Work Center can be standalone to represent a single or group of resources. If your resources, such as a group of CNC machines, all operate at the same efficiency and cost, you can just use a Work Center and update your Capacity calculation to account for however many machines are included in the group. You also use a Work Center when you are defining a sub-contractor, by defining a Vendor on the Work Center card.
Machine Centers are linked to a Work Center, and they are optional. We suggest the use of Machine Centers when you need to be specific with resource selection. For example, I can't use just any welder, the build requires the robot welder. You can also control the specific cost of the resources at the Machine Center level, which can give you a more accurate Standard Cost rollup and allows you to select the specific resource during time reporting to have more accurate actual costs.
If you use one of the great scheduling Extensions for Manufacturing, they will utilize Machine Centers to help load balance your production. They can operate just as well with only Work Centers too.
Hope I kept this simple enough for you to better utilize your environment.
Best Regards,
Ben Baxter
Accent Software Inc
