Merging operations from subassembly on production order

That’s an interesting and thought provoking question and I think I’d like to understand your use case a little better.

The idea around phantom routing is effectively a “make-to-production” workflow.  From a pracitical standpoint, the subassembly’s BOM is assigned a primary workcenter (or set of workcentoers) that would include a standard labor cost, equipment, and other overhead applications to support the correct cost absorbtion, based on the resources needed to make the item beyond the material costs.  

If you’re not absorbing costs beyond materials or if your standard cost absorbtion is the same across the shop floor, then sure, I would only use a single workcenter for everything since the workcenter functionality then becomes academic.  Otherwise, the workcenter routing is a critical part of your cost accounting mechanism. 

It appears that what you’re suggesting is that the workcenter for the subassembly can be fluid, and made anywhere by anybody within the shop floor depending on where the primary part is being made?  

Perhaps you can provide an illustration so we can better understand your use case?  Also, is this a UI issue or a traveler formatting issue?

Hi Paul 

Thank you so much for your quick reply and insight. 

The reason we need to merge operation is based on operational needs. 

The same operation (i.e. cutting board) will be part of most of the subassemblies (doors, drawers). When the joinery is put together from the subassemblies, board cutting will be done together. So we would like to avoid recording labour into many different cutting board operations. Hence the need to merge them into one operation. 

Each joinery’s subassemblies varies greatly. So we couldn’t capture labor time in BOM at the parent level. 

Hope this helps. 

Really appreciate your advice and suggestion.

Best Regards

I was looking for a solution and found multiple production clock entry. It seems that you can log time towards the operations that share the work centres. but you can’t seem to log time towards operations that share the work centres on the same production order (our current issue). 

We could look at creating production orders for subassemblies, but it will be very hard to track which production orders are linked together, since the clock entry screen does not reference it. 

Appreciate any insight you may have.

Thanks. 

​@snzhang this is AI generated answer hope it helps!

1. Phantom BOM Optimization
If you are using Phantom BOMs, ensure that similar operations are grouped at the parent level.
Acumatica does not automatically merge identical operations from different subassemblies, but you can restructure the BOM so that operations are only listed once at the parent level instead of repeating in each subassembly.
2. Use the "Batch Operations" Feature
Some versions of Acumatica Manufacturing Edition allow you to group operations under Batch Processing.
This helps log clock entries against merged operations rather than separately for each subassembly.
Check if you have Batch Operations enabled in Production Preferences.
3. Modify the Routing Process
Instead of having duplicate operations at the subassembly level, define operations at the parent level.
Use overlapping operations where possible to allow workers to log time against a single work center.
4. Customization or Business Event Automation
If Acumatica does not support this natively, you may need a customization:
A business event that detects duplicate operations with the same work center and merges them into one.
A custom workflow that adjusts routing automatically.
5. Alternative: Track Work Orders for Subassemblies
As you mentioned, creating separate production orders for subassemblies makes tracking difficult.
However, you could:
Use attributes or reference fields in the clock entry screen to link related production orders.
Leverage linked production orders within Acumatica’s Manufacturing module.

​@snzhang 
Have you seen this thread? 
It’s a request to add the exact functionality you’re also needing.
Currently merging materials from multiple phantom subassemblies isn’t possible, but they are gathering feedback for this requirement. 

Phantom "Synthesize" Routing | Community

Our work-around for this is as follows. 
We include all possible operations in the parent BOM of the configurable item, with no materials in them. 
Then, for each option in the configuration template we select the operation the materials should be consumed in. 

Depending on the options selected for a specific configured item, some of those operations will be empty on the resulting production order. We then built a custom action, “Delete Empty Operations” that gets called automatically when the production order is released. 

This has worked fairly well for us.