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One of the most draining daily tasks in any production environment is deciding what to make next. Which order is most urgent? Which machine is free? Can we commit to that delivery date the sales team just promised? In most SMEs, these decisions are made informally — the production manager walks the floor, consults a whiteboard, and makes a call based on experience. Bold Factory’s automatic sequencer replaces that manual juggling with a mathematically optimised production plan, generated in seconds and ready to deploy to the floor.

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What Automatic Sequencing Does

The sequencer takes your open production orders and builds an ordered schedule for every workstation on your floor. It does not just sort orders by due date — it models the real constraints of your factory and finds a feasible sequence that minimises delays and maximises throughput. The inputs the sequencer uses include:
  • Open production orders — everything that needs to be made, with due dates and quantities.
  • Process recipes — the steps required for each product, the machines those steps can run on, and the cycle times per unit.
  • Machine availability — working hours, shift patterns, and any downtime already recorded.
  • Tooling constraints — which machines are equipped for which operations, so work is only scheduled where it can actually be done.
  • Precedence rules — the sequencer respects recipe step order, so operation B is never scheduled before operation A that feeds it.
  • Material availability — open purchase orders and current stock levels from the MRP module, so the plan does not schedule production for materials that have not arrived yet.
The sequencer is integrated directly with Bold Factory’s MRP module. Material availability windows are read automatically — you do not need to enter them separately in two places.

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Benefits for Your Team and Your Customers

When operators arrive for their shift, the sequence is already waiting for them in Operator Work Mode. Each workstation shows the ordered list of work for the day. There is no need to find the production manager, check a whiteboard, or decode a spreadsheet.
Because the sequence is built from real capacity data, Bold can calculate a genuine expected completion date for every order. Sales can quote delivery dates with confidence, and you can spot overload situations — where you have promised more than the floor can deliver — before they turn into a crisis.
The sequencer surface queues that are building up at specific workstations. If one machine has three weeks of work queued while another of the same type sits idle, that is immediately visible in the schedule view and you can act on it.
When a new urgent order arrives or a machine goes down, re-run the sequencer. It recalculates the full schedule in seconds and shows you the updated plan, including any orders whose delivery dates have shifted as a result.

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How to Use the Sequencer

1

Review open orders

Before running the sequencer, check that your open production orders have accurate due dates and that the recipes linked to them have correct cycle times. Garbage in, garbage out — a few minutes here saves a misleading schedule later.
2

Run the sequencer

Navigate to Production Control → Sequencer and click Generate Plan. Bold runs the algorithm against your current data and presents the proposed schedule. This typically takes a few seconds, even for large factories with many concurrent orders.
3

Review the output

The schedule is shown in a Gantt-style view by workstation. Review it for obvious issues: orders with tight due dates, machines with unusually long queues, or steps that have been pushed out because of a bottleneck upstream. Bold highlights constraint violations and delivery date risks automatically.
4

Make manual adjustments

If the algorithm has made a decision you want to override — for example, you want to prioritise a specific customer order regardless of due date — drag and drop it to the position you want in the sequence. Bold recalculates the downstream impact of the change and updates estimated completion dates in real time.
5

Apply the plan to the floor

When you are satisfied with the schedule, click Apply. The sequence is pushed to Operator Work Mode, where operators see their updated work queue immediately. Production begins.
Applying a new plan updates the queue for operators currently on the floor. If you are running in the middle of a shift, consider locking the immediate short-term horizon — the next few hours — before resequencing, so operators are not disrupted mid-operation.

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How Sequencing Works with MRP

The MES sequencer and Bold’s MRP module work together as two layers of the same planning system:
LayerScopeHorizon
MRPWhat to make and buyWeeks to months
MES SequencerIn what order and on which machineHours to days
MRP sets the demand signal — it tells you how many of what to produce by when, and generates the work orders and purchase requisitions to make it happen. The MES sequencer takes those work orders and solves the detailed floor-level question: given everything you need to make, what is the best order to make it in, across all your machines and people? The two systems share the same data in Bold — there is no manual synchronisation or duplicate entry. Work orders created by MRP are immediately visible to the sequencer, and estimated completion dates calculated by the sequencer flow back into customer-facing delivery commitments.
Run the sequencer at the start of each shift or each day as a matter of routine, not just when something has gone wrong. A regular cadence means the schedule is always fresh and your team is never working from stale priorities.