How to Set Up Routings and Work Centers in Business Central

A routing defines the sequence of operations needed to produce an item. Each operation references a work center or machine center, and carries time values that drive both scheduling and costing. Before you can create a routing, you need at least one work center set up with a shop calendar assigned.

This guide covers creating work centers, optionally adding machine centers, building a routing, certifying it, and linking it to an item card.

Work Centers vs. Machine Centers

A Work Center represents a production resource, this could be a department, a labor group, or a category of machines. Work centers hold the capacity and cost rates that Business Central uses for scheduling and costing.

A Machine Center is a specific machine or workstation within a work center. Machine centers allow more granular capacity tracking. A work center might be called “Welding Department” while individual machine centers within it represent specific welding stations.

You can use routings with work centers only, or add machine centers when you need operation-level capacity detail. Both are valid setups, machine centers add precision but also more maintenance overhead.

Step 1: Create a Work Center

Search for Work Centers using Alt + Q.
Select New.
Enter a No. and Name for the work center.
Set the Work Center Group Code if your setup uses work center groups for reporting or planning.
Enter the Capacity value. This represents the number of concurrent units available (for example, 1 for a single machine, 3 for three parallel operators).
Set the Efficiency as a percentage. 100 means the work center operates at full rated capacity. Lower values account for downtime, changeovers, or general inefficiency.
Enter the Direct Unit Cost, this is the cost per unit of time (typically per hour) used when calculating production costs.
In the Shop Calendar Code field, assign a shop calendar. This is required for capacity calculation. If no shop calendar exists yet, see the note below.

Shop Calendar note: Shop calendars define which days and hours the work center operates. Without one, Business Central cannot calculate capacity entries or schedule operations. See How to Use Capacity Planning in Business Central for setup details.

After assigning the shop calendar, use the Calculate Calendar action on the work center card to generate capacity entries.

Step 2: Create a Machine Center (Optional)

If you want to track capacity at the individual machine level, add machine centers under the work center.

Search for Machine Centers using Alt + Q.
Select New.
Enter a No. and Name.
Set the Work Center No. to link this machine center to its parent work center.
Enter Capacity, Efficiency, and Direct Unit Cost, these work the same way as on the work center card but apply specifically to this machine.
Assign a Shop Calendar Code if this machine operates on a different schedule than the parent work center. Otherwise, the work center calendar is used.

Step 3: Create a Routing

Search for Routings using Alt + Q.
Select New.
Enter a No. and Description.
Set the Type field. Use Serial if operations must be performed one after another. Use Parallel if some operations can overlap or run simultaneously.

Step 4: Add Operation Lines

Each line in the routing represents one operation in the production process.

In the Lines section, enter an Operation No., typically in steps of 10 (10, 20, 30…) to allow for insertions later.
Set the Type field to Work Center or Machine Center, depending on which level you are scheduling to.
Enter the No., the work center or machine center number for this operation.
Enter Setup Time, the time needed to prepare the work center before production begins (per production run, not per unit).
Enter Run Time, the time required per unit of output at this operation.
Optionally, enter Move Time, the time to move the item to the next operation after this one finishes.
The Unit of Measure Code for time defaults to your system setting (usually minutes or hours). Confirm this matches your time entries.
Repeat for each operation in the production sequence.

Example Routing

Operation	Type	Work Center	Description	Setup Time	Run Time
10	Work Center	WC-CUT	Cutting	15 min	5 min
20	Work Center	WC-ASSM	Assembly	10 min	12 min
30	Work Center	WC-PACK	Packaging	5 min	3 min

Step 5: Certify the Routing

Like production BOMs, a routing must be Certified before it can be used.

On the routing header, change the Status field from New to Certified.
Business Central validates the routing lines. Errors will appear if any referenced work centers or machine centers are missing or inactive.

To edit a certified routing, set the status back to New or Under Development, make your changes, and certify again.

Step 6: Assign the Routing to an Item Card

Search for Items using Alt + Q and open the item card for your finished good.
Go to the Manufacturing FastTab.
Enter the routing number in the Routing No. field.
Confirm the Production BOM No. is also filled in, both are needed for production orders to populate fully.

When you refresh a production order for this item, Business Central reads the routing and creates routing lines on the order, one per operation.

Shop Calendars and Scheduling

Shop calendars control when a work center is available. Business Central uses capacity entries, generated from the shop calendar, to schedule operations on production orders.

If a work center has no capacity entries (because the calendar was never calculated, or the calendar does not cover the production order’s date range), scheduling will fail or produce incorrect results. After any change to a shop calendar, run Calculate Work Center Calendar to regenerate the capacity entries for affected work centers.

For full details on setting up shop calendars and running the calendar calculation, see How to Use Capacity Planning in Business Central.

With work centers and routings in place, you have the foundation needed to run production orders.

The next step is creating your first production order and moving it through the full lifecycle in How to Create and Manage Production Orders in Business Central.