Visual Scheduling Blog

We continue our podcast episode by going north of the border. From Wisconsin, we now head to Montreal, Canada where we had the chance to talk to Trevor Moore, the Product Director of ERP Solutions at Gestisoft. Trevor started his career in the manufacturing industry, where he implemented full ERP systems in two different companies as a production scheduler. Given his experience on the end-customer side, he ventured into the NAV world where he now has a 20-year track record of successfully implanting ERP systems to around 100 companies (mostly manufacturing).

Our conversation mainly centered around all aspects of how to right-size a manufacturing ERP solution for each client.

We continue our podcast, where we left off last time, somewhere in the US. From the Atlantic coast in Florida, we now go to Madison, Wisconsin (virtually) for our next guest, Kevin Fons. Kevin has been working in the manufacturing industry for 30 years and with Dynamics NAV, Dynamics 365 Business Central, and ISV add-ons for about 16 years. Today he is a Senior Applications Consultant for Innovia, where he leads various NAV & Business Central projects for a wide array of customers.

Starting from the general value manufacturing ERP data can have for customers, the conversation became very specific rapidly. Kevin and Martin dived down into the concrete topic of routings and that they need to serve two purposes: costing and scheduling.

As we like to remind users, the Visual Advanced Production Scheduler is the first finite capacity manufacturing scheduler for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. Among others, it enhances the standard manufacturing module of Business Central by handling all machine and work centers as if their capacity always equals one (1).

If being finite is not enough reason for you to bet on it, in this blog I will briefly explain 6 further features that make the VAPS an advanced scheduler. These are added solutions to other most common challenges on the shop floor and its management. 

These are the earliest material availability date, production simulations, consideration of alternative machine centers, incorporation of a standby resource, the sales order view and the opportunity to see your schedule in regards to your preferred information, or as we call them color views.

Let’s dive into each feature, shall we?

The wait is over! The Business Central Manufacturing Show is back with its 14th episode. In this episode we talk to Olof Simren. A Dynamics 365 Business Central and Dynamics NAV expert who started working with Navision back in 2002, when it was called Navision Attain. With over 18 years of Microsoft Dynamics experience, an awesome blog about Dynamics NAV manufacturing and projects in different parts of the world, Olof now leads a US based company called Naviona. In our interview, we discussed how an ERP system can help manufacturing companies go paperless through full-circle digitization.

The summer break is long ago again and you will be back in your (home) offices again. I hope you had a nice and restful holiday and are all still well.

We at NETRONIC are back at work at full steam and can already present you with a new version of both the Visual Production Scheduler (VPS) and the Visual Jobs Scheduler (VJS). Version 1.8, as well as its versions before, offers some nice new features.

As always, the complete release information can be found in the respective notes for VPS and VJS. Moreover, both new versions will be  available in AppSource soon.

Is it really only three months ago that we released version 1.2 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?  Time flies and here's already the next new version! We have been really busy and are now able to offer you a whole lot of new and powerful features.

So sit back and see what version 1.3 has to offer.

Is Excel a suitable add-on tool to support the production scheduling in a company? Many manufacturing companies using the EPR System Microsoft Dynamic 365 Business Central including the Manufacturing module will answer this question with a clear yes. They work with it and have come to terms with its minor and major shortcomings. But is Excel really a suitable tool for reliable and optimal production scheduling ? What are the dangers of using Excel to manage your production in Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC? That's what this blog post is all about.

The Visual Production Scheduler (VPS) has been our signature software since 2013. With the experience from more than 300 VPS customers using Microsoft Dynamics NAV, we knew that there are a lot of manufacturing clients that have higher scheduling requirements as what can get fulfilled with the standard Dynamics NAV, respectively Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central functionality.

For this reason, we very consciously decided for a two-pronged approach when we transferred our IP from Dynamics NAV to Dynamics 365 Business Central. On the one hand, we rebuilt the Visual Production Scheduler to prove customers with an easy-to-use visual drag & drop front-end to standard Business Central manufacturing. On the other hand, we started the development of the “bigger brother” to the VPS, which we named VAPS – Visual Advanced Production Scheduler.

The idea was, and is, to enhance the Business Central manufacturing module by those functions that the standard seems to lack, and that larger manufacturers require to better run their shops.

As of today, both the VPS and the VAPS are available on AppSource for Dynamics 365 Business Central addressing to improve the same module: Manufacturing. Then, what are the main differences between these two extensions?