Visual Scheduling Blog

Production scheduling is in no way a trivial task. Many small and medium-sized companies, therefore, already rely on or have decided to use an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system like Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central to help them better manage their business. And, of course, the ERP provides valuable assistance for running the business in an integrated way. To do so, it provides data and extracts and presents information in a meaningful manner.

But especially getting started with Dynamics 365 Business Central can be tricky. I'm sure that there are a lot of users that could report on their painful experiences as a newbie to the system. A lot of knowledge is needed to work with Business Central and looking at it for the first time it can be really overwhelming.

In this blog post I'd like to shed some light on how transparency and simplicity can be added to Business Central, thus easing the way into quickly using the ERP efficiently and profitably.

After our major release of the Visual Advanced Production Scheduler in December 2021, we are already back with a new one. We used this version to clean up a lot of things internally, and also fixed a lot of bugs as you can see from the release notes. 

Hence, for us, this release was a minor release, indicated by the number 1.8.1.0. Nevertheless, we decided to ship the enhancement of two existing features which both play a significant role in production scheduling. These features are EMAD (earliest material availability date) and fill idle times.

So, after having enjoyed reading this post, don't hesitate and get your new version from AppSource !

In the latest episode of his podcast, Martin talked to Bart Vanbelle from Belgium who is Business Consultant with the Belgian partner ESC. Bart’s background is different from all the guests in the podcast so far. He started his career with international experiences as a cocktail bartender. After shortly running two catering businesses for a few years, he first came into contact with Navision, version 2009. He was a key user in a Navision implementation. Surprisingly enough, being part of an ERP implementation enthused him more than mixing drinks. 

Hence, he decided a U-turn move for his career at the age of 30. He started studying supply chain management full-time, had his bachelor after 3 years and joined ESC. At ESC, he is mainly responsible for manufacturing implementations and just recently got promoted to being the team lead of ESCs center of manufacturing excellence. 

In the conversation, Bart surprised Martin with the ADKAR model and mixed a delicious "knowledge cocktail" of how to successfully implement Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.

As an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central helps small and medium-sized companies to better manage their accounting and finance processes, supply chain, and operations. It provides users with a real-time view of their entire business. 

Undoubtedly, the ERP is valuable for most business matters. However, when it comes to production scheduling, it must be noted that most of its capabilities are centered on handling transactions and core financial business processes. While production planning still is a strong part of Business Central, it falls short when it comes to operational production scheduling. 

First, task-, time-, and resource-centric scheduling data as they are used for production order sequencing and capacity scheduling are presented to the users solely in tabular forms. This creates a certain degree of intransparency. Moreover, certain functionalities that are needed for a smooth and fault-free production process are missing, which, in combination leads to a functional gap between planning and execution.

In this blog post, I'll explain which functionalities are missing in Business Central and how visual scheduling can help overcome these shortcomings.

Martin met with Shannon Mullins, Chief Revenue Officer of Accelerynt, and a Microsoft MVP of business applications. She has over 20 years of experience in - amongst others - deployment implementation of CRM and ERP systems and hence has a deep understanding of the functional aspects of projects’ process automation and system design and the reporting needs and requirements for complex ERP systems. 

While talking to Shannon for the first time at last year’s Directions EMEA in Milan, Martin quickly noticed to his shame, that he never had a woman as a guest to his podcast and decided on the spot to change this.

So it happened that Shannon agreed to become the first in – as we hope – a long line of female guests.

In January, Martin hosted a webinar about the December releases of our visual scheduling extensions Visual Advanced Production Scheduler, Visual Production Scheduler, and Visual Jobs Scheduler for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. With this blog, I'd like to give a summary of the webinar and briefly introduce the new features for all those who couldn't attend.  

I also include the recording of the webinar and provide links to the respective minute of the presented webinar and release highlights.

Some days ago, I informed you about the new versions 1.13 of the Visual Production Scheduler and the Visual Jobs Scheduler for Dynamics 365 Business Central and today I'd like to show you the nice new features of release 1.8 of the Visual Advanced Production Scheduler. The new version has already been approved by Microsoft and can be downloaded from AppSource as of now. 

First of all, I'd like to wish you all the best for 2022 - hope you had a good start to the new year!

Shortly before Christmas, together with a new release of the Visual Advanced Production Scheduler (VAPS), we have released version 1.13. of the Visual Production Scheduler (VPS) and the Visual Jobs Scheduler (VJS) respectively. Both versions have been approved by Microsoft and can be downloaded from AppSource as of now. 

See in this blogpost how we have further improved our extensions for visual scheduling in 365 Business Central.