Business Central normally prioritizes production orders and operations based on their starting date and due date. In practice, many production environments need to override that automatic prioritization manually, because some orders simply become more important than others regardless of their dates. This article explains how a manual priority field lets you do exactly that.
You set a manual priority value on both production order lines and operation lines. The default value is 20. Lower the number to make an order more urgent and raise it to make it less urgent. There is no upper limit.
When you change the priority on a production order, the value flows down to the routing line, the component line, and the production order line. You can then override it further down in the hierarchy if needed.
You sort and filter on the manual priority field to see your orders and operations in the exact sequence you want to work through them.
Manual priority overrides date-based prioritization in Business Central
By default, Business Central prioritizes production order operations based on the starting date and the due date. That works for many situations, but it does not account for cases where an order suddenly becomes more important for reasons that have nothing to do with its scheduled dates.
To handle this, a manual priority field has been added as a column on both production order lines and operation lines. It gives you a way to override the date-driven sequence and decide for yourself which orders should be handled first.
How the manual priority field works
Every order is created with a default manual priority of 20. The lower the number, the more urgent the order. To make an order more urgent, set the value below 20. For example, you can change a priority from 20 to 12. To make an order less urgent, set the value above 20. There is no upper limit on how low the urgency can go.
Take production order 146 with a manual priority of 20 as an example. You open the order and change the value to 12. That single change updates the routing line, the component line, and the production order line with the new priority. If you need finer control, you can override the priority further down in the hierarchy.
Sorting and filtering on manual priority
Once you have set the priorities, you sort and filter on the manual priority field to see your orders in the order you want to work through them. After updating the order lines and filtering on manual priority, order 146 appears higher in the list.
The same applies if you work at the operation level. With a manual priority of 12 on an operation, it now ranks higher than an operation belonging to order 114. This makes it easy to push one order ahead of another and select the lines in the sequence they should be handled, directly in the overview.
Q&A
How does Business Central prioritize production orders by default?
By default, Business Central prioritizes production order operations based on the starting date and the due date.
What is the default value of the manual priority field?
The default manual priority value is 20.
How do I make a production order more or less urgent with manual priority?
Set the manual priority below 20 to make an order more urgent, for example 12. Set it above 20 to make it less urgent. There is no upper limit.
What happens when I change the manual priority on a production order?
Changing the priority updates the routing line, the component line, and the production order line with the new value. You can override it further down in the hierarchy if needed.
Where can I set the manual priority field?
The manual priority field is available as a column on both production order lines and operation lines.