Visual production scheduling in Dynamics NAV: more efficiency & transparency

Posted by Ute Gillet on Nov 11, 2021 1:45:36 PM

The Serbian manufacturing company Unipromet used Microsoft Dynamics NAV as ERP and kept track of capacity load and production performance by manual Excel-based reports and realized that they needed an extra planning tool. 

Read in this blog post how by using the Visual Production Scheduler the company achieved more planning efficiency and transparency and increased throughput by better usage of resource capacities.

Unipromet uses NETRONIC VPS

Unipromet, founded in 1989, specializes in the production and installation of road fence security systems, noise protection panels, seam pipes, and various steel constructions. The company has an own hot deep galvanizing plant for the finishing coating of all steel elements. They process over 80.000 t of steel and aluminum per year, and the metal processing is conducted on over 50.000 m² of working area and 150.000 m² of land in two facilities.

The growth of the company and the increasing production capacities posed major challenges for production planning at Unipromet and made it necessary to put the planning process on a secure footing.

 

Before NETRONIC: manual approach was inaccurate and offered no control

For some years, the company had been using Dynamics NAV version 5 as ERP and its included graphical planning tool. Interestingly enough, this tool at that point of time was provided by Microsoft but built with NETRONIC’s base technology enabling software developers to build visual planning applications.

When Unipromet switched to a role-tailored client version of Dynamics NAV, they found, to their regret, that Microsoft no longer offered the integrated visual planning tool. From then on, the company only used manual Excel-based reports for keeping track of capacity load and production performance.

Using manually created production plans not only was too inaccurate, it also “ …often required a lot of time and resources”, reports Ljilja Božović, IT director at Unipromet.

What was even worse - since the manual planning was very time-consuming, “accurate plans very often were not even made due to the lack of professional staff or resources”, says Ljilja. This, of course, did little to help keeping track of capacity load and the whole production process. In fact, establishing a structured and transparent planning process thus became impossible. And so, after three years of trying to manage without a visual planning board the company realized that “…it was necessary to provide production visualization.”

 

Requirements for the visualization tool

The tool should be able to

  • bring structure to their production planning

  • provide transparency of the production schedule by visualizing

    • capacity loads

    • bottlenecks

  • integrate with Microsoft Dynamics NAV

NETRONIC VPS fits

Searching for a tool offering the features described above, Unipromet was supported by NPS, their Dynamics NAV partner and at the same time long-term reseller of NETRONIC. After an in-depth analysis of the company’s problems and situation “our NAV provider recommended NETRONIC to us”, as Ljilja remembers.

 

Use of the NETRONIC VPS

Having used the VPS for over two years now, Ljilja can report significant changes and improvements:

“We got a better insight into capacity and human resources. This gives us the the possibility to use available capacities and resources for extra production. Hence, the VPS enabled us to increase our throughput.”

However, Unipromet achieved more than an improved utilization of their resource. The entire process of production planning has become more effective and more efficient:

“The operation management for each and every work order was also made easier. Consequently, the operational production planning has also improved significantly. We got an extra tool that reduces the time used for the analysis of the workload and that gives exact guidelines what to do next.”

 

Advantages of the VPS

Unipromet uses visual production scheduling tool for producing noise protection panels

  • better overview of resource capacity and load
  • better use of resources leading to the ability to accept and fulfill more orders
  • the total operations management for each production order became a lot easier
  • significant improvement of the whole production planning process
  • reducing the time used for the analysis of the workload per working order

 

Pleasant cooperation with NETRONIC

Ljilja is happy about the beneficial and smooth collaboration with NETRONIC:

“It is a delight using this advanced tool for our daily work. NETRONIC helped us solve our problems in production, its planning and management We gladly recommend NETRONIC and offer live experience in working with them and their software.”

 

More information

Ebook visual scheduling for Microsoft Dynamics NAV

Topics: Case Study, Dynamics NAV Visual Scheduling Add-in, Business Central Visual Scheduling Extensions