What Is a Production Order (Job Ticket)? Meaning and Example

Key takeaways

• It is the plant's instruction to itself: make this product, in this quantity, by this date.
• Many names, one idea: job ticket, manufacturing order, shop order or, in some systems, work order.
• The enterprise resource planning (ERP) system owns the order from creation to close.
• A manufacturing execution system (MES) or light MES records how the line ran while the order was made.

By the numbers

• Only 8% of the world's roughly 5 million factories use a commercial MES; many more rely on homegrown tools, ERP add ons, spreadsheets or paper. (IoT Analytics, 2025)
• In 2018 only about 30% of manufacturers had rolled out their digital manufacturing solutions company wide, the 'pilot purgatory' McKinsey described. (McKinsey & Company, 2018)
• In consumer goods, 70% of companies were at pilot phase or beyond with digital manufacturing solutions, but only 26% had reached the rollout phase (2018). (McKinsey & Company, 2018)

A production order (also called a job ticket) is the instruction to make a set quantity of one product by a set date. It lists the steps, called the routing, and the materials, called the bill of materials (BOM). Each order has its own number, so the floor can book output, scrap and time against it.

Fabrico is a computer vision enabled Manufacturing Performance Platform. It is OEE (overall equipment effectiveness) and light MES software. It logs downtime automatically, prices each loss in money and shows OEE live by line and shift. The order itself stays in your ERP.

What is on a production order?

The core fields are the same in most systems.

The ERP copies the routing and the BOM into each new order, so later master data changes leave it alone. Our guide to BOM vs routing explains both records, and the production work order data model lists the fields in full.

The output often gets a batch or lot number too, which is not the order number. See batch vs lot numbers for the difference.

What happens to a production order from release to close?

The state names differ between ERPs, but the steps are much the same.

1. Created: a planner creates it, often from a planned order suggested by material planning.
2. Released: the planner checks materials and capacity, then releases it. The floor can now book against it, and the job ticket can be printed.
3. Started: the first step begins and materials go to the line.
4. Confirmed: the floor reports quantities and times, partly as it goes and finally when the order is done.
5. Closed: finance settles the costs, and no more bookings are allowed.

Most order data problems are bookings at the wrong moment. A quantity booked before release, or after close, makes stock, costs and output disagree.

How is a production order different from a work order or a sales order?

Three kinds of order get mixed up in most plants.

• Sales order: a customer asks to buy. It says what, how many and when. It can be filled from stock or trigger a production order.
• Production order: the plant tells itself to make something. It points to a product, its routing and its materials. In make to order, it can link back to a sales order.
• Maintenance work order: a technician is asked to inspect or repair a machine. It points to an asset, not a product.

"Work order" is the trap. Some ERPs use it for production orders, while maintenance teams use it for repairs. When someone says work order, ask which kind.

How does the shop floor report against a production order?

While the order runs, the floor sends back what really happened:

• Good quantity: units that passed and can ship.
• Reject quantity: scrap and rework, with a reason.
• Times: when the order started and finished on the line.
• Stops: each halt, how long it lasted and why.

The ERP wants totals: good units, materials used and hours. The ISA-95 standard agrees: the business level gets a summary of production, not raw machine signals.

An MES or light MES records how the line ran while the order was made: stops with reasons, counts by shift and OEE. The totals sent to the ERP then match the line.

Paper job tickets struggle here. Totals get written at the end of the shift, and short stops go missing. IoT Analytics reports that 54.4% of small and medium manufacturers still run production on paper or spreadsheets. Our comparison of OEE software and the ERP production module shows which system should hold which data.

What does a production order look like in a worked example?

Sample line (illustrative numbers, not a customer). Order PO-20817 asks line 2 for 18,000 one litre bottles of apple juice by Thursday. The ideal rate is 150 bottles a minute, so the order needs 120 minutes of perfect running.

The order ran for 160 minutes, first to last bottle. Stops took 25 minutes: one capper jam of 15 minutes and 10 minutes of short stops.

Method note: Sample line, illustrative numbers, not a customer. Every result above comes from the inputs listed and the formula shown with it, so you can repeat the calculation with your own line's numbers.

• Availability = (160 minus 25) / 160 = 135 / 160 = 84.4%.
• Performance = 120 minutes of ideal output / 135 minutes of run time = 88.9%.
• Quality = 17,640 / 18,000 = 98.0%.
• OEE for the order = 17,640 / 150 = 117.6 minutes of good output, and 117.6 / 160 = 73.5%.

The ERP gets the summary: 17,640 good, 360 rejected, final confirmation. The planner decides whether to close the order short or make the rest. The MES keeps the story of the 25 lost minutes and their reasons.

Say the line is sold out, and each bottle earns a contribution margin of $0.20 (€0.20 in a euro plant). The stops then cost 25 x 150 x $0.20 = $750.

What should production order software do?

Production order management lives in the ERP: create, release, cost and close. Tracking is the shop floor side: how far each order has got and what slowed it down. The usual tools:

• The ERP production module for the order itself.
• The job ticket, on paper or a screen, so the line knows what to run next.
• An MES or light MES for counts, stops with reasons, and OEE by line and shift.
• A line screen where the operator confirms a stop reason in one tap.

Keep the split clear: the ERP says what to make, and the MES records how it went. Our guide to choosing MES software compares full and light options, and what a light MES covers shows where to start.

Fabrico sits on the recording side. It is not an ERP and does not replace one. You start with a pilot on one line. There is no free plan and there are no tiers: each plant gets a quote.

Proof from a named plant: Ficosota raised factory-wide OEE from 53.1% to 59.6%, with good output up 23.2% a month from June to September 2026. Read the Ficosota case.

Toyota defines just-in-time as "making only what is needed, when it is needed, and in the amount needed." (Toyota, Toyota Production System)

Frequently asked questions

Is a job ticket the same as a production order?

In most plants, yes. Job ticket is the shop floor name, often for the printed sheet that travels with the work. Production order, manufacturing order and shop order are ERP names for the same instruction. Some ERPs call it a work order, and SAP calls the process industry version a process order.

Who creates a production order?

Usually a planner, in the ERP. Material planning often suggests a planned order from demand and stock, and the planner turns it into a production order. Before release, the planner checks materials and capacity. Some plants also create orders by hand for trials or rework.

What is the difference between a planned order and a production order?

A planned order is a proposal from material planning. It can change or vanish when demand changes, and nothing is booked against it. A production order is firm. It has a number, a routing and materials, and once it is released the floor can report against it.

Does an MES replace the production order in the ERP?

No. The ERP stays the owner of the order, its costs and its stock postings. An MES or light MES records how the line ran while the order was made: counts, stops, reasons and OEE. It then hands clean totals back to the ERP.