It'll constantly put orders for bone crafts in my rock craft shop that is making pots on repeat (so the order never gets finished), or try and put the "mill plants to slurry" job into my flour-only mill and spam me with cancellation messages for grinding dimple dye.
One can fill specialized workshops with 10 orders and either repeat or suspend them. That way there is no more room for manager to issue orders in this given workshop and R / S make sure it stays so.
The whole system needs a serious revamp, and is a rather large headache to do just simple things (like make all of my pots out of light-weight jet then make all my furniture out of the same color rock).
That may be simple orders from a customer perspective but not so from craftsmen side. What is light-weight enough? Which colour? Taking in note lucidity (or lack of it) of other DF game systems I think stockpiles-workshops work in fact quite well. Just workshops could maybe list their associated stockpiles.
Dummy suspended jobs only solve part of the problem, and require micromanagement. Every time I want to use the manager, I have to run through all the shops of a type and either clear out all the junk dummy jobs in one shop, or set up the other 5 with dummy jobs. Its a ton of micro that requires constant supervision if I want to change orders and stop that repeat for blocks, then commission statues. It doesn't respect stockpile links either. I have 5+ craftshops throughout my fort linked to various sources (wood, stone, bone, book/quire making, etc). If I try to queue up any craft-related job from the manager (like 20 doohicky-silk instrument strings), I have to go to all the other ones and set up suspended jobs... but my craft shop is making 5 bookcases and I can't just add 5 suispended jobs (as while the others complete, it will create space), nor do I want ot set them on repeat (you really don't need that many bookcases). So if I put hte order in, I'll start getting cancelation spam as the manager sees the open space in the other shop and puts string orders in it.
The manager is supposed to SAVE us time. Not require several times the oversight and keypresses of just ordering the jobs manually.
Also, why can't workshops have material selection? We can hit "d" to change the details of armor we make (for different races AND it has a search function) and inherently select the specific type of metal we want our arms and armor (or statues and bins) made out of. I can specify bronze helms, silver hammers, and then order up brass tables and electrum statues. All without fiddling with stockpiles and links. But if I want to make marble tables, jet pots, or just keep (light-blue) microline out of my furniture/block production? Its a hassle. We also cannot set up workshop links. We set up STOCKPILE links, but orders cannot be directly given to a workshop itself. So to link two workshops, you must first place an intermediary stockpile that takes from one and give sto the other (while only taking from links in the first place). But even then, that linked workshop can now only take items from links, so if you want it to make other items or it requires additional materials outside of what hte input stockpile does, you have to set up another stockpile link for that.
My point is that is a rather indirect and clumsy system that can be easily fixed by toggling material selections within a workshop itself. Make table-d(etails)->(f)ilter->Obsidian->x10
Decorate furniture with moss agates->(d)etail->(f)ilter->brass... repeate. There could even be a toggle (D for toggle details?) to automatically force all subsequent jobs into a specific material until its changed/canceled. It'd be easier and more intuitive than saving room/setting up/clearing out stockpiles to force only specific items.
I would -not- say workshops are fine. They are serviceable at best.