NETRONIC Software GmbH from Germany and Technology Management Ltd. from the UK today announce the collaboration in the development of a visual advanced production scheduling extension for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. The joint product is meant to provide manufacturing users of Dynamics 365 Business Central with advanced scheduling capabilities. The product, named Visual Advanced Production Scheduler (VAPS), will be sold through NETRONIC’s international network of resellers. The first version of the VAPS will be presented at Directions NA (May 5-8, 2019) in Las Vegas, Nevada (US).
Visual Advanced Production Scheduling
The VAPS brings visual advanced production scheduling as an extension to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. It enables customers using Business Central’s production orders to understand their production loading and schedule with a graphical transparent, easy-to-understand display that also assists by with advanced rules.
The term advanced is meant in a twofold way.
- The VAPS firstly provides manufacturing clients with a finite capacity scheduler which is something that standard Business Central does not deliver in an easy to use way. This scheduler is triggered by drag & drop actions and achieves a semi-automatic forward scheduling based on finite capacity.
- Secondly, the VAPS also enhances Business Central by some capabilities that are crucial for manufacturing companies and their scheduling challenges. Namely, these are visibility of material availability on routing line level, the option to define alternative work centers (incl. different setup and run times) and the option to pin operations. All of this new functionality is brought to the user with a new, transparent and purpose-made interactive visual scheduling board that supports multiple views and scenarios.
Why TecMan & NETRONIC
TecMan contributes with all functional enhancements to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. In addition, the UK-based Business Central manufacturing experts take care for the integration of the new product with Business Central. In turn NETRONIC, the visual scheduling experts, develop the visual scheduling board as well as the required finite capacity scheduler.
The VAPS will become a NETRONIC-branded product and will be solely sold by NETRONIC’s global network of Business Central resellers.
James Crowter, Managing Director of TecMan and a Microsoft Most Valued Professional (MVP), comments:
“We were a key partner for PlannerOne in the UK and their sudden departure from the market left a gap, but also opened a door. We decided not to look at the risk of losing a solution that we had invested in, but to act on the chance of the open door, also addressing some deficiencies we experienced in the previous solution. Our company has a proven Dynamics NAV and Business Central track-record, specifically with hundreds of clients that manufacture and hence we have many ingredients to provide production scheduling value to manufacturing clients. However, we lack the visualization capabilities and also do neither have a network of international partners to run an international ISV business nor have an ambition to build one. We have been knowing NETRONIC for a while and always were impressed by their ease-of-use and their openness to share information and knowledge in a competitive environment. Hence, we reached out to them, suggested a collaboration and are happy to see the VAPS coming to life.”
Dr. Martin Karlowitsch, Chief Executive Officer of NETRONIC Software, adds:
“The VAPS confirms our companies’ strong commitment to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, and nicely complements our claim to provide the most complete stack of visual scheduling software for Business Central and NAV. The collaboration with TecMan on the VAPS is one of these truly rare cases, in which one plus one equals three. I am confident that this collaboration will provide Business Central partners and users with an unprecedented production scheduling value.”
About Technology Management Ltd
Technology Management helps manufacturing and distribution companies across the UK ‘drive forward’ through the delivery of better business process and digital transformation based on Microsoft Dynamics 365. Since being founded in 1992 they have consistently been the UK’s leading organization implementing and supporting, first Navision, then Dynamics NAV and now Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, for clients who manufacture and distribute.
Our focus is on listening to our clients to understand their business needs and providing them with the tools they need to consistently improve their quality, efficiency and capability, That feedback has resulted in library of prebuilt extensions branded Clever Dynamics, that advance Business Centrals capability to enable a real time fully digital business best able to compete in today’s competitive world.
We’re proud of our record of combining long term client and vendor partnerships with world leading skills to exploiting new technologies and techniques to provide the best possible results for our clients. We aim to be the most knowledgeable and dependable experts to continually assisting to become completely indispensable.
About NETRONIC Software GmbH
Our mission is to empower every SMB organization to gain operational agility with visual scheduling. We combine tradition and experience with curiosity and perspective. We were founded in 1975. Since more than 40 years, our focus had been always the same. We develop software to visualize time- and resource-oriented planning data.
This experience in building Gantt chart software is our core competence. Our DNA is to develop this as software products which we sell globally. Our "traditional" products are tools for software developers. They help those building powerful and flexible Gantt charts. Yet, we not only have tradition, we also have a perspective. We used our experience and built visual scheduling products for end customers. Based on state-of-the-art technology and "living" in the cloud.
So today, we are all about using Gantt charts for visual scheduling. Other than just "Gantt charts", it puts into the foreground what people actually do with our software.