Picking lists
Staging a job's materials from the warehouse to the point of use, tracked line by line.
A is a set of instructions to pull a job's materials out of the warehouse and stage them where the work happens. Each line names one material, how much to pick, where it lives now, and where it's going: the bin at the operation's . A pick doesn't consume the stock; it moves it, so production can draw it down later.
What a picking list picks against
Picking is driven by production, not by shipping. A list is generated from job operations that still have unstaged material. Carbon looks at each operation's materials, checks whether the operation's own lineside bin already holds enough on hand to cover them, and lists only what's genuinely outstanding. An operation already on a non-cancelled picking list won't be offered again, so you can't accidentally pick the same work twice.
Every line ties back to a specific job, job material, and (usually) job operation. There is no picking against a or a sales order here. Shipments pull finished goods out to customers and are their own document; picking stages raw and component material into a job.
A material needs picking only when its lineside bin doesn't already cover the operation's issue quantity. Carbon tests the actual on-hand at that bin, not where the job material's record happens to point. Material line-stocked at the work center is already staged, not an outstanding pick.
Header and line status
A picking list header moves through four states. It starts at "Draft", flips to "In Progress" on the first pick, and reaches "Completed" when every line is resolved. "Cancelled" is a terminal off-ramp.
The header status is derived from its lines by a database trigger, not set by hand: as lines are picked and unpicked, the header recomputes. It only jumps to "Completed" once no line is still outstanding, and it never overrides a "Cancelled" header.
Each line carries its own status:
Short picks don't silently close the list
When there isn't enough stock, a picker enters how many were actually pulled and marks the line "Short". That is a deliberate, human-acknowledged shortage, not an error.
A "Short" line that isn't fully picked keeps the list "In Progress" — it does not count as resolved. The list completes only through the explicit "Complete" action, so a shortage is always signed off by a person rather than being finalized in the background. A "Cancelled" line is different: its requirement is gone, so it no longer holds the list open.
Where picking happens
Picking lists are generated and managed from the ERP, and the same lists are worked on the MES shop floor, where an operator opens an assigned list, taps "Start" to move it to "In Progress", picks each line, and taps "Finish" to complete it. Tracked items (serial and batch) are picked by scanning the specific lot.
Once a list is "Completed" or "Cancelled" it locks: no further picks or unpicks. Reopening is ERP-only — it needs the inventory delete permission, so the floor can't reopen a closed list. The MES surface tells the operator to reopen it from the ERP instead. This keeps a finalized pick from being quietly reworked at the station.
What posting a pick does to stock
A pick is a transfer, never a consumption. Posting one writes two balanced entries: a negative at the warehouse source bin and an equal positive at the operation's lineside bin. On-hand doesn't drop; it just relocates to the point of use. Carbon also repoints the job material at the lineside bin, so when production backflushes or issues the material, it draws from where the pick just put it.
- Untracked material posts the transfer pair and marks the line "Picked".
- Serial and batch picks additionally record a movement, so the exact lot is traceable end to end. Picking part of a batch splits it: the picked quantity moves to lineside and the remainder stays behind as a new lot.
An unpick reverses the transfer, restores the warehouse source as the consumption point, and returns the line to "Pending". And at job complete, any picked-but-unconsumed remainder is walked back from the lineside bin to the warehouse automatically, so leftover staged stock never gets stranded at the line.
Because a pick only moves stock and never checks availability first, on-hand at a bin can go negative — the same way shipping and issuing do. Carbon lets the floor proceed and reconciles later rather than blocking the work.