We are really lacking the ability to schedule production orders. The Due Date, start date and end date are all linked currently so you cannot move the start date and end date prior to the due date to schedule wen you want to run the order.
Ideally a Scheduling time could be added to the manufacturing setup and possibly the item (mfg setup is global, item is specific). an example might eb scheduling time = 1W which would set the start date a week earlier so material would be planned to arrive by the start date. Then the user could manually or via the visual schedulers available move the start date to schedule it in a particular work center (as long as the end date does not move past the due date).

The dates would initially be calculated as:
Due date = due date
End Date = Due date - scheduling time
Start date = End Date - production time from the routing.

The user would then be able to move the start date of the entire order or a routing operation and the end date would be adjusted but the due date not changed as long as the end date is still less than the due date. Moving the start date where the end date moved past the due date would result in a message telling the user the end date would be past the due date and they would have to select Yes to do it vs the No default.
The scheduling time would only be used for the initial refresh of the production order, however there could be a function to Reschedule the Production Order (o the existing refresh function could be used). The refresh button could have a field for the scheduling time where the user could adjust the time for a particular order.
It might also be nice to indicate via a field on the header and/or line that the order had been "scheduled" i.e. the start date / end dates changed.