A production process is triggered by existing production requirements. During material requirements planning, production requirements are converted into planned orders defining the planned basic dates and production quantities.

During process planning, planned orders are converted into process orders. The basic dates and production quantities are copied from the planned order. The actual production dates are calculated using the basic dates. You can also create a process order manually.

A process order provides a detailed description of the actual production of one or more materials in one production run.

A master recipe is used as the basis for a process order. It defines, for example, the planned resources and material components.

After a process order has been released for production, the process instructions maintained in the order are bundled into control recipes during process management. The control recipes are either transferred to a process control system via a specific interface or they are displayed in natural language in the form of a process instruction sheet (PI sheet) which can be maintained by the line operator.

In return, process management receives process messages from the process control level and transfers them to different destinations. For instance, it is possible to record actual values of the process to functions for process data documentation and evaluation, post material consumptions or production yields as goods movements, and transfer quality data to results recording of Quality Management.