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.

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. 

Our tagline at NETRONIC has been "visual scheduling software" for quite a while. We selected the phrase "visual scheduling" on purpose. It mirrors best what we are good at. And it reveals where we aim at excelling.

Even more: we are convinced that it is the aim for "visual scheduling" that makes our scheduling products stand out. Also, it is the approach of "visual scheduling" that delivers the utmost value to our clients.

"Visual scheduling" has become what we live and breathe day by day. It is a phrase that we keep on using, and that customers and partners started to use when they talk about us.

This post is meant to provide an answer to the question "what is visual scheduling?". First, I provide this answer in a general way. Second, I then focus on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and visual scheduling.

Engineer-to-order (ETO) companies develop and sell sophisticated one-of-a-kind solutions that get tailored to specific customer demands. Thus, each customer order is an individual project. These ETO projects typically run rather long (compared to production orders in a make-to-order environment, MTO). Also, contrasting to MTOs, the dominant resources utilized in an ETO project are humans (engineers) and not machines.

Numerous cases which we have observed working with our clients reveal that most ETO companies have a common challenge. This challenge is planning their design and engineering activities. Ultimately, it boils down to finding the right planning tools and establishing appropriate planning processes.

This blog post reveals 12 concrete steps that ETOs should apply to achieve effective engineering-to-order project management when they work with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.

Martin met again with Robert Jolliffe for the Business Central Manufacturing Show. He is our first guest, who is on the podcast for the second time. If you missed the first episode with him (in which we searched for the secret sauce of Business Central), I suggest you check it out here.

Robert is President & CEO of Sabre Limited in Canada. He has been an ERP consultant for 25 years and holds a Microsoft Engineer designation. In this episode, Robert shares with Martin why Dynamics 365 Business Central is the right system for engineering-to-order (ETO) companies. Of course, he does this thoughtfully and points out what makes ETOs so special.

Last week, I had an interesting conversation with Matthew Kiernan, Business Applications Director at Bam Boom Cloud in the UK. The conversation turned into the next episode of the Business Central Manufacturing Show.

When we met before the show, Matt said: "The manufacturing end of Business Central, although can be complicated, doesn’t need to be super scary." I picked up that statement and opened the conversation with the WHY question. 

Well, the remaining 30+ minutes just flew by and Matt managed to demystify Dynamics 365 Business Central. This went as far as transferring the concept of an MVP (minimal viable product) from software product development to ERP implementation.

We conducted a global market survey within our Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central customers and partners, to get a better understanding of the state of Business Central and manufacturing. The full 69-pages State of Business Central and Manufacturing Report is free for download. Alternatively, you can quickly digest four key findings from the below infographic.

The Business Central Manufacturing Show is back. This podcast started as something I would call a “first COVID lockdown project” in spring 2020. Six months ago, I lost a bit of traction, then got distracted and the podcast came to an unplanned stop. However, we analyze our marketing data.

Here is the finding. We stopped the podcast. We stopped to promote it. Nevertheless, the episodes that we recorded got listeners. Week, by week. So: what is more inspiring than creating content that has, well, a "fan base"?

Here we are again. We decided to make the podcast a natural part of our monthly Marketing plans. Thus, we aim for one episode a month for the time being. For my first new episode, I met Antonio Checa from Spain. And we had a great conversation on how to jumpstart Business Central production scheduling.