Manufacturing instructions/assembly/recipe

I’m trying to figure out where I can store instructions for manufacturing/assembly? For example: making a bike. I understand where to store the materials into BOM. But I want to store the instructions on assembling the bike. ex: 1) attach wheel 2) screw on handle bars, etc…

This would be similar to a recipe. BOM for ingredients but where’s do I store the cooking instructions.

The other half of this is when I create a production/work order, I want to print the bill of materials needed and the assembly instructions/

@Nathan you can try adding operations in the BOM.
https://frappe.github.io/erpnext/user/videos/learn/bill-of-materials.html

HI @shachiTakalkar, I appreciate you answering my questions in a quick and timely fashion. But I am very specific about my questions and I do research on my questions beforehand. Yes, I have looked in operations. If that is your only solution that is good to know. But the other half of my question was to bring the BOM for the production order. As would be normal business operations. When I do production, I want to know what I need(BOM including quantities and what I need to do (as you say, most likely operations).

Please let me know how I may do this.

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@Nathan from what I understand, you need your BOM to be used during Production Order. To do so you can use the production planning tool.
Refer the below link:
https://frappe.github.io/erpnext/user/videos/learn/production-planning.html

Hope I got it this time.
:sweat_smile:

not quite. I did enter the instructions as an operations that’s associated with my BOM.

Imagine a scenario of a production manager creates a production order, prints it out and gives it to the production team. The production order currently has the Item that needs to be created but doesn’t have the BOM or the instructions. It’s like a chef who gets a food order (ie production order). But doesn’t get the recipe (ingredients or instructions).

I guess when I print out the production order, I will have to print out the bom as well.

But what I was hoping was a production order that included a list of all the materials needed and it’s quantity with the instructions.

Can this be done?

I’ve included a print out of the production order. You’ll notice it doesn’t look so nice because the operation instructions is jammed into one column with no preservation of formatting. It would also be nice to be able to include images into my operations/instructions.

btw. the image is a print out of 4 pages into one page so that I can save it as an image for you to see.

Hi @Nathan,

Currently in the BOM, there is no provision to add the instructions. But you can resolve this issue by adding a custom field. Kindly make a new custom field Instruction with fieldtype as Text in the BOM, for more details check below image

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@rohit_w okay. thanks for giving a clear answer.

Nathan, your requirement is a standard one among all of manufacturing. And, such a requirement is also found among all companies that have an ISO900X type of quality system. I think developers sometimes do not understand the importance of such a feature because software “work” recipes can be found in README files, coding standards, and ???

You may want to review [Feature] Routings + Wiki + Quality System Documentation Capability · Issue #5310 · frappe/erpnext · GitHub that I posted earlier this year. I offered to pay for development for this but have not met with success so far.

As you state, a chef needs a recipe and where would it be documented in ERPNext? The ingredients would be documented but not the process. ERPNext is not weak in this area relative to other ERPs, to my knowledge. However, it could set itself far far apart in functionality with a somewhat straightforward adding of a feature.

To my knowledge, today, manufacturers document work instructions (processes or whatever) via documents (PDF, docx, etc.) or document control systems or similar. This are very clunky and require their own separate control system for changes, authorizations, etc. Some manufacturers have adopted wiki which improves things considerably. But, such wikis then require IT support for user management, ACLs, etc. ERPNext users would then need to jump back and work between the ERPNext system and the wiki system.

Such a feature would help a broad range of industries as all industries need processes that need to be documented and followed. Examples: AP or AR procedures, sales prospecting, product testing process, etc.

If any ERPNext or EPRNext partners are interested in pursuing development, please feel free to contact me via this discussion or via the above GitHub discussion.