Routings

A routing is the ordered sequence of operations that converts components into a finished product. It tells production where, in what order, and for how long the work happens — the time-and-process counterpart of the bill of materials, which describes what is consumed.

Routings are master data. When a work order is released, it copies the routing’s operations into its own list, and that list keeps its sequence. If you schedule the order later, Beelocity still reads the current times from the routing.

Creating a Routing

To author a new routing:

1. Navigate to Manufacturing > Setup in the sidebar and open the Routings tab.
2. Click New.
3. Fill in the header:
   • Number: it opens on the next number of the routings’ series, such as RTG-000001. Keep it, or type a number of your own.
   • Name — Human label (e.g., Office Chair Pro routing).
   • Version — Engineering version (e.g., v1, rev-A).
   • Status — Start in DRAFT while you build the operations list.
   • Product — Optional. The default product/variant this routing applies to.
   • Default: Mark Yes for the usual routing of this product. A new work order takes the routing that its bill of materials names, and not this mark. At most one Active routing per product and variant can hold it.
   • Priority: Shown on an alternate routing only. Beelocity stores this number, and nothing chooses a routing by it.
   • Effective From / Effective To: The days that you plan to use this routing. Beelocity only stores these dates, so it refuses nothing outside them. Leave Effective To blank if you plan no end.
4. Click Save. The routing is created in Draft status.

Adding Operations

Operations live on the Operations tab of the routing detail page. Click the tab, then New to open a dedicated page for the new operation.

Each operation is one step performed at one work center. Fill in:

Each time is a figure and a unit. Type the figure, and pick seconds, minutes or hours beside it. For example, type 45 and keep minutes for an assembly that takes three quarters of an hour. The page then reads the time back as 45m, and an hour and a half as 1h 30m.

Each operation is its own page — click Save on the operation page to commit it; there is no separate “save the routing” step. Click an operation’s name on the Operations tab to revisit and edit it.

The Operations tab’s filter button narrows by Work Center, Subcontract, Active, an Effective From / Effective To date range or any of the time, parallelism, yield, lead-time and cost ranges (Working with lists).

Adding the Operator’s Checklist

Once an operation is saved, open the Instructions tab on its page to build the operator-facing checklist of micro-steps. Use the operation’s Description field for the high-level summary of what the step achieves; keep the step-by-step “do this, then this” content in Instructions.

Each instruction is its own page: click New to open it (the Sequence is pre-filled with the next free gap — highest existing number + 10), and click an instruction’s text in the grid to revisit and edit it later.

For each instruction:

Instruction Kinds

The Kind field decides what the operator sees on the shop floor:

• Step — a plain checklist item. The operator clicks Done when the step is complete. Use this for ordinary instructions: “Align the stencil”, “Torque the screws to 4 Nm”, “Apply label”.
• Quality check — a pass/fail gate. The operator clicks Pass or Reject + reason. Pair with Rejection blocks completion when a failed check must stop the operation (e.g., “Visual inspection: no solder bridges”).
• Measurement — a numeric input with optional tolerance. The operator enters a value; if Min value and Max value are set and the reading falls outside, the item is auto-rejected. Use Unit to make the input self-describing (e.g., enter 1.95 with unit mm when the tolerance is 1.9 ≤ x ≤ 2.0).

The Instructions tab is hidden until you save the operation for the first time, since the items need a parent operation to attach to. To reorder, open an instruction and edit its Sequence number — re-sort happens automatically. To delete, use the row’s actions menu (or select rows and delete from the toolbar).

Once work-order progress tracking is enabled, the items checked off here are how we measure how far along an operator is in a step (e.g., “5 of 7 mandatory steps done”).

How operator results gate completion

When the WO is running, each instruction collects a result as the operator works through the checklist on the shop floor:

• Step → the result is recorded as Done once the operator ticks the checkbox.
• Quality check → the result is Pass or Reject. A reject requires a reason.
• Measurement → the operator enters a number. The server compares against Min value / Max value and resolves the result to Pass (in range) or Reject (out of range, with the value preserved for traceability).

When the operator clicks Complete on an operation, Beelocity checks every instruction whose Rejection blocks completion is on. If any of those still has an active Reject result, completion is refused with a “There are unresolved rejections on this operation” message — the operator must re-record the failing step as Pass (after the rework that fixed it) before the operation can finalise. Re-recording overwrites the previous attempt but keeps the full history for the audit trail.

Instructions whose Rejection blocks completion is off do not gate completion — a reject is logged for the record but the operator can still finish. Use this for informational checks that you want to track without holding production.

The Instructions tab filters by Kind, Optional, Active or an Estimated (s) range.

Operation Time Math

For an operation with quantity Q and parallelism P running at a work center with efficiency E:

op_setup_seconds = setup_time_seconds                       (independent of Q and E)
op_run_seconds   = (Q × run_time_per_unit_seconds) / E      (efficiency stretches/shrinks)
op_total_seconds = op_setup_seconds + op_run_seconds
op_capacity_hours = op_total_seconds × P / 3600             (parallelism multiplies the constraint draw)
op_cost          = op_capacity_hours × cost_rate_per_hour
                 + (Q × subcontract_unit_cost   if subcontract)

Queue and move times are scheduler-only — they push the next operation’s earliest start later, but they do not consume capacity and they do not absorb cost.

Example

A Cut tubes operation: setup 600 s, run 30 s/unit, parallelism 1, work center efficiency 0.92, cost rate 1200 DZD/hour. For a work order of 50 units:

op_setup_seconds  = 600
op_run_seconds    = (50 × 30) / 0.92 ≈ 1630
op_total_seconds  = 2230
op_capacity_hours = 2230 × 1 / 3600 ≈ 0.62
op_cost           = 0.62 × 1200 ≈ 744 DZD

Use the Cost Preview action on the routing detail page to compute this for the whole routing at any quantity.

On the Routings list, the filter button beside the search box narrows by Status, Product, Default, Active, Priority or an Effective From / Effective To date range (Working with lists).

Routing Lifecycle

Routings progress through four statuses:

A road runs along the top of the routing’s page: Draft → Active, the same two steps a bill of materials walks, since the two are written and put into service together. The button beside it takes the next one.

The other two statuses are not on that road, and are picked from the list of moves behind the status word instead:

• Pending approval is a detour off Draft, for a routing that waits for a reviewer. One that goes round by it rejoins the road at Active.
• Obsolete is the way out, from wherever the routing stands.

Hover a step to read when the routing reached it and who moved it.

To change a process, you can edit the operations of an Active routing. A work order that is already released keeps its copy of the sequence. A changed time still reaches that order if you schedule it after the change.

To keep the old process on record, create a new routing with the next Version label, and activate it. It has its own number. Then move the old routing to Obsolete.

Subcontract Operations

When a step is performed by an external supplier (powder coating, electroplating, heat treatment, screen printing, etc.), model it as a subcontract operation:

1. The Work Center must be a work center marked as Subcontract (with a Default Partner).
2. Toggle Subcontract on the operation.
3. Fill in Supplier Lead Time (days) — the cycle time the supplier quotes. The scheduler uses this in place of setup + run time.
4. Optional: Subcontract Partner to override the work center’s default supplier on this operation.
5. Optional: Subcontract Unit Cost — the per-unit price the supplier charges. Flows into the cost rollup as a direct cost, separate from labor + overhead absorption.

The Cost Preview shows subcontract costs broken out from labor and overhead.

Default and Alternate Routings

A product can have multiple ACTIVE routings:

• Default routing: The usual routing of a product. Beelocity does not pick it for you, because a new work order takes the routing that its bill of materials names. At most one Active routing per product and variant can be the default. To swap the default, deactivate the current default before you mark the new routing as default.
• Alternate routing: Another routing that you keep for the same product. Beelocity never picks one for you, even if a work center is full. To use it, pick it on the work order before you release it.

Seeing a product’s routings

Open the product from Products. If the product has at least one routing attached, a Routings tab appears alongside Overview / Variants / Units. The tab lists every routing attached to that product. Its Role column says whether each one is the Default, an alternate (Stands in for another routing), or a Primary, which is neither. Click a routing number to open it. The list is read-only — create, edit, and activate routings in the Routings module — and its filter button narrows it by Status, an Effective From range or Active. The tab is hidden for products with no routings, so a missing tab simply means none have been authored yet.

Cost Preview

To preview the cost of running a routing for a specific quantity:

1. Open the routing detail page.
2. Click Cost Preview in the action bar.
3. Enter the quantity (e.g., 100).
4. Beelocity computes the per-operation breakdown and the total — labor + overhead, subcontract, and grand total — using each operation’s work center efficiency and cost rate.

Use this when validating a quote, sanity-checking after a work-center cost-rate update, or comparing alternate routings.

Common Pitfalls

• Activating a routing without operations. A routing with zero active operations cannot be activated — you’ll get an error. Add at least one operation in DRAFT status before transitioning.
• Forgetting parallelism on multi-person ops. A two-person assembly with Parallelism = 1 will under-cost the operation by half. Always set parallelism to the actual headcount drawn from the work center.
• Editing an Active routing. Beelocity does not lock an Active routing, so your change reaches every work order that you release next. To keep the old process on record, create a new routing with the next Version label, activate it, and move the old routing to Obsolete.
• Mixing standard and subcontract on one operation. An operation is either fully internal or fully subcontract. If a step is partly outsourced (e.g., overflow during peak), model it as two routings, one all-internal and one with the subcontract operation. Then pick one on the work order.