components from the bill, a production plan takes its requirements from the bills of everything planned, and the cost of a finished item follows from the components consumed. A wrong quantity in a bill of materials is not a small error — it propagates into planning, stock, and cost, and it usually shows up first as stock counts that drift for no visible reason.

At Suggest, documents are prepared and wait for your approval before submission. You can choose different permissions for recording completed work and authorizing future stock use. Keep either at approval or authorize a specific routine when it fits your process. See Autonomy levels.

Parameters

What Rufio needs from you. Your bills of materials: what goes into what, in what quantity, in the units you actually use. This is the input that matters most.

Your operations and routings, if you want to plan or cost the work rather than only the materials — the steps, the workstations they run on, and how long they take.

Item lead times, if planning needs to account for how long things take to arrive or to make.

Your warehouses, since production moves components out of one place and finished goods into another.

For subcontracting, who does the work and what you send them.

What you get back

A prepared work order, production plan, or job card, linked to the bill of materials and the demand it came from, waiting for you to submit.

For a planning question, what needs making and what needs buying, derived from actual demand and stock rather than from a guess.

For work in progress, the record: what was made, what it consumed, who did it, how long it took, and where a workstation sat idle.

For cost, a finished item whose cost follows from the components actually consumed and the operations actually recorded.

Limits

Rufio does not decide what to manufacture. A production plan proposes from demand; committing to it is yours.

It does not consume stock without a document. Components leave stock through an entry tied to a work order, which is what keeps counts and costs reconcilable.

It does not fix a bill of materials that is wrong. It applies what the bill says — if the quantity is wrong, everything downstream inherits it, and the symptom will look like a stock problem rather than a bill of materials problem.

It does not pay subcontractors, any more than it pays suppliers. That's a hard limit.

Subcontracting is early access. It works, but it is the least settled thing on this page.

Related

• Stock and purchasing — buying components in, and the counts production draws down
• Work and scheduling — tasks, assignment and approvals
• Money — what a finished item costs and what it is sold for
• Automation and reports — scheduled production reporting
• Autonomy levels — why recording work and authorizing it sit at different levels
• Every capability — the full list, and how settled each area is