Manufacturing – a Dynamics ERP strength for decades

Microsoft Dynamics ERP predates the year 2000 and it has always catered to all manufacturing types – Discrete, Process, Lean and also enables mixed-mode manufacturing that allows a company to use multiple types if needed (D365 for Finance & Operations and Business Central). As a partner, we have consultants with over 10 years experience in manufacturing and Dynamics ERP (365, AX/NAV).

A cloud solution must also cater to the realities of remote manufacturing and distribution sites. To meet these realities, Microsoft, through partners like Brightpoint Infotech can deliver hybrid architected infrastructures which enable these remote locations to run independently (if necessary) and synch up to pass the necessary transactions (and, receive updates) periodically.

Microsoft is embedding more of their market leading analytics to better anticipate, forecast and prescribe for:

• Sales and forecasting accuracy
• (Master) Planning Optimization – near real-time recommendations that run as a microservice, in memory, up to 50 times faster than before which allows it to be run multiple times per day (as opposed to in batch)
• Operational alerting (predicting downtime or maintenance need based on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning)

Key Findings

Since 2016, we’ve migrated or upgraded customers from SAP or Dynamics GP, NAV and AX (2009/2012) to D365. Our clients have included manufacturers of bearings (for downhole drilling equipment) to automotive aluminum wheels to process manufacturing or industries (like food/drug additives and supplements that require recipes/formulas).  Here’s our findings:

• Data migration is complex and important. This requires a significant portion of the project and can’t be understated.
• Process matters. Microsoft has great tools for business process modelling which are vital to conform with your organization’s needs. This will carry over to ensure consistency and User Acceptance Testing.
• Microsoft continues to improve manufacturing. They recently added an Asset Management module (from an ISV, Dynaway) that we helped implement at one of our clients recently to improve the scheduling, monitoring, and management of shop floor equipment. Microsoft also added functionality to monitor OEE performance (Uptime, Cycle times and Quality) that will not only surface trends but also automate responses to avoid costly events.
• Financial Reporter remains a good, end-user oriented tool (while we may help develop some custom reports, we also help our clients serve themselves). PowerBI will be embedded more and more to provide near real-time insights for outliers and other important trends and can be run on a phone or other wireless device.
• Important, complex processes (think Master Planning) are being reworked as Micro Services that can run in-memory and also in a hybrid environment. Run times are literally 30-50 times faster which means what-if scenarios/simulations can occur throughout the day versus being run in batch at off-hours.