About work centers

Work centers are locations within the equipment model that AVEVA™ Production Management tracks the balance of materials and the transactions that affect the balance (that is, inputs and outputs).

Types of work centers

When you choose a work center for any particular location on the plant hierarchy, match the work center with the process that the location uses:

• A Process Cell represents the batch process type.

• A Production Unit represents the continuous process type.

• A Production Line work center represents the discrete process type.

• A Storage Zone represents the storage process type.

  

Guidelines about work centers

• A work center is an element of the plant hierarchy that represents the location of a process type, the location of a group of equipment, and the location to record the movement of materials.

• A work center specifies how a material lot behaves when it enters or leaves the work center.

• A work center in AVEVA™ Production Management correlates to the work center in the ISA-95 Equipment Hierarchy Model. However, AVEVA™ Production Management does not use the ISA-95 term work units for equipment in a work center.

• A project can contain any number and combination of work centers, and they can reside in only site folders and area folders.

• After you add and configure a work center, the Inventory module is present in AVEVA™ Production Management.

Lot IDs

The same Lot ID can move through a work center, as long as each of the lots with the same Lot ID belong to a different lot group.

In the preceding table,

• Row 1, row 2, and row 3 are all valid because although they have the same Lot ID, they have different lot groups.

• Null is a valid lot group if the LotGroupRequired property is set to Optional. See, Work center properties.

• The Lot IDs must be of identical material.

• Row 4 is not valid because the material does not match.

Remnants lots

If the source work equipment is of type WeightedAverage, then material is taken from each lot in weighted amounts. After repeated weighted average movements, some lots have very small balances and are known as a remnant lot. For weighted average movements, AVEVA™ Production Management moves remnant lots first, and then the remaining lots are moved in weighted amounts. When remnant lots are calculated, AVEVA™ Production Management considers only lots where material exists, so debt lots are not considered.

Negative balances and debt lots

Work centers support having negative balances or debt lots. This occurs when the balance in a source work equipment is not enough to fulfill a material movement request. AVEVA™ Production Management creates a negative balance on a lot, or a debt lot to hold the negative balance at the source work equipment. Whether a negative balance or a debt lot is added, depends on the type of work center. For more information, see Understand lot behavior for negative balances.

Work centers and survey results

If the work center is of type Mixed, you can use a survey result to change the balance of the work center to reflect the result of a survey. AVEVA™ Production Management uses the survey result to automatically calculate the adjustment so that the balance of the work center is equal to the balance of the survey result.

Example: Adjusting a balance with a survey result

Work Center 1 is of type Mixed, and has a balance of 100. An aerial survey is performed on the work center and determines that the surveyed balance of the work center is 110. AVEVA™ Production Management calculates the adjustment to apply to the work center so that the work center balance is equal to the survey result.

For more information, see About survey results.

Related topics

• Add and configure a work center

• About the plant hierarchy

• About the equipment model

• About the material model