What is a Routing in Business Central?

A routing is the ordered list of operations, work or machine centers and times that Business Central uses to schedule and cost the manufacture of an item.

A routing describes how an item is made, not what it is made of. Each line is an operation with an operation number, a type that points to a work center or a machine center, and time fields for setup, run, wait and move. The header defines whether the operations run one after another or in parallel, and a certification status that controls whether production orders can use the routing.

Search with Alt+Q for Routings to open the list, then open a card to enter operations. The routing is attached to the item through the Routing No. field on the Replenishment FastTab of the item card. Routing link codes entered on operations and repeated on production BOM lines are what ties a component to the operation where it is consumed.

Routing MG-1000 has operation 10 at work center 100 with 30 minutes setup and 12 minutes run per unit, and operation 20 at work center 200 with 5 minutes run per unit. For a production order of 25 units, that is 30 plus 25 times 12, so 330 minutes at work center 100 and 125 minutes at work center 200. Scheduling backward from the due date of 14 August 2026 sets the starting date of the order accordingly.

Time unit confusion is the usual source of wrong schedules: a run time meant per unit but entered for the whole lot, or a time unit of measure in hours while the value was typed in minutes, multiplies or divides the plan by a large factor. A routing left uncertified is not skipped quietly, it stops the refresh of the production order with a status error until you certify it. If the work center behind an operation has no calculated calendar for the period, the scheduler finds no available capacity and the dates it proposes are unusable.

Keep setup time separate from run time rather than folding it into a per unit figure, otherwise capacity requirements grow linearly with lot size and lot sizing decisions become impossible to evaluate. Recalculate work center calendars whenever you extend the planning horizon into a new year.

Frequently asked questions

Related terms

• Production Order, A production order is the Business Central document that plans and records the manufacture of a quantity of an item, from component consumption to finished output.
• Production BOM, A production BOM is the certified list of components and quantities needed to make one unit of a manufactured item in Business Central.
• Work Center, A work center in Business Central is a capacity resource, such as a team or an area, with a calendar, costs and efficiency that routings consume when scheduled.
• Value Entry, A value entry carries the amount of an inventory movement: expected cost, actual cost, adjustments, item charges and revaluations, linked to an item ledger entry.
• Item Ledger Entry, An item ledger entry is the record Business Central creates for each posted quantity movement of an item: receipts, shipments, transfers and adjustments.

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