Capacity planning in Business Central gives you visibility into whether your work centers can handle the production load before orders are due. It relies on shop calendars to define when work centers are available, and on planning tools to match demand against that capacity. Without shop calendars and calculated capacity entries, the system cannot schedule operations or show you where bottlenecks exist.
This guide covers setting up shop calendars, assigning them to work centers, running the capacity calculation, reviewing work center load, and using the Planning Worksheet to generate production orders from demand.
Step 1: Create a Shop Calendar
A shop calendar defines which days of the week a work center operates and what the working hours are on those days.
- Search for Shop Calendars using
Alt + Q. - Select New.
- Enter a Code and Description (for example,
WEEKDAY, “Standard Monday–Friday”).
- Select Working Days from the action bar to open the working day lines.
- For each day the work center operates, add a line:
- Set the Day field to the day of the week.
- Enter the Starting Time and Ending Time for the shift.
- If a day has multiple shifts, add a separate line for each shift on the same day.
- Close the working days page.
Example: Standard Weekday Calendar
| Day | Starting Time | Ending Time |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | 08:00 | 17:00 |
| Tuesday | 08:00 | 17:00 |
| Wednesday | 08:00 | 17:00 |
| Thursday | 08:00 | 17:00 |
| Friday | 08:00 | 16:00 |
Step 2: Assign the Calendar to Work Centers
Each work center must have a shop calendar assigned before you can calculate capacity.
- Search for Work Centers using
Alt + Q. - Open the work center card.
- Set the Shop Calendar Code field to the calendar you created.
- Repeat for each work center.
Machine centers inherit the calendar of their parent work center unless you assign a different one directly on the machine center card. If a specific machine operates different hours, assign it a separate shop calendar.
Step 3: Calculate the Work Center Calendar
Assigning a shop calendar does not automatically create capacity entries. You need to run the calculation to generate them.
- On the Work Center Card, select Calculate Calendar from the action bar.
- A dialog appears asking for a date range:
- Set Starting Date to the beginning of your planning horizon (for example, the first day of next month or the start of the year).
- Set Ending Date to as far ahead as your planning runs (typically 3–12 months out).
- Select OK.
Business Central generates capacity entries for every working day in the range, based on the shop calendar. These entries are what the system uses when scheduling production order operations.
Run this function again whenever:
- You change the shop calendar (add or remove working days or shifts)
- You extend your planning horizon beyond the previously calculated range
- You add a new work center
You can also run the calculation for all work centers at once by navigating to Manufacturing > Planning > Calculate Work Center Calendar (the exact path may vary by Role Center).
Step 4: View Work Center Load
The Work Center Load page shows how much of a work center’s available capacity is consumed by production orders across a time period.
- Search for Work Center Load using
Alt + Q. - The page lists each work center with columns for:
- Capacity (Effective), available hours after efficiency is applied
- Allocated Time, hours allocated to released and firm planned production orders
- Remaining Capacity, the difference between effective capacity and allocated time
- Load %, allocated time as a percentage of effective capacity
Use this view to identify overloaded work centers before releasing production orders. A Load % above 100 means the work center is scheduled beyond its available capacity for that period.
For machine-level detail, use the Machine Center Load page, it works identically but shows capacity at the machine center level.
Step 5: Use the Planning Worksheet
The Planning Worksheet generates suggested production orders (and purchase orders) based on demand. It looks at sales orders, demand forecasts, and minimum stock levels, then compares against inventory and existing supply orders to calculate what needs to be produced and when.
- Search for Planning Worksheet using
Alt + Q. - Select Calculate Regenerative Plan or Calculate Net Change Plan from the action bar:
- Regenerative Plan, recalculates from scratch for all items within the date range.
- Net Change Plan, only recalculates items where demand or supply has changed since the last plan run. Faster for daily use.
- Set the Starting Date and Ending Date for the planning horizon.
- Select OK to run the calculation.
After the calculation, the worksheet populates with suggested action lines. Each line shows:
- The Item No. and description
- The Action Message, for example, New (create a new order), Change Qty. (adjust an existing order), or Reschedule (move an existing order’s date)
- The suggested Quantity and Due Date
- The Ref. Order Type, Prod. Order for items with a production replenishment system
- Review the suggestions. You can delete lines you do not want to act on, or modify quantities and dates directly in the worksheet.
- When ready, select Carry Out Action Message from the action bar.
- A dialog asks which order types to create. Confirm and select OK.
Business Central creates the suggested production orders (or purchase orders) based on your selections. New production orders are created as Firm Planned by default.
Capacity-Constrained Planning
By default, Business Central’s planning does not respect work center capacity limits, it schedules all demand regardless of whether work centers are overloaded. This is known as infinite capacity planning.
If you want the system to avoid scheduling more work than a work center can handle in a given period, you can enable Capacity Constrained planning for specific work centers.
- Open the Work Center Card.
- On the Planning FastTab, set Capacity Constrained to enabled.
- Set a Dampener %, this controls how close to 100% load the system will plan before it starts deferring work to avoid overloading.
With capacity-constrained planning active, the Planning Worksheet will push production order dates out if the required capacity exceeds what is available, rather than simply stacking demand onto an already full work center. This produces more realistic schedules but may result in later due dates than infinite capacity planning would suggest.
Once capacity planning is in place, you have a complete manufacturing setup, BOMs, routings, work centers, production orders, and demand-driven planning all working together.
For an overview of how these pieces connect, see Introduction to Manufacturing in Business Central.