What is Loading? Definition & Manufacturing Examples

What is Loading?

Loading in manufacturing is the process of assigning work — in the form of production orders and their operations — to specific machines, work centers, or labor resources. It determines how much work each resource is responsible for within a given time period, typically expressed as hours loaded versus hours available. Loading is the critical step that connects the production plan to the physical resources that will execute it.

How Loading Works in Manufacturing

Loading takes the operations from all open and planned production orders and assigns them to the appropriate resources. Each operation in a routing specifies which work center or machine it requires, along with setup time and run time. The loading process totals these times for each resource to show how many hours of work are assigned.

There are two fundamental approaches to loading. Finite loading respects resource capacity limits, never assigning more work than a resource can handle. If a machine has 40 hours available per week, finite loading caps the assigned work at 40 hours and pushes excess to the following week or an alternate resource. Infinite loading ignores capacity limits, assigning all work based on timing requirements and leaving overload resolution to the planner.

Loading can also be vertical or horizontal. Vertical loading assigns all operations for a single job before moving to the next, ensuring each job gets a complete schedule. Horizontal loading assigns all first operations across all jobs, then all second operations, and so on — useful for flow-type production where bottleneck loading is the priority.

Loading Example

A machine shop reviews weekly loading for its CNC department:

CNC Mill 2 is overloaded by 5 hours. The planner has several options: move 5 hours of milling work to CNC Mill 1 (which has 8 hours of available capacity), authorize 5 hours of overtime on Mill 2, or push the lowest-priority jobs to the following week.

CNC Lathe 2 at 50 percent utilization has significant available capacity. Sales can confidently accept new orders requiring lathe work without affecting existing commitments.

Why Loading Matters for Production Scheduling

Loading is the mechanism by which production plans become shop floor reality. Without loading visibility, planners cannot tell which resources are overcommitted and which have room for more work. This leads to the common manufacturing problem of accepting orders without knowing whether capacity exists to fulfill them.

Resource Manager DB (RMDB) provides real-time loading views for every work center, showing planners exactly where capacity exists and where overloads need resolution. The visual loading reports make it straightforward to balance work across alternate resources and make informed decisions about overtime, outsourcing, and delivery date commitments.

Related Terms

• Capacity Planning — The strategic process of ensuring sufficient capacity, which loading data supports
• Utilization — The percentage metric derived from loading data that measures how fully a resource is used
• Workload Balancing — The practice of distributing work evenly across resources based on loading analysis

Frequently Asked Questions

Learn more in our complete manufacturing glossary or production scheduling guide.