Operations and the routing

Last updated 6 August 2026

The routing is the order the part travels and what each station does to it. It is what turns a list of characteristics into a control plan with a sheet per operation, and it is what the tolerance walk-back runs on.

What an operation carries

Field	Notes
Step	Sort order. Operations are always shown lowest first.
Name	Free text, as your travelers say it.
Type	From the shop list: mill, turn, grind, plate, anodize, heat treat, inspect and the rest.
Changes dimensions	Whether this operation moves the size of the part. This is what turns on the effect fields.
Effect	How much it adds or removes per side, as a minimum and a maximum, in a unit of its own.
Equipment	Machine or cell.
Owner	Who runs it.
Vendor	Free text. Blank means in-house.
Special process	Marks it for AS9102 Form 2.
Notes	Free text.

Dimensional is not the same as the type

Whether an operation changes dimensions is a checkbox, not something inferred from its type. A masked plate on a feature nobody plates should not be flagged, and a deburr that takes a real amount off an edge should. Nothing in the walk-back happens on an operation whose box is clear.

Effects

An effect is entered per side, as a minimum and a maximum, because that is how an outside process is specified: plating at 0.0002 to 0.0004, grinding at exactly 0.0100.

A range, where the minimum and maximum differ, narrows the tolerance band available upstream. The part has to be in spec whichever thickness the outside shop lands on.
A fixed amount, where they are equal, shifts the limits without narrowing them.
The unit belongs to the operation, so an inch-spec plating on a metric drawing is entered as inches and converted for you.

Half buildup

Anodize is called out as total coat thickness, but only about half of it sits above the original surface: the rest grows into the base metal. The half buildup checkbox halves the amount applied, so you can key the callout as written rather than doing the arithmetic in your head and leaving nobody able to check it.

Vendors

Vendor is a name typed on the operation. There is no vendor registry in ctrlPlanner, and that is deliberate: the approved vendor list is a controlled document in your QMS, and a second copy of it here would be a second copy to keep current and an obvious finding when the two disagree. Storing names rather than references also means a plan file opens correctly on a machine that has never heard of your vendors.

Special processes

Tick special process on the operations that are ones. AS9102 Form 2 builds its special processes table from that flag, so plating, heat treat and NDT arrive on the form already filled in with the operation and its supplier.

What each operation does to each characteristic

Effects live on the operation; how a given characteristic responds to them lives on the characteristic. Open a row's Ops cell and you get a grid of every operation with two things to set.

Inspected here, or not.
Behavior: grows, no change, or shrinks. Plus whether the effect lands on one side or on both, which is the difference between a slot depth and a diameter.

Inspection and behavior are independent. An operation can grow or shrink a dimension without being a station where anybody measures it, and the walk-back still accounts for it.

Process templates

A routing you run often can be saved and applied in one click. A template carries the operation names, types and whether each is dimensional, and nothing else: effects, equipment, vendor and notes are filled in per plan, because those are the parts that differ between two jobs that follow the same route.

Next: the tolerance walk-back