Odoo Work Centers and Routing: Manufacturing Guide

What Are Work Centers and Routing?

Work centers represent physical locations or machines where manufacturing operations happen — a CNC machine, an assembly line, a paint booth, or a quality station. Routing defines the sequence of operations (work orders) a product goes through during manufacturing. Together, they enable capacity planning, scheduling, and performance tracking.

Enabling Work Orders

Go to Settings → Manufacturing and enable Work Orders. This activates routing and work center features on Bills of Materials.

Setting Up Work Centers

Creating a Work Center

1. Manufacturing → Configuration → Work Centers
2. Enter the work center name and code
3. Set capacity and cost parameters
4. Define working hours

Work Center Configuration

# Cost components per work center:
# - Machine cost per hour: $50 (depreciation, maintenance, energy)
# - Labor cost per hour: $35 (operator wage + benefits)
# - Total cost per hour: $85

# Capacity planning:
# Available hours: 8 hours/day × 5 days = 40 hours/week
# Time efficiency: 95% → Effective: 38 hours/week
# Maintenance downtime: 2 hours/week → Net: 36 hours/week

Defining Operations (Routing)

Adding Operations to a BOM

1. Open the Bill of Materials for a product
2. Go to the Operations tab
3. Add operations in sequence

Operation Parameters

# Example routing for a metal bracket:
# Op 10: Cutting (CNC Machine, 5 min/unit)
# Op 20: Bending (Press Brake, 3 min/unit)
# Op 30: Welding (Welding Station, 8 min/unit)
# Op 40: Painting (Paint Booth, 15 min/batch)
# Op 50: Inspection (QC Station, 2 min/unit)
# Total: 33 minutes per unit

Time Calculation

For a batch of 100 units at Op 10: Setup (30 min) + 100 × 5 min + Cleanup (10 min) = 540 minutes total.

Work Orders

When a manufacturing order is created, Odoo generates work orders for each operation in the routing.

Work Order Lifecycle

# Status flow:
# Waiting → Ready → In Progress → Finished
#                      ↓
#                   Paused (break, issue)
#                      ↓
#                   Resumed → Finished

# Sequential operations:
# Op 10 must finish before Op 20 can start
# (configurable — can allow parallel operations)

Shop Floor Interface

Operators interact with work orders through the shop floor tablet view:

• See current and upcoming work orders
• Start/pause/finish operations with one tap
• View work instructions and diagrams
• Record production quantity and scrap
• Log quality checks

Capacity Planning

The Planning view shows work center load over time:

• Overloaded work centers — Highlighted in red when scheduled beyond capacity
• Available capacity — Green slots available for scheduling
• Bottleneck identification — Which work center limits throughput

OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness)

Odoo tracks OEE for each work center:

# OEE = Availability × Performance × Quality
# Availability: Uptime / Planned production time
# Performance: Actual output / Theoretical output
# Quality: Good units / Total units produced

# Example:
# Availability: 7.5h / 8h = 93.75%
# Performance: 90 units / 96 theoretical = 93.75%
# Quality: 88 good / 90 produced = 97.78%
# OEE = 93.75% × 93.75% × 97.78% = 85.9%

Maintenance Integration

Link work centers to maintenance schedules:

• Preventive maintenance based on hours worked or units produced
• Corrective maintenance requests from operators
• Maintenance downtime deducted from availability calculations

Best Practices

• Accurate time estimates — Measure actual times and update operation durations
• Include setup/cleanup — These affect scheduling accuracy significantly
• Track OEE — Monitor and improve equipment effectiveness
• Update efficiency — Adjust time efficiency percentages based on real data
• Plan maintenance — Schedule preventive maintenance during low-demand periods

DeployMonkey + Work Centers

DeployMonkey's AI agent configures work centers, routing operations, and capacity planning parameters based on your manufacturing layout and production processes.