Manufacturing Foundations Capacities (2026)
Capacity setup in Business Central Manufacturing: work shifts, shop calendars, work centers and groups, machine centers, consolidated calendars, the work center calendar matrix, and how these drive production order scheduling. Uses the Contoso Coffee demo data.
- Introduction and capacity overview
- Work shifts as building blocks
- Shop calendars and shift combinations
- Work centers and work center groups
- Work center posting and scheduling settings
- Machine centers and consolidated calendars
- Work center calendar matrix and capacity calculations
- Production order scheduling demonstration
- Summary and closing
Overview
The video walks through the capacity setup that production scheduling depends on in Business Central. It starts with work shifts as the smallest building block, combines them into shop calendars with working days and holidays, and then sets up work centers, work center groups and machine centers.
It then calculates the work center calendar to produce a capacity matrix in minutes, and finishes by refreshing a production order to show how start and finish dates are derived from capacities, routings and the shop calendar.
Key points
- Work shifts are reusable labels (Contoso Coffee uses code 1 for first shift and code 2 for second shift) assigned to working days in a shop calendar.
- A work center using two shifts can schedule 16 hours per day instead of 8.
- Every work center belongs to exactly one work center group; groups are used for reporting and cost aggregation.
- The work center Posting tab holds direct unit cost, indirect cost percentage and overhead rate; the Scheduling tab holds unit of measure, capacity, efficiency and shop calendar.
- Machine centers always belong to a work center, inherit its calendar, and have their own capacity, efficiency and routing setups.
- With the consolidated calendar activated, work center capacity is the sum of its machine centers instead of coming from the work center card.
- Calculate the work center calendar to build the capacity matrix in minutes. In the demo, work center 200 has 2,400 minutes of effective weekly capacity.
Features
Every feature below: status not stated, demoed.
| Feature | At |
|---|---|
| Work shifts | 0:27 |
| Shop calendars | 0:41 |
| Work center groups | 1:33 |
| Work center posting settings | 1:56 |
| Work center scheduling configuration | 2:07 |
| Machine centers | 2:30 |
| Consolidated calendar for work centers | 2:42 |
| Work center calendar calculation | 2:59 |
| Work center calendar matrix | 3:28 |
| Production order scheduling | 4:42 |
AL objects mentioned
As heard in the captions. A name that matches one object page by exact type and name links to it; the others stay as named.
- table 99000754 “Work Center” at 0:12
- table 99000758 “Machine Center” at 0:12
- table 99000750 “Work Shift” at 0:12
- table 99000751 “Shop Calendar” at 0:12
- table 5405 “Production Order” at 4:42
Quotes
- 0:12 “On Business Central, by clicking into capacities, you can access work centers, machine centers, and related setup pages that drives production scheduling.”
- 0:27 “Work shifts are the smallest building blocks. Contoso has two shifts, code one for the first shift, and code two for the second shift.”
- 1:09 “A work center using two shifts can schedule 16 hours per day instead of eight.”
- 1:45 “Every work center belongs to exactly one group and are useful for costing.”
- 3:48 “Our weekly capacity the work center 200 is 2,400 minutes of effective capacity.”
- 4:24 “Each working day has now a total capacity of 960 minutes, but effectively only 768 minutes per day”
- 4:55 “Once we click refresh production order, the system calculates when production must start and finish.”
- 5:19 “Business Central uses calendar entries for scheduling your production against your capacities.”
Presenters (as heard): Unknown narrator.