In this blog post, you will learn an alternative approach to coloring the Visual Scheduling Widget - VSW for short - using CSS custom properties instead of calls to the widget’s API.
Attending conferences is one of the perks I value the most about the industry. It's at times like these that I get the opportunity to connect with like-minded professionals, learn more about Business Central, showcase our extensions, and of course, travel.
Last year, as I was about to register as an attendee for DynamicsCon Live 2022, one of my cousins announced her wedding date. Murphy's Law happened: it was the same weekend. After some internal delivery, we decided to postpone our tryout for this event and do it "better". As in, as sponsors.
So this year, we signed up for a Gold Sponsorship at the highly anticipated DynamicsCon 2023 held in beautiful Scottsdale. And again, Murphy's Law happened: Days of Knowledge was organized for the same week. That left me with a team of one. In this blog post, I want to share my journey and highlight the valuable experiences I had during this event
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.
We finally participated in Directions Asia in April 2023! And we did it as bronze sponsors. It was quite a journey from Germany, but it was well worth the trip. I had a blast and wanted to share my reasons why I liked Directions Asia.
Establishing configure-to-order (CTO) manufacturing processes is tempting. It promises the efficiency and scale effects of standardized (mass) production. Likewise, it pledges the flexibility and customer intimacy of a make-to-order manufacturer. However, theory and practice are two different things. I have met many configure-to-order manufacturers needing help to unleash the expected efficiency gains. Instead, they fight with ambitious customer deadlines and the mere complexity of their (semi-standardized) sub-assembly structures.
The obvious indication of this complexity is the sheer number of items and item variants in their ERP system. Combined with a multi-level bill-of-materials (BOM), this frequently leads to statements such as "we suffer from data ambiguity and fly blind when it comes to an understanding of the impacts of changes in our schedule."
This blog post describes why production scheduling is that hard and specific for configure-to-order manufacturers. Then, it provides production scheduling 101 for configure-to-order manufacturing and gives some ideas on how CTO manufacturers could tackle this challenge - especially when they work with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.