# Manufacturing plans **A manufacturing plan saves your production workflow so you can reuse it.** Define the sequence of steps once, set their dependencies, and every matching manufacturing order automatically receives those steps as work orders. Think of a plan as the recipe card for your production floor: how we build this product, in this order, with these dependencies. Cut must finish before sew. Sew must finish before finish. Finish and QC must both complete before pack. The plan makes these relationships explicit. ## What a plan contains ### Steps Each step in a plan is a unit of work: Cut fabric, Sew panels, Assemble frame, Final QC. Each step has a name that appears on the manufacturing order as a work order, so your production team knows exactly what to do and when. ### Work order templates Every step is built from a *work order template*, a reusable kind of work like "Final QC". Create it once and you can pick it in every plan that needs quality checking. A step takes its name from its template when you add it. ### Dependencies Steps can depend on each other. Common patterns: - **Sequential**: Cutting must finish before sewing starts - **Parallel**: Sewing and assembly can run simultaneously - **Convergent**: Packing waits for both finishing AND quality check The plan keeps these relationships explicit, so there's no ambiguity about what runs next or what can run in parallel. ### Targets A plan needs to know which products it applies to. Set targets to assign the plan to: - Specific product variants (most specific match) - Entire products - Product collections - Or set it as your shop's default plan (least specific match) Orderkraft matches each manufacturing order to the most specific plan that fits. ## How a plan becomes work orders When a made-to-order, personalised, or built-on-the-fly line item sells, Orderkraft creates a manufacturing order. That order then gets matched to a plan using this hierarchy: 1. **Variant-level plan**: The exact product variant 2. **Product-level plan**: The product itself 3. **Collection-level plan**: One of the product's collections 4. **Shop default plan**: Your fallback plan Once matched, the plan's steps are **copied** into the manufacturing order as work orders, preserving all dependencies between them. This is important: work orders are copies, not live references. Editing a plan later doesn't retroactively change orders already in production. The manufacturing order then starts at the first work order with no unfinished dependencies. As work orders complete, dependent ones become startable. When the last work order finishes (or auto-complete is enabled), the manufacturing order itself completes. ## Auto-complete setting Each plan has an auto-complete toggle. When enabled, completing the last work order on a manufacturing order automatically completes the manufacturing order itself. This removes one click from your production team's workflow. Disable auto-complete if you want someone to review the finished product or sign off before marking the order complete. ## Default plan Your shop can have **one default manufacturing plan**. This is your safety net: new products with no specific plan automatically match the default, so you can start using plans immediately without setting up targets for every single product. **Important**: Only one plan can be the default per shop. If a product has: - No plan targeting it specifically, AND - No default plan set Then the manufacturing order is created without any work orders (same as before plans existed). ## When to use manufacturing plans Use plans when you have **repeated production workflows**: | Scenario | Use Plans? | Why | |----------|-----------|-----| | Products with consistent build process | ✅ Yes | Standardize and save setup time | | Steps with strict sequencing requirements | ✅ Yes | Prevent errors from wrong order | | Multi-person teams | ✅ Yes | Everyone follows the same process | | Every product is unique, one-off | ❌ No | Plans add overhead, not value | | Frequently creating same work order sequences | ✅ Yes | Plans automate this repetition | **Rule of thumb**: If you've created the same sequence of work orders three times, it's worth creating a plan. The time saved on the fourth order pays for the plan setup. ## Practical example **Furniture workshop scenario:** A furniture workshop has a standard dining table build process with these steps and dependencies: ``` Cut → Sand → Assemble → Finish → QC → Pack ↑ (Sand and Assemble run in parallel) ``` **The process:** 1. Create a manufacturing plan with all six steps 2. Set dependencies: Cut before Sand, Sand and Assemble in parallel, Finish after Assemble, QC after Finish, Pack after QC 3. Assign the plan to the "Dining Tables" collection **Result:** Every dining table order automatically receives those six work orders in the correct sequence, with the correct dependencies. No manual setup. No sequencing mistakes. Every time. ## See also - **[Made-to-order in Orderkraft](/docs/concepts/made-to-order/)** — how products are marked as buildable and connect to bills of materials - **[Manufacturing orders](/docs/concepts/manufacturing-orders/)** — the production orders that plans populate with work orders - **[Bill of materials](/docs/concepts/made-to-order/#the-bill-of-materials)** — the raw materials and components that go into a made-to-order product - **[Work order templates](/docs/concepts/manufacturing-plans/#work-order-templates)** — reusable kinds of work that plan steps are built from - **[Set up manufacturing plans](/docs/setup/set-up-manufacturing-plans/)** — step-by-step guide to creating your first plan