Visual Scheduling Blog

Episode 25 of  Martin's podcast was all about the difficulties and obstacles that can stand in the way of a successful implementation of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.

The guest in this jubilee episode was James Crowter from the UK. He is the founder and Managing Director of Technology Management, an established Navision and Business Central partner whom everybody knows as TecMan. In addition, Microsoft has appointed him as MVP (most valuable professional) for business applications for the sixth year running. And if that was not enough, he last year volunteered to become the chairman of the Directions EMEA committee.

James is passionate about how businesses can improve their efficiency by getting process optimal more of the time. And for the last 25 years, he has been working to help organizations of all sizes and types implement the ERP and CRM software that typically they decide they need when things are going wrong. While he has seen projects run unbelievably well, at the same time he has also had some unbelievably hard projects.

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 !

Included in all Microsoft Office packages, Microsoft Excel oftentimes is the most likely software for companies to initially support business processes. Excel is powerful. Excel is flexible. Everybody can learn Excel fast. And you can significantly tweak Excel so that it increasingly becomes a homegrown business management system.

As such it is no surprise that many manufacturers initially use Excel for planning and scheduling. Also, it is no surprise that this works well for many of them. However, when those manufacturers grow, they no longer can run their company on Excel. They realize that they need a holistic business management system. Many of the customers we work with then decide on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. My colleague Lawin actually wrote a post about why Business Central is a great fit for SMB manufacturers.

When they make the move to Business Central they have to decide if they want to continue planning with Excel. Or if they want to start working with a (visual) scheduler that is integrated with the entire system. This blog post reveals details of why Excel is a great starting point, when to leave Excel, and what the advantages of an integrated visual scheduler are. 

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.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is Microsoft’s fast-growing ERP business management solution for small and medium-sized companies. As such, day by day, SMB manufacturing companies around the globe decide on this solution.

I wanted to better understand the profile of the manufacturing companies and “why” they are choosing Dynamics 365 Business Central. I gathered my thoughts based on conversations I’ve had with partners, guests on our podcasts, and customers. Then I combined that with information we got from our “State of Business Central and Manufacturing Report”. (btw: we are currently working on the 2022 edition of this report)

These sources of information helped to answer the question: "Why is Business Central a good fit for SMB manufacturing companies?"

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.