Work Centers

A work center is one production capacity bucket — a machine, a labor pool, a workbench, a paint booth, or an external supplier slot. Routings reference work centers (not specific machines) so the scheduler is free to load any equivalent resource within the bucket.

Work centers do not track stock. They track time — how many hours are available, how efficiently they run, and how much each hour absorbs into the cost of finished goods.

Setting Up a Work Center

To define a new work center:

1. Navigate to Manufacturing > Work Centers in the sidebar.
2. Click Create Work Center.
3. Fill in the details:
   • Code — Short identifier (e.g. WC-CNC-01).
   • Name — Human label (e.g. CNC Mill #1).
   • Description — Optional notes about layout, tooling, certifications.
   • Capacity Type — Machine, Labor, or Both (see below).
   • Resources — How many parallel resources this bucket provides (e.g. 1 for one machine, 4 for a four-person crew).
   • Efficiency Factor — A multiplier on nominal operation time. 1.00 means the work center hits theoretical throughput; 0.85 means it actually runs at 85%, so every operation takes ~17% longer than its nominal duration. Most real-world centers fall between 0.80 and 0.95.
   • Cost Rate / hr — The combined labor + overhead absorption rate, e.g. 1200 DZD/hour. This is what the cost engine uses to compute the labor + overhead component of every finished product.
   • Currency — The currency of the cost rate (typically DZD).
   • Calendar — The recurring weekly availability pattern; see Calendars.
   • Default Warehouse — Optional. Where component issues default to when an operation runs at this work center.
   • Subcontract — Toggle on if this work center represents an external supplier slot. When on, the Default Partner field becomes required.
   • Active — Uncheck to retire the work center while preserving history on existing routings.
4. Click Save.

Capacity Types

The capacity type determines how the scheduler counts time on a work center:

For Both, fill in the separate Machine Resources and Labor Resources counts so the scheduler can size each pool independently.

Capacity Math

Available capacity for a given date is computed in three steps:

1. Base hours from the calendar. Sum the duration of all open windows on that weekday — e.g. 08:00–12:00 plus 13:00–17:00 is 8 base hours.
2. Apply any exception. If a calendar exception or a work-center-specific exception covers the date, it replaces the base windows (a Closed exception zeroes the day; an Override exception swaps the windows for custom hours).
3. Multiply by resources and efficiency.

   Capacity hours = Base hours × Resources × Efficiency
   

   For Both work centers, machine and labor capacity are computed separately and the smaller of the two is the binding constraint.

Example

A CNC mill with one machine, an efficiency factor of 0.92, on a regular Monday in the Standard 8-5 calendar:

Capacity hours = 8 × 1 × 0.92 = 7.36 hours

If a public holiday closes the calendar for that Monday, the day’s capacity becomes 0 regardless of resources or efficiency.

Calendars

Calendars describe the recurring weekly availability pattern that work centers are scheduled against. Most organizations define a small set of canonical calendars and point many work centers at the same one. Examples:

• Standard 8-5 — Sunday closed; Monday–Thursday and Saturday 08:00–17:00 with a one-hour lunch (8 productive hours/day); Friday closed (Algerian weekend).
• Two-shift 16-hour — Monday–Saturday with two 8-hour shifts (06:00–14:00 and 14:00–22:00).
• 24/7 continuous — All days, 00:00–24:00.

To create or edit a calendar, navigate to Manufacturing > Calendars and use the Create Calendar button. The weekly pattern is built in a grid: one row per day (Sunday → Saturday), with start/end time pickers for each working window. Use Add window to split a day into multiple shifts (for example, a morning and afternoon block around lunch), the × button to remove a window, and Open day to start hours for a closed day. Three one-click presets sit above the grid:

• Standard 8-5 — Sun + Fri closed; Mon–Thu and Sat 08:00–12:00 and 13:00–17:00.
• 24/7 — every day open 00:00–23:59.
• Clear all — every day closed (useful as a starting point for fully custom hours).

The header above the grid summarises how many days are open and the total weekly hours so you can sanity-check the pattern as you build it.

The Timezone field is a dropdown of region-based timezones (e.g. Africa/Algiers, Europe/Paris). It defaults to Africa/Algiers on new calendars and is the timezone the weekly pattern’s 08:00–17:00 windows are interpreted in. Always pick a region zone — fixed offsets like GMT+1 would not handle daylight-saving transitions.

The Default flag identifies the fallback calendar used when a work center is created without an explicit calendar choice. There can be at most one default per organization.

Calendar Exceptions

Exceptions are date-specific overrides that overlay the recurring calendar:

• Closed — The work center is unavailable for the date range. Use for public holidays, planned maintenance, and unplanned downtime.
• Override — Replaces the recurring calendar’s windows for the date range with custom windows. Use to open a normally-closed Friday for a year-end push, or to reduce a normal day to a half-shift.

Exceptions can be scoped to a calendar (every work center sharing that calendar) or to a single work center (overriding what the calendar would otherwise say). Work-center-specific exceptions take precedence over calendar-scoped ones on the same date. When two exceptions of the same scope cover the same date, the higher Priority wins.

To add an exception, navigate to Manufacturing > Calendar Exceptions and click Create Exception. Fill in:

• Calendar or Work Center — Choose exactly one. Targeting a calendar applies to every work center using it; targeting a work center overrides only that one.
• Start / End Date — The inclusive date range affected.
• Type — Closed or Override.
• Working windows (Override only) — Add one row per shift using the time pickers (e.g. one 06:00–22:00 row for a 16-hour overtime day, or 08:00–12:00 plus 13:00–17:00 for a normal split shift). The same windows apply to every day in the range. Inline errors flag end-before-start or overlapping windows before you can save. The field is hidden until you pick Override.
• Priority — Higher numbers win when multiple exceptions overlap. Defaults to 100.
• Reason — Free-text explanation surfaced in the scheduler tooltip (e.g. “Eid al-Fitr 2026”, “Quarterly maintenance”).

Capacity Preview

To check how many hours a work center has available over a date range — for example to confirm that a planned production run will fit — use the Capacity view on the work-center detail page (or call the capacity API directly). The view returns a day-by-day breakdown showing base hours, applied exceptions, and final capacity hours.

Load Tab

The Load tab on each work center shows what’s already committed to that resource over time. Available capacity (the grey bar) is what the calendar offers; committed (the blue bar) is what the scheduler has already slotted in. Pick Day for a 30-day overview or Hour for the next 48 hours. Click any bar to see exactly which work orders contribute to that bucket.

When the committed bar runs red — taller than the available bar — that bucket is over-committed: a calendar exception was added after work was scheduled, and the shop now owes more time than it has. Re-schedule the affected WOs from the Scheduler page to flush the over-commit.

Common Pitfalls

• Setting Subcontract without a default partner. A subcontract work center represents an external supplier slot, so it must be linked to one. The save will be rejected until you pick a Default Partner.
• Forgetting to update efficiency. A new work center starts at 1.00 (100% efficient). Real production rarely sustains that. Adjust to your observed long-run output once you have a few months of data.
• Inactivating a work center referenced by an active routing. Inactivating preserves history (existing work orders still reference the work center), but new routings cannot select it and the scheduler refuses to plan against it. If you need to retire a work center temporarily, use a calendar exception instead.
• Putting public holidays on the wrong calendar. A holiday that affects every shop in the organization should be a calendar-scoped exception, not a work-center-scoped one — otherwise you’ll have to recreate it for every work center.