When Should Manufacturers use Product Families in Business Central

Business Central manufacturing includes a very useful (and I believe misunderstood) feature called a production family. This is a standard component of Production Management, which is included in the Premium Business Central license.

Who Uses Production Families

Production families are more likely to be used in a make-to-stock or make-to-order manufacturing environment than they are in most others. They work best when a single raw material (or materials) are used to make multiple finished parts. Here are some examples I've seen of this kind of feature in use:

• Cutting many parts on a plasma cutter from one sheet
• Stamping 2 or more distinct parts during the same hit of a die 
• Cutting two parts at once (often a top and bottom or a left and right) on a CNC machine

In some ERP systems these can be called co-products as well. 

Some Best Practices using Production Families

I've seen production families used for activities like cutting multiple parts from a single sheet on a plasma or laser cutter.  This works pretty well when you are willing to work with a multi-level BOM.  When a company tries to flatten their BOM (have all their components on a single - or too few - levels of BOM) this can create problems.

Production families expect to produce the multiple finished goods in a single step.  That means that it's not expected that following that step or related steps, the parts will then "split" and proceed in different directions.