Visual Scheduling Blog

In episode 34 of his podcast, Martin welcomed José Miguel Azevedo, a Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Senior Solution Architect with KPMG in the UK, one of the BIG4 consulting companies. José has more than 24 years of experience with different ERPs, ranging from SAP and Oracle to Dynamics 365 Business Central, his focus areas being Navision and Business Central, where he held various roles in consulting, like business consultant, functional consultant, project manager, program manager, etc. He has worked in companies of all sizes and with clients from the fashion, food, pharmaceutical, manufacturing, and services industries. Although Jose admitted that speaking foreign languages is not big fun for him, he dared to move to and work in London and join Martin for the podcast.

(Comment from Martin: The conversation was absolutely brilliant. Unfortunately, we experienced some sound issues when recording. However, I decided to publish this episode nevertheless. The content will more than compensate for the poor audio quality.) 

In his latest podcast episode, Martin hosted Ivar Keskpaik, who, amongst a plethora of other roles and positions, works as a Business Consultant for Softera Baltic, Lithuania. 

He also is an Interim TOP Manager, Business Development Consultant, and Project Manager who has been working in different countries for more than 25 years with experience in logistics (including e-commerce), supply chain, production/operations, transport, and crisis management. Ivar has held various positions, like CEO, Logistics Director, Crisis Manager, and Project Manager for several holdings owning pharmaceutical & cosmetics, wood & furniture, garment production & retail, FMCG production & physical distribution companies, and crude oil-oil products terminals. He has also consulted Estonian Railways, seaports (Estonia, Montenegro), (HITECH) assembly plants, and hospitals to increase their throughput and optimize operating expenses. In addition, Ivar has developed a TOC1-based flex resource management application suitable for diverse types of logistics/distribution centers and labor-intensive productions.   

He holds an MSc in Physics, is a chartered engineer, a certified Theory of Constraints (TOC) practitioner, and has been titled the “most famous Interim Manager of Estonia” by the Magazine “Director”. Ivar and Martin had a lively discussion on how manufacturing companies working with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central can apply the Theory of Constraints.

In his latest podcast episode, Martin was pleased to welcome Andrew Good, CEO of Liberty Grove Software in Toronto, Canada. 

Andrew is an engineer, project manager, analyst, manufacturing expert, and Microsoft Certified Trainer. His extensive knowledge and background have been built from personal experiences with a lot of companies, working in a variety of operational and management roles. Projects have ranged from new implementations, special projects, and upgrades to streamlining business operations. 21 years of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and Dynamics NAV experience mean that he can fall back on many different perspectives when working with customers.  

Andrew has not given up on his commitment to continuous personal and professional learning. To support the end users and partners that he works with, he is an MCT, DCP (Dynamics Certified Professional), MCP, and Professional Engineer. 

He has helped clients get the most out of their Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central/NAV systems through integrations, upgrades, and extensions that allow them to deal with their changing business environments, regardless of whether financial operations, rentals, distribution, and manufacturing.  

Just in time before the summer break we have released version 1.14 of the Visual Advanced Production Scheduler (VAPS), the only available finite capacity scheduler that fully integrates with the manufacturing module of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. At the same time, we have released version 1.19 of the Visual Production Scheduler (VPS) and of the Visual Jobs Scheduler (VJS). Like with our last release, we have, of course, improved and streamlined the other two extensions, but our main focus was on the VAPS. 

Once again we have some nice and useful functions for you that will make your life as a planner much easier - so sit back and enjoy! And don't forget to register for the upcoming webinar about the new features on 12 July.

Finite capacity scheduling enables you to manage and maintain a production schedule efficiently. It helps with sequencing production orders on your machine and work centers and ensures you use your capacities wisely.

However, we all know that things seldom go as planned. Material arrives later than expected. Or it is there but cannot be used due to quality issues. A machine breaks. Your machine operator figures out that he has to run the machine slower than planned. Just to name a few incidents that can make your well-defined schedule obsolete every moment.

Two weeks ago, our CEO Martin held a webinar showing how you, as a production planner, can rapidly react to these incidents. He demonstrated the newly implemented integration with shop floor data of the latest VAPS version that lets you identify deviations from actual versus plan immediately and with which you can update your schedule on the fly - so that it is always current.

Read this blog to get a written wrap-up of the webinar with links to the respective minute of the presentation. At the bottom of the page, you'll find the link to the recorded webinar on YouTube.

In his latest podcast episode, Martin was super excited to have one of the North American Business Central manufacturing rockstars with him. Steve Chinsky is the Manager Dynamics Practice with Accelerynt. He has over 23 years of experience consulting, implementing, and managing Dynamics NAV and Business Central projects. His over 180 NAV and BC implementations were done in manufacturing, supply chain (aka WMS(, food and beverage, jewelry, retail, service, oil and gas, chemical, industrial equipment, and home goods industries. In addition to this, he worked over 16 years as an Accountant (CMA) in a variety of positions (Director of Finance, Controller, and Director of Operations). 

Steve is, among others, a Microsoft Dynamics 365 Most Valued Professional (MVP), a Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP), and a Certified Navision Manufacturing Specialist. He is a Board Member and Program Committee Chair of the NAVUG (the NAV user group), Summit Program Committee Co-Chair, and he is on the Program Committee for DynamicsCON Live and the Content Committee for Directions North America. 

Our podcast is back! After a half-year break, Martin felt it was time to "revive" the podcast again, last but not least because many Business Central manufacturing enthusiasts reached out and encouraged him to continue with it. So, in episode 30, he was happy to talk to Jeff Brickler, solution architect at an ISV called CADtalk in Cincinnati, USA.

CADtalkisn’t exclusively made for Business Central. Instead, they have their background with other ERP systems and decided to bring their software to Business Central last year when Jeff and Martin met for the first time at Directions North America. Hence, he was excited to discuss with Jeff his lessons learned with manufacturers running different kinds of ERP systems. 

Jeff's background is quite outstanding because he hasn't been an IT/manufacturing person for his entire career. He started as a Latin teacher in high school with a master's degree in Classics. He joined CADtalkeight years ago and has worked closely with manufacturing customers as a support specialist, consulting and services manager, and solution architect since then. 

Planners do not want reservations between production orders and sales orders to break if production delays occur. Instead, they want to quickly understand which sales orders run late due to material and/or capacity constraints. To solve these problems, the latest VAPS version comes with an enhanced and improved integration of sales orders and production orders. As promised in his webinar on this release, our CEO Martin held an in-depth webinar on this very topic some weeks ago.

Read this blog to get a written wrap-up of the webinar with links to the respective minute of the presentation. At the bottom of the page, you'll find the link to the recorded webinar on YouTube.