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 > Setup in the sidebar. It opens on the Work Centers tab.
2. Click New.
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 — For Machine or Labor: how many parallel resources this bucket provides (e.g. 1 for one machine, 4 for a four-person crew).
   • Machines and Operators — For Both, in place of Resources: the size of each pool. Both are required.
   • 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 supplier field appears, and is required.
   • Active — Uncheck to retire the work center while preserving history on existing routings.
4. Click Save.

On the Work Centers list, the filter button beside the search box narrows by Capacity, Calendar, Subcontract, Active or a Resources, Efficiency or Rate / hr range (Working with lists).

Capacity Types

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

For Both, the form asks for Machines and Operators instead of Resources, 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 Closure 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 falls on that Monday and the calendar closes on public holidays, 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, open the Calendars tab of Manufacturing > Setup and use the New button. The weekly pattern sits under the calendar’s details, across the full width of the page: one row per day (Sunday → Saturday), with a start and an end time for each working stretch. Type a time as four digits and the colon comes by itself: 0830 becomes 08:30, and an hour alone, such as 17, becomes 17:00 when you move on. An end may be 24:00, the end of the day, so a stretch can run to midnight; a start may not. Use Add a second stretch to split a day into two shifts (for example a morning and an afternoon block around lunch), the × button to remove a stretch, and Open the day to give hours to a closed day. Three one-click presets sit above the grid:

• Day shift — Friday and Saturday closed; Sunday to Thursday 08:00–12:00 and 13:00–17:00.
• Around the clock — every day open 00:00–24:00.
• Close every day — 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 marks the calendar a new work center opens on. There can be at most one default per organization: your first calendar is the default on its own, and marking another moves it.

Close on public holidays

A calendar can close on your organization’s public holidays, the ones you keep once in Settings (Public holidays). Switch on Closes on public holidays, and every holiday on that list shuts the calendar’s day by itself: a whole holiday all day, and a half holiday — the eve of a feast — from noon, in the calendar’s own timezone. You never type the holidays again as exceptions, and a feast you add the day it is announced reaches the scheduler, the Load and Capacity tabs, the planning run and the maintenance deadlines at once.

A new calendar starts with the switch on, unless you pick Around the clock: a line that runs day and night does not stop for a feast, so that preset turns the switch off, and another preset turns it back on, until you set it yourself. A calendar that existed before the switch did starts with it off, so its plan does not move until you decide. To work one feast anyway — the morning of the Aïd, say — add an Override exception for that day: it beats the holiday.

The Calendars list filters by Default and Active; the Calendar Exceptions list by Type, Calendar, Work Center, Active, Priority or a Start / End date range — the same filter button as every other list (Working with lists).

Calendar Exceptions

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

• Closure — The work center is unavailable for the date range, or only some of its machines are (below). Use for a shutdown, planned maintenance, and unplanned downtime. Public holidays need none: a calendar closes on them by itself.
• 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, and of two with the same priority, the one that starts later.

A closure can take only some of a work center’s machines. Give it the number of machines it takes out (maintenance always does, for the one machine it works on), and it never competes with the exceptions above: the day keeps the hours the calendar and its exceptions give it, and fewer machines can be booked in them. On a cell of three mills with one down, the day keeps its nine hours and two mills. Two such stops on one day take two machines. On a day that is closed anyway, a stop changes nothing.

To add an exception, open the Calendar Exceptions tab of Manufacturing > Setup and click New. Fill in:

• Calendar or Work Center — Both pickers are on the form and naming one clears the other, because an exception hits exactly one of the two. 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 — Closure or Override.
• Working windows (Override only) — The section appears once you pick Override. 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.
• Priority — Among exceptions of the same scope that cover a date, the higher number wins. Defaults to 100.
• Reason — Free-text explanation, shown on the exceptions list and on the Capacity tab (e.g. “Summer shutdown”, “Quarterly maintenance”). It is required: the list names the exception by it.

Windows maintenance books by itself

When a maintenance work order on a machine that is a work center is released, or production reports a breakdown on it, Beelocity books the window on that work center’s calendar for you. Such a window has no reason of its own — the job is the reason. The list names it by the job, Maintenance work order MWO-2026-000004, and its page shows a Booked by maintenance section with a link to the job and its Confirmation: Tentative while the job is only scheduled, Confirmed once it has started, Cancelled if it is called off. Planning counts tentative and confirmed windows alike, and a cancelled one nowhere. Such a window takes out the one machine the job works on, not the whole work center (above).

Capacity Preview

To check how many hours a work center has available — for example to confirm that a planned production run will fit — open the Capacity tab on the work-center detail page. It shows the next fortnight day by day: the hours the place is open, the capacity once its machines and its efficiency are counted, and a Status. The status gives the reason of the exception that decided the day, or of the stop that lowered it; a window a maintenance job booked is named by the job, the way the exceptions list names it. A public holiday the calendar closes on is named by its own name, Aïd el-Adha, and a half holiday shows the morning it keeps. A day with none of these is a Closed day when the week does not open it, and Open otherwise. The tab counts exactly what the scheduler books, so a stop on one mill of three shows two thirds of the day.

Load Tab

The Load tab on each work center shows what’s already committed to that resource over time. Each day or hour is a column: available capacity (the pale column behind) is what the calendar offers; committed (the blue column in front of it) is what the scheduler has already slotted in. Pick Day for a 30-day overview or Hour for the next 48 hours; the days run left to right in every language. Point at any column to see exactly which work orders contribute to that bucket.

When the committed column turns red — taller than the one behind it — 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.
• Typing the public holidays as exceptions. A calendar that closes on public holidays already closes on every one of them, from the list your organization keeps in Settings. A holiday typed as an exception as well is closed twice, harmlessly, but it is a second list to keep — and the one nobody updates the day a feast moves. Delete those exceptions once the switch is on.