Manufacturing board

The manufacturing board is a kanban view of your production process. Your steps run from left to right, and every manufacturing order sits at the step it’s currently at.

It’s built from the steps in your manufacturing plans. If your products go through one step from start to finish, you don’t need a board. If they go through cutting, sewing, finishing and packing, the board shows how many orders are waiting at each of those steps.

Columns and stages

A board is made of columns, and columns hold stages.

A column is a point in your process. Columns run left to right in the order work happens, so the column on the left is your first step and the one on the right is your last. Columns don’t have names. The stages inside them do.

A stage is a step, like Cutting or Final QC. Most columns hold one stage. When two steps happen at the same time, put both stages in the same column. A workshop that measures first and then does embroidery and appliqué in parallel would set it up like this:

Column 1     Column 2        Column 3
Measuring    Embroidery      Packing
             Appliqué

The stages in a column split its height evenly, so each one gets its own list of orders.

How orders end up in a stage

Each stage follows one work order template. When a manufacturing order picks up a plan, every step in that plan becomes a work order built from one of these templates. The stage shows every manufacturing order with a work order from its template that’s either Waiting (nothing is blocking it any more) or In progress.

That has a few consequences:

An order shows up in the stage where its work can actually happen. Steps that are still blocked by an earlier step don’t appear yet. Once Cutting is completed, the order leaves the Cutting stage and appears under Sewing.
An order with two steps open at the same time shows up in both stages.
Orders on hold stay on the board, at the stage they were in, with an On hold badge. They’re still at that step, they just can’t move on until the hold is lifted.
Draft, completed and cancelled manufacturing orders aren’t on the board.

A work order template can be used by one stage per board. A stage without a template stays empty until you give it one.

You can’t drag a card to the next stage. An order moves on when its work order is completed, and the next stage picks it up from there.

The cards

Each order on the board is a card with:

The manufacturing order number
The status of its work order at this stage, or On hold if the order is on hold
The product’s image and name, plus the variant when the product has more than one
The quantity being made

Click a card to open the manufacturing order.

Every stage shows how many orders it holds. The first ten load straight away, and more load as you scroll down.

Search, sort and location

The search field above the board finds orders by order number, manufacturing order number, SKU or product name, across every stage at once.

The sort button orders the cards within each stage, the same way in every stage:

Sort	Sorts by
Ship by	The date the order has to ship. The default, soonest due first
Created	When the work order was created
Started	When work at this stage started

Each one sorts either way, so Started can show the work that’s been going longest or the work that’s just begun. Sorting by ship-by turns every stage into a to-do list: whatever has to leave next is at the top. See ship-by dates for how that date is worked out.

If you produce in more than one place, the location switcher next to the heading narrows the board to orders made at one production location.

Zooming in and out

The board, the manufacturing orders list and the work orders list show the same work in different amounts of detail. The zoom buttons in the top right of each page move between them:

Zoom out from the manufacturing orders list to see the board
Zoom in from the board to see the manufacturing orders list
Zoom in again to see the individual work orders

The location you picked stays selected when you zoom.

Deleting the board

Deleting the board removes its columns and stages. Your manufacturing orders, work orders, plans and work order templates aren’t touched. The board is only an overview of them. You can create a new board at any time.