As promised in the last post of our new blog series about mastering SMB manufacturing with powerful scheduling software - Find out what's missing in production scheduling with Business Central - here comes the next part already in which I would like to show you how you can make your ERP implementation even more powerful and achieve proper production scheduling.
The last post was all about what is missing in Business Central's manufacturing module to use it as proper production scheduling tool. Let us shortly recap the basic ideas behind this statement.
Why are Business Central's manufacturing features not sufficient?
In our exploration of Business Central, we've identified two noteworthy considerations:
Firstly, while Business Central excels in data organization through its table-centric presentation, we recognize the power of visual clarity. Our belief in the saying "A picture is worth a thousand words" guides us, suggesting that a more holistic, visual representation could enhance user experience.
Secondly, while Business Central boasts a robust MRP engine and basic time scheduling for production orders, its finite capacity scheduling leaves room for improvement. While it offers a function called "capacity constrained resources," our clients have noted its lack of precision, resulting in outcomes that often feel impractical. Consequently, the standard finite capacity scheduling within Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central may appear somewhat disjointed to users.
The missing link: between planning and execution: visual scheduling
Wouldn't it be ideal to enhance Business Central's robust functionalities with a graphical display of your plan, and even better, allow interactive adjustments with changes being directly stored in Business Central?
This is where visual scheduling tools come into play. (For a detailed exploration of visual scheduling, read this blogpost.)
An effective visual scheduling tool should seamlessly link planning with execution. Not only should it visualize the plan, but it should also incorporate feedback from the shop floor, enabling planners to intervene as needed. It should offer:
-
A clear overview of production orders, their status (released, planned, firm-planned), and sequence
-
Alerts for imminent due date overruns
-
Real-time load display of all resources, indicating overloads and potential bottlenecks
-
Visualization of dependencies between operations within and across production orders
-
Indication of work and non-work periods
-
Interactive re-planning capabilities
-
Integration with Business Central
-
Advanced planning and scheduling with finite capacities
Test our extensions for visual scheduling in Dynamics 365 Business Central
Curious about enhancing your Business Central with a tool that encompasses all the functionalities described above? Look no further! Explore our solutions - we offer two visual scheduling extensions tailored for production scheduling in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.
-
The Visual Production Scheduler (VPS) - the drag & drop frontend to standard Business Central manufacturing.
-
The Visual Advanced Production Scheduler (VAPS) - the first finite capacity scheduler fully integrated into Business Central. Other than the VPS, it comes with a lot of (semi-)automatic scheduling tools and an algorithm that always schedules with finite capacity.
Look forward to the next posts in the series - here we will introduce you step by step to the most important functions of our extensions
More valuable information
- Join a webinar about our powerful scheduling software for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central or join an upcoming one.
- Book a free demo with a VAPS, VPS, or VJS specialist.
- Get your free copy of our comprehensive eBook that covers the topics of our blog series:
