A typical make-to-order plant: sales photographs the contract into the production group, the supervisor writes dispatch by hand. The order is the root. Work orders are branches. The root holds customer, date, finished good. Branches hold shop, operation, qty, material. Many packaged ERPs refuse to split without a full BOM and routing. The real BOM is in a veteran’s head, so the tree never grows and the group stays the system. Why suite buttons stay gray is in A packaged ERP nobody uses is almost as bad as having none. Phase one may use a thin BOM: split only the operations the floor actually reports. The rest is text. That beats waiting three years for complete process data.
Three split rules
One: split by a reportable unit, not by department. The shop wants what this lot does, how many, which material — not another read of contract clauses. Two: the work order inherits the line’s date and customer. Change date at the root; branches follow. Do not each write their own. Three: reporting writes the root. Sales asks progress on order complete %, not “where are we” in the group. Quality and after-sales have a basis after work orders close. See work-order close.
See a material short at split, not at start. Same logic as inventory reserve. See stock matching the books. Path with a system vs. group dispatch is in how the work path differs. If the floor is still messy, check whether work orders were backfilled. See ledger or operations.
Do not climb to APS in phase one
First: a sales order can create work orders, issue material, report good qty, and hang exceptions on the ticket. Auto schedule, finite capacity, and fine hours wait until the work already happens in the system. Talk cycle and money on that scope. See cost and cycle. DaXi draws the split tree from your real operations — not a standard manufacturing pack first. For a make-to-order system, go to Business systems service page and say how a contract enters the shop today. If project delivery is milestones not operations, see how to manage contract milestones. Operation names match the shop blackboard. Do not “standardize” into words workers do not know or reporting goes back to paper.
Rework, insert orders, and subcontract are their own branches
Rework is a second small tree. Do not edit the original qty and scramble reporting. An insert needs a priority field. Verbal “do this first” chops the tree. A drawing change freezes issued work orders, then re-splits. Otherwise the floor finishes the old drawing and argues whose fault. Split rules in the system outlast a supervisor notebook when people leave. See handover when people leave.
A subcontract operation is a side branch: qty and return date going out, inspect coming back before the next work order. No side branch and outside work stays on WeChat. Reporting may have tolerance, but name who can edit reported qty so the floor does not mark unfinished as done at quitting time. If the promised date is shorter than the process minimum, warn at split — do not wait for the shop to finish shouting and then change the contract. Phase one stands when sales opens an order and sees good qty per operation. Prefer a shallow true tree: two real operations beat six ghost operations that exist only in software. The floor reports the tree it recognizes.