Build a transparent starting queue from deadline pressure, business priority, remaining labour and whether a job is actually ready for production.
This is an explicit planning heuristic rather than an optimization algorithm. Critical jobs receive the strongest priority boost, near or overdue deadlines rise, production-ready jobs rise, and very long jobs receive a smaller adjustment so the queue does not automatically put every long job first.
Order value is deliberately a secondary signal. A high-value order may matter commercially, but a lower-value order with a hard deadline should not automatically be ignored.
Most importantly, a job that is not actually ready should not simply be pushed forward because it is urgent. Missing material, approvals or upstream work can create idle work-in-progress.
The score is based on deadline proximity, business priority, production readiness, remaining hours and a small value adjustment. It does not know your machines, skills, batch setup, supplier delays or historical production times, so workshop management should override the ranking when real constraints require it.