Production Units

A Production Unit is a place that does work. Your own plant floor. An outsourced workshop. Every Production Batch step lands at a Unit; without Units, work has nowhere to go.

The Production Unit master is the configuration layer. It defines the unit, the operations it can perform and how much of each it can do per day, and (for outsourced units) the supplier and default cost source.

Inside an internal unit sit its Work Centers — the individual lines, tables and bays. The unit is the place; the work centers are the stations in it. A unit with four stitching lines is one Production Unit and four Work Centers.

Getting there

Awesome bar: Cmd/Ctrl + K → type production unit → pick Production Unit List.

Click path: Desk → GarmentFlow → Production → Setup card → Production Unit.

The two unit types

Every Unit is one of two types:

• Internal — work happens in-house. The Unit links to a Shop Floor (where on the factory map it sits) and uses your factory's own labor rate.
• External — work is outsourced. The Unit links to a Supplier, a Default Service Item (the item code that represents this service in purchasing), a Default Cost Source (Blanket Order / PO / PI), and optionally a Default Blanket Order if you've pre-negotiated rates.

The distinction matters because cost lands differently:

• Internal Units charge cost from labor (Cost Per Minute × minutes).
• External Units charge cost from procurement documents (the Blanket Order rate, the PO rate, or the PI).

Pick the wrong type and the Batch's cost rollup is wrong from day one.

The tabs

Configuration. Unit name, unit type (Internal / External), default warehouse, and the Operations table — every operation this unit can perform, with its own capacity. Internal units link to a Shop Floor (where on the factory map they sit); External units carry Supplier, Default Cost Source, Default Service Item and an optional Default Blanket Order.

The Scheduling section holds the unit's Holiday List, which is what puts non-working days on the cut calendar and out of the schedule.

Capacity is per operation

Capacity is declared once per operation, in the Operations table, not once for the whole unit. Each row picks a Capacity Method:

• SMV (the usual) — employees × shift minutes × efficiency % gives total minutes per day; capacity is those minutes ÷ the operation's SMV.
• Cycle Time — minutes per batch, with a maximum quantity per batch.
• Units/Hour — a straight hourly rate.

This matters because one line rarely runs one operation at one speed. A unit that stitches and finishes has two rows with two different capacities, and the simulator and the unit-load dashboard read the row that matches the step they're scheduling. Wrong numbers here mean wrong simulator output and wrong load reporting.

An operation a unit doesn't declare can't be scheduled there — and a Work Center that tries to run an operation its unit doesn't declare refuses to save. That guard is what keeps capacity honest.

Shop Floor. Internal units only: the unit's Work Centers laid out as cards with live machine counts and health, and a button to add another. Click through to a centre to lay out its machines. External units have no floor of yours to show, so the tab hides itself.

Contact. For External units, contact details and the supplier's location. Optional but useful — a supervisor chasing a delay can open the Unit and find a phone number.

How many Units to create

A common question: do you create one Unit per operation, or one Unit per physical place?

The answer is one Unit per physical place that runs an operation independently. Two stitching lines that can be loaded independently are two Units. One wash drum that can run one cycle at a time is one Unit. Three subcontract suppliers running the same wash service are three Units.

The simulator, the load dashboard, and the cost rollup all reason about Units as the atomic capacity allocation. Lump two things into one Unit and they'll share capacity that shouldn't be shared.

Within a unit, split the stations out as Work Centers. That is where per-station limits (a cutting table's maximum plies and length), per-station hourly cost, and the machines themselves live.

What to do next

Move on to Assembly Operations and skills for the operations that run on these Units, or to Work Centers for the stations inside them.