Use Work Orders to generate Bills of Materials to control the allocation and issuing of materials. miniMrp can use the allocation to forecast your materials requirements and generate shortage reports giving you the information you need when making purchasing decisions.

If you've used miniMrp 2 or 3 you will have noticed that in those versions a works order could only be created inside a customer order. A Work Order bill of materials, for example, could only be accessed by first opening the relevant customer order.

This version of miniMrp has a separate 'Work Order' menu allowing you to get straight to your work orders without first opening the customer order.

v4 also introduces an additional method of creating new work orders. We refer to this new method as "Build for Stock". A work order is created without a customer order. For example when you simply want to build assemblies and put them into your inventory in advance of any customer requirement.

To begin the manufacturing process miniMrp provides a stage called 'Allocation'. This is where materials remain in your inventory but are 'reserved' for a specific work order and this would, in turn, drive an inventory shortage report prompting you to purchase materials so that you can complete your work orders.

When you're ready to begin the manufacturing process you place the work order into the "Issued/WIP" state. The materials will then be issued/reduced out of your inventory and the work order will then be "Work in Progress

When the manufacturing process is complete you place the work order into the "Completed" state and miniMrp increased the OnHand quantity of finished assemblies in your inventory.

Of course you don't have to go through these separate stages. You can skip any of them or, if your manufacturing process is quick, you can skip everything and flush the whole thing through your inventory in single quick process.

Create a new Work Order.