When you are setting up your routes you need to consider a lot of things like how you want to use the data for scheduling, costing etc. If you compile all this data and look for similarities then you could for example setup one route that multiple products could go through.

While you might make a different product, the production steps might be the same. In AX this can save you setup and administration of data because you can setup a route and relate it to multiple SKUs.

Here is a quick overview.

AX2012 R3 CU11

Cheers

Lachlan