Production in Business Central
Plan and control your production and assembly efficiently and digitally in the ERP system.
Plan and control your production and assembly efficiently and digitally in the ERP system.
Manage your assembly and production effortlessly with Dynamics 365 Business Central. From production and material planning based on sales and demand forecasts to variant configuration and workstation and machine utilization, you can map and control all areas. Special features such as agile manufacturing or finite loading, and limited capacities can also be taken into account.
If you do not have complex products and production lines, the “assembly” functional area can be a sensible alternative to production. Colloquially, this is referred to as “small-scale production”. The end result of both areas is the same: the finished product. Only the way to get there differs.
You can see the exact differences in the tables below:
Function | Production | Assembly |
---|---|---|
Orders | ✔ = Production Orders | ✔ = Assembly Orders |
Production Planning | ✔ | ✔ limited |
Routing | ✔ | – |
Capacity Planning | ✔ | – |
Work Centers and Groups | ✔ | – |
Scheduling | ✔ | – |
Variant Configuration | optional: orderbase VariPlus | optional: anaptis Configuration |
Function | Production | Assembly |
---|---|---|
Agile Manufacturing | ✔ | ✔ = no Capacity Planning |
Outsourcing | ✔ | – |
Resource and Material Consumption | ✔ | ✔ |
Bills of Materials | ✔ | ✔ |
Scrap | ✔ | – |
Time Expenditure | ✔ | ✔ limited, time per resource (but no work steps) |
If the following functionalities seem too complex for your company, feel free to explore the comparison with the “Assembly” module. The Assembly module is designed to be simpler and is fully sufficient for many companies.
Production orders are the central components of the system’s manufacturing functionality. They contain the following information:
Production orders serve as the starting points for:
How do I create a production order?
Production orders can be manually created from the Production Order pages on an order-by-order basis or automatically generated from sales order planning and/or order planning. Multiple orders are created from the Planning Worksheet page.
Information from various sources, including but not limited to, the following is used to create a production order:
Planning can also be seen as the preparation of the necessary purchase orders in the purchasing, assembly, or manufacturing departments to meet demand. The system offers functions to meet expected and actual demand from sales, assembly, and production, as well as distribution planning functions.
Like bill of materials, routings are associated with the finished product or semi-finished goods. A routing contains master data that capture the process requirements for a specific produced item. Once a production order for this item is created, the routing governs the scheduling of operations.
Also: Limited capacities
With the system, it is also possible to prevent overloading of certain resources. Additionally, it ensures that no capacity remains unassigned if it could increase the lead time of a production order. Bottlenecks are identified, and resource overloads are prevented.
The top level is the department. Work center groups are assigned to departments. Each work center group belongs to exactly one department. You can group different work centers into a work center group. A work center can only belong to one work center group.
The planned capacity of a work center group consists of the availability of the corresponding work centers and the additional planned availability of the work center group. The planned availability of the department is the sum of all availabilities of the corresponding work centers and work center groups.
The system allows setting up work centers as part of manufacturing capacity planning and production management processes. With work centers, it is possible to monitor manufacturing activity, collect information on productivity, scrap rates, etc.
In addition to the Netronic add-on, etagis APS also enables interactive production planning and control with limited capacities and all relevant planning data.
Agile companies aim to be able to quickly respond to market changes or shifting customer needs. With the system, you can dynamically adjust delivery and capacity planning accordingly. Moreover, it enables the automatic creation of production orders and purchase orders. Capacity planning including finite loading completes the module.
In some manufacturing companies, operations are outsourced to vendors. You can easily represent this process in the system.
Calculate the costs of manufactured items based on raw materials and labor hours.
Track the consumption of your components and the quantity of your manufactured finished goods. The values are booked as items under the released production order.
Order terminal for orders (customization)
For one company, we introduced a custom order terminal. To streamline order entry, we developed custom screens for the terminals, which work optimally for touch operation and scanner input.
Manufacturing bill of materials
A manufacturing bill of materials describes the components that go into a manufactured item.
If there is any scrap generated during production, it can be easily recorded and booked digitally. Scrap can also be accounted for in planning.
Record the time spent on operations. The values are booked as items under the released production order. The recorded times are booked as capacity entries. Such booked entries can also be displayed as actual quantities in the bottom of the journal.
Traceability
Digital production orders and parts lists make it easy for your employees to understand what needs to be done.
Flexible Design
You can react quickly to changing customer requirements and optimize your production processes in the long term.
Optimal Capacity Utilization
Thanks to the constant overview of resources, you can optimally plan the utilization of employees and machines at all times.
Exact Delivery Dates
Reliably guarantee your customers the planned delivery date. This is easily possible with good planning.
Production managers are primarily responsible for planning processes. The system takes a lot of work off your hands with AI-powered sales and inventory forecasting. This forecasts potential sales based on historical data, providing an overview of expected demand and anticipated stockouts.
Production and material requirements planning
Using the Calculate Regeneration function, production and material requirements can be calculated based on actual and planned demand. Both production program planning and net requirements can be calculated separately or simultaneously.
Material requirements planning/net requirements
Material requirements planning forecasts the material needs for components based on actual demand. The main purpose of net requirements planning is to schedule formal plans for each item to provide the right item at the right time, in the right place, and in the right quantity.
Production program planning
Production program planning is the calculation of a production plan based on actual demand and sales planning. The calculation of the production program planning is performed for finished items with a plan or a sales order line. These items are referred to as “production program planning items” and are marked as dynamic when the calculation is started.
The visual representation of your planning can be expanded with various add-ons such as the Netronic Visual (Advanced) Production Scheduler.
Outsourcing
Outsourcing selected operations to vendors is common in many manufacturing companies. Outsourcing is realized through special work center groups assigned to vendors. The software recognizes the need for subcontracting, which can be created through the subcontracting proposal. Service costs can be added to the cost of production through this process.
Bills of materials
With bills of materials (production or assembly bills of materials), you structure higher-level products consisting of individual components.
Fulfillment orders can be created directly from sales orders, from production planning (planning proposal), or from order planning.
Within the system, a production order (abbreviated as PO) can have different statuses depending on its processing stage (PO status). The following PO statuses are distinguished:
As soon as the production order has been created and planned, it can be released for the production area and then executed. In the meantime, the materials, working time and quantity of the manufactured item are recorded.
The material consumption can be recorded either manually via the FA consumption book sheet or the production book sheet. In addition to the manual method, you can also use forward or backward posting. With forward and backward booking, you also have the choice of whether this should be recorded for the entire order or for each work step.
There are various options for material postings. Small parts, such as screws, can be configured so that they are automatically booked according to the planned quantity from the parts list. Other items may require picking and should be entered manually as consumption by the production employees. Subsequent correction postings are also possible.
Actual reporting
Actual reporting can be processed through the PO Actual Reporting Journal. It serves to track how much time the order has taken and the quantity produced of the manufactured item. Actual reporting helps determine the exact manufacturing costs.
Similar to material consumption, there are three methods for actual reporting: manual, forward, or backward. Through the PO Actual Reporting Journal, you can also book scrap and downtimes.
Journals
The Production Journal, the PO Consumption Journal, and the aforementioned PO Actual Reporting Journal are essential in the production process. The Production Journal is essentially a combination of the other two journals, allowing you to capture both consumption and actual reporting of a production order in one place.
Analysis and error source minimization
With the system, you can monitor production declines or scrap and identify causes more easily to avoid scrap in the long term.
You can also enter and record scrap and downtimes in the system. The same applies to downtimes.
Production key performance indicator reporting
Reports on essential production key performance indicators can be easily generated due to the system’s robust reporting capabilities and scheduled as desired. For example, you can set up a report to be delivered to management every Monday morning at 8 a.m.
Monitoring (quantity and quality)
Through Azure IoT, it’s possible to connect physical objects (e.g., machines) and virtual objects (e.g., cloud). Why? This allows for proactive and predictive minimization of error sources (e.g., machine failures, machine overheating). To achieve this, a large amount of data is collected and analyzed.
Why should you choose us as your partner company for ERP implementation from the vast Microsoft network? Here’s an overview of what makes us unique:
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