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Every product your factory makes has a story: a sequence of operations, a set of materials, and a handful of special cases for when the customer wants something slightly different. In most SMEs, that story lives in the memory of a handful of experienced people. Process recipes in Bold Factory give you a way to write it down — not in a document that sits in a drawer, but in a living digital definition that guides operators, drives quality checks, and feeds your production schedule every single day.

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What a Recipe Is

A recipe is the complete definition of how a product is manufactured. It brings together three things:
  • Process steps — the ordered sequence of operations an operator must carry out, from the first machining pass to the final inspection.
  • Bill of materials (BOM) — the materials and components consumed at each step, with quantities and units.
  • Conditions — rules that adapt the recipe automatically to handle product variations, so you do not need a separate recipe for every configuration you sell.
Think of a recipe as the manufacturing DNA of a product. Once it is defined in Bold, any operator — experienced or brand new — can produce that product correctly, every time.

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Creating a Recipe

1

Open the Recipe Manager

Navigate to Production Control → Recipes and click New Recipe. Give the recipe a name and link it to the product it belongs to.
2

Add process steps

Add each operation in the order it must be performed. For each step, you can specify:
  • A description and work instructions for the operator
  • The workstation or machine type where the step must be carried out
  • An estimated cycle time, which the sequencer uses to build your production plan
  • Any quality checks that must be completed before the step is marked done
3

Attach materials (BOM)

On each step, add the materials consumed at that point in the process. Set the quantity per unit produced. Bold links this to your warehouse so operators always know exactly what to pull and from which location.
4

Define conditions for variations

If a product can be ordered in different sizes, colours, or configurations, use conditions to branch the recipe. A condition evaluates a property of the production order — such as a product attribute — and shows or hides steps, changes quantities, or swaps materials accordingly.
5

Publish the recipe

Once you are happy with the initial version, publish it. From that point, any new production order for that product will use the recipe automatically.

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Managing Bills of Materials

The BOM is embedded inside the recipe rather than managed separately. This means the materials list is always in context — you see what is needed at which step, not just a flat list at the top of a document. Key things to know about BOM management in Bold:
  • Per-step materials — assign materials to the step where they are actually consumed, not just to the order as a whole. This lets you track consumption accurately and trigger stock alerts at the right moment.
  • Yield and scrap factors — set expected scrap percentages per step so that gross material requirements are calculated correctly when you launch a production order.
  • Alternative materials — define substitutes for each material so that operators know what to use when the primary stock runs out, without stopping the line to find a supervisor.
Bold’s MRP module reads your recipe BOMs to calculate material requirements and generate purchase orders. Keeping your BOMs accurate in the recipe manager directly improves the reliability of your purchasing plan.

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Handling Product Variations with Conditions

Rather than duplicating an entire recipe for each variant of a product, use conditions to handle differences inline. A condition is a logical rule — for example, “if the order attribute finish equals polished” — that controls whether a step appears, which materials are used, or what quality tolerance applies. Common use cases for conditions:
  • Showing an extra surface treatment step only when the customer has specified a special finish
  • Adjusting material quantities based on the product’s size or weight
  • Applying tighter quality tolerances for components that will go into a safety-critical assembly
Keep conditions simple at first. A small number of well-defined conditions is much easier to maintain than a deeply nested tree of rules. Add complexity gradually as you encounter real cases on the shop floor.

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How Recipes Guide Operators

When an operator opens a work order in Operator Work Mode, Bold reads the recipe and presents exactly the steps they need to complete — in order, with the correct materials listed, and with any quality checks surfaced at the right moment. The operator does not need to know the recipe exists; they just follow the screen. This has two important effects:
  1. Consistency — every operator follows the same process, regardless of their experience level or whether the usual expert is on shift.
  2. Onboarding speed — new starters can contribute from their first day because the knowledge is in the system, not locked in someone else’s head.

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Bulk Editing with AI Agents

If you need to update a large number of recipes at once — for example, to add a new quality check across every recipe that uses a particular machine, or to change a material specification following a supplier change — you can use Bold’s AI Agents to make bulk edits in natural language.
Bulk recipe editing with AI Agents is covered in depth in the AI Agents section of this documentation.

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Best Practices

You do not need to capture every micro-detail before going live. Start with the major steps and top-level materials. A first version that is 80% complete and live on the shop floor teaches you far more than a perfect version still being written. Add detail progressively based on real feedback from operators.
When you make a significant change to a recipe, create a new version rather than overwriting the existing one. This gives you a clear audit trail and lets you roll back if the change turns out to cause problems.
The operators who run the process every day know it better than anyone. Include them when writing and reviewing steps. They will spot gaps and inaccuracies that no one at a desk would ever catch, and their involvement builds buy-in for using the system.
Whenever a recurring defect or non-conformance is traced back to a process issue, update the recipe. Over time, your recipes become a continuously improving record of best practice, not a static document.