How to Set Up Machine Centres and Work Centres for Capacity Planning in Business Central

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes

Why most food manufacturers run capacity planning on a whiteboard

Food plants have hard capacity constraints. Oven capacity, mixer capacity, packaging line speeds, cold room throughput. Unlike distribution, you cannot simply process more orders by working faster. If your oven runs 16 hours a day and you schedule 20 hours of production, something has to give. Products miss ship dates. Customers lose patience.

Most food manufacturers manage this in their heads or on a whiteboard in the production office. BC can handle it inside the system if you configure work centres and routings. In my experience, most BC manufacturing clients skip this setup entirely and manage capacity in Excel or not at all.

Work Centres vs Machine Centres: the hierarchy

BC uses a three-level hierarchy for production resources:

Work Center Group > Work Centre > Machine Centre

A Work Centre is a production area or group of machines. Think “Packaging Department” or “Oven Room.” Work centres define the cost centre and the calendar that governs available working time.

A Machine Centre is a specific machine within a work centre. Think “Packaging Line A” or “Oven 2.” Machine centres inherit their calendar from the parent work centre but can have their own capacity and cost rates.

Every machine centre links to exactly one work centre through the Work Center No. field on the Machine Center Card.

When to use which: If you have one oven that is a bottleneck, create it as a machine centre under an “Oven Room” work centre. If your packaging department has three interchangeable lines, the work centre with Capacity = 3 may be sufficient without individual machine centres.

Step-by-step setup

1. Create Work Shifts

Search for Work Shifts in the Tell Me bar. Create at least one shift code (e.g., Code: “1”, Description: “Day Shift”). If you run two shifts, create both.

2. Create a Shop Calendar

Search for Shop Calendars. Create a new calendar (e.g., Code: “PROD”, Description: “Production Calendar”).

Select the Working Days action. Define each working day with Day, Starting Time, Ending Time, and Work Shift Code.

Example for a single-shift bakery:

• Monday: 06:00 to 14:00, Shift 1
• Tuesday through Friday: same
• Saturday and Sunday: not listed (non-working days, zero capacity)

For a two-shift dairy plant, add a second row per day:

• Monday: 06:00 to 14:00 Shift 1, then 14:00 to 22:00 Shift 2

Use the Holidays action to define statutory holidays and planned shutdown days.

3. Create Work Centres

Open Work Centers and create a new card. Key fields on the Work Center Card:

General FastTab:

• No. and Name: Your identifier and description
• Work Center Group Code: Optional but useful for reporting

Scheduling FastTab:

• Shop Calendar Code: Link to the shop calendar you created
• Capacity: Number of machines or people working simultaneously. A baking area with 3 ovens = Capacity 3.
• Efficiency: Percentage of expected output. Set to 90 if you expect 90% utilization after breaks and minor downtime.
• Unit of Measure Code: The time unit for cost calculation (typically MINUTES)

Posting FastTab:

• Direct Unit Cost: Labour rate per time unit
• Indirect Cost %: Overhead as a percentage of direct cost
• Overhead Rate: Fixed overhead per unit (e.g., maintenance cost)

After entering these fields, select the Calendar action, then Calculate to generate calendar entries based on your shop calendar, capacity, and efficiency values.

4. Create Machine Centres

Open Machine Centers. Create a new card. The critical field is Work Center No., which links this machine centre to its parent work centre.

Set Capacity and Efficiency at the machine level if they differ from the work centre defaults. Set machine-specific Direct Unit Cost if different from the work centre rate.

5. Set Up Routings

Open Routings and create a new routing card. Set the Type (Serial or Parallel) and add operations on the Lines FastTab.

Each routing line includes:

• Operation No.: Sequence (10, 20, 30)
• Type: Work Center or Machine Center
• No.: The specific resource
• Setup Time: Time to prepare the operation (calculated per production order, scaled by the Capacity field on the work centre)
• Run Time: Time to process one unit
• Wait Time: Non-productive time after processing (cooling, proofing, freezing)
• Move Time: Transit time to the next operation

6. Link Routings to Items

Open the Item Card for each finished good that uses this routing. On the Replenishment FastTab, set the Routing No. field to the routing you created. The Production BOM No. and Routing No. are separate fields on the Item Card. When you create a production order, BC pulls both the BOM and the routing from the item card and calculates capacity needs against your work centre calendars.

Food-specific configuration tips

Cleaning and changeover time. Use the Setup Time field on routing operations to account for allergen changeovers. A bakery switching from a nut-containing product to a nut-free product might need 90 minutes of setup (full wet clean) compared to 15 minutes for a same-allergen switch. Create separate routing versions if changeover times vary significantly by product sequence.

Concurrent capacity. A work centre with 3 ovens should have Capacity = 3. This tells BC it can schedule 3 production orders simultaneously on that work centre. Setting Capacity to 1 when you have 3 ovens creates artificial bottlenecks in scheduling.

Wait time vs. run time. Fermentation, proofing, cooling, and freezing consume calendar time but not machine operator time. Configure these as Wait Time on the routing line, not Run Time. This distinction matters because run time consumes work centre capacity while wait time consumes only elapsed calendar time. A 4-hour fermentation stage does not block the mixer for 4 hours if you move the dough to a separate proofing area.

Capacity-constrained resources. BC does not have a “critical” flag directly on the Work Center Card. Instead, search for Capacity Constrained Resources and add your bottleneck work or machine centre. Set the Critical Load % to define the maximum utilization the planning engine allows. Once you add a resource here, the planning engine treats it as finite-capacity and schedules operations to avoid overloading it.

Important caveat: Operations on constrained resources are always planned serially, even if the resource has multiple capacities. If your “Oven Room” work centre has Capacity = 3 and you mark it as a capacity-constrained resource, BC will schedule those 3 ovens in sequence rather than in parallel. This is a significant trade-off. Only mark a resource as constrained if you genuinely need the planning engine to cap its utilization. Otherwise, leave it unconstrained and monitor the load manually.

Using capacity data

Once configured, open a Work Center Card and select the Load action. This displays planned capacity utilization based on released and planned production orders.

Use the View by option to see load by day, week, or month. If a work centre shows utilization exceeding 100% for next week, you know you need to add a shift, defer orders, or redistribute production across other work centres.

For longer-term visibility, BC v25 (2024 release wave 2) introduced Power BI manufacturing reports including Work Center Load, with the Machine Center Load report added in v26 (2025 release wave 1). Both pull from capacity ledger entries.

The payoff: production scheduling that respects your physical constraints instead of blindly booking orders against infinite capacity. For food manufacturers with perishable outputs and hard ship dates, this is the difference between reliable delivery and constant firefighting.

How many of your BC manufacturing clients actually have work centres and routings configured? In my experience, most skip this and manage capacity in Excel or on a whiteboard. What has been your experience?