KPI Dashboard and Role Center
The KPI strip
Six tiles, always visible at the top of the Scheduler, updating as you work:
| Tile | What it measures |
|---|---|
| Active Orders | Total production orders currently in the system. |
| Released | Orders released to the shop floor. |
| Avg Utilization | Average utilization across your work centers. |
| Late Orders | Orders that need attention — reads “all on time” when there are none. |
| Material Alerts | Orders with a shortage or partial-availability component. |
| High Priority | Orders flagged High or Critical priority. |
None of the six is a target to hit in isolation — they’re a dashboard precisely because reading one without the others is misleading. A high Avg Utilization looks like a win until you check Late Orders next to it: a work center running hot and still shipping late usually means the load is in the wrong place, not that there’s too little of it. Material Alerts is worth checking before you trust a finite or optimizer proposal at all — an order the solver scheduled cleanly can still be blocked on the floor if a component behind it is short; see Capacity Heatmaps and Material Availability for what drives that count. The strip recalculates after every action you take on the board — a drag, an Accept, a Reject — so it’s a live read of the schedule you’re looking at, not a cached snapshot from when the page loaded.
The SmartFlow Planner role center
SmartFlow ships a dedicated Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central role center — BDP SmartFlow APS Planner — built around the scheduling and sequencing work a planner does every day:
- A headline part and an activities cue part summarizing what needs attention.
- A Recent Optimization Runs part.
- Quick actions grouped into APS Scheduling (Scheduler, Conflict Log, Optimization Results), Production Orders (Firm Planned / Released / Planned / Finished, each opening the standard Business Central list), Shop Floor (Work Centers, Machine Centers, Routings, Production BOMs), Sequence Optimizer (Constraint Types, Changeover Matrix, Product Attributes, Attribute Values), Inventory (Items, Locations), and Setup (SmartFlow APS Setup, Manufacturing Setup).
Extending the Manufacturing Manager role center
If your planners already work from Business Central’s standard Manufacturing Manager role center, SmartFlow adds four navigation actions to it rather than requiring a role-center switch: SmartFlow APS Scheduler, APS Conflict Log, APS Setup, and APS Constraint Setup.
Concepts behind this feature
For what each KPI actually trades off against the others — why chasing 100% utilization and chasing on-time delivery can pull in opposite directions — see Measuring a Schedule: OTIF, Tardiness, Utilization, and the Trade-offs.