5 Powerful Manufacturing Features in Dynamics 365 Business Central

How can your manufacturing organization thrive despite tough competition and fluctuating markets? In today’s age of digital transformation, it may be as simple as upgrading your operational and financial solutions. The Manufacturing modules in Dynamics 365 Business Central offer robust functionality, excellent flexibility, and intuitive design. It’s a great fit for a variety of environments and needs, including both process manufacturers and discrete manufacturers.

What is Manufacturing in Dynamics 365 Business Central?

Dynamics 365 Business Central’s Manufacturing series is a set of modules which allow you to use variable inputs in order to produce one or more outputs. In addition to tracking components, you can track direct labor and additional indirect and overhead costs. The system lets us break down and identify the individual steps involved in the production process, and record those real-time.

Here a few key components of what makes Business Central’s Manufacturing work so well:

1. Production Orders

Production Orders are the basic unit the Manufacturing system revolves around. They record the cost components from consumed items and show the transformation into finished output.

There are several ways to create production orders. They can be created manually, individually on a sales order, or based on a suggestion from the Material Requirements Planning (MRP) engine, using what’s called the Planning Worksheet.

2. The Planning Worksheet

Planning production based on forecasting allows you to ensure you have sufficient component inventory available. In Dynamics 365 Business Central, the MRP engine calculates suggestions and gives you a list to review, then you adjust that list and carry it out. The demand the MRP engine uses in its calculations can come from sales orders, service orders, multi-level BOMs, and more.

In addition to calculating component inventory needs, the planning worksheet can also calculate the master production schedule (MPS) for end items. This calculation is based on actual demand and the demand forecast. When MRP and MPS are combined, the Business Central engine generates action messages as suggestions for the user to create, change, or cancel orders for every stage in the production process. 

3. Inventory

The Manufacturing functionality in Dynamics 365 Business Central works very nicely with the solution’s Warehouse Management module, which manages the processes of picking, inventory, and more. Business Central has a shared list for all inventory items, which includes raw ingredients, intermediates, products, packaging, finished inventory, etc. Users can easily define groupings to filter these different items and view exactly the data they need.

4. Production Bill of Materials

The Production Bill of Materials (BOM) is a default list of components that go to produce a finished inventory item. If you change the quantity of the item, it changes the quantities of components. A production BOM can be linked to multiple items at one time, or you can have a specific BOM for each item.

Users can create multiple versions of BOMs. These can be used to keep the history of how the raw materials of a finished good have changed over time, which impacts the cost of the final item. It’s also possible to override the default list of components in order to change items or quantities as needed for a particular situation.

5. Routings

Although not all manufacturing systems require routings, they’re helpful for many businesses. A routing is an ordered list of operations in the manufacturing process. In order to produce something, these are the steps that need to be followed. Similar to production BOMs, you can have a generic routing that’s assigned to multiple items, or you can have specific routings set up for each item.

Interested in learning more about D365BC for Manufacturers?

We’ve only described a handful of impressive features of Manufacturing in Dynamics 365 Business Central. If you’d like to watch a more in-depth tour of the Manufacturing modules, watch our Manufacturing in Dynamics 365 Business Central webinar.

Western Computer has helped numerous manufacturing-based businesses achieve greater efficiency by leveraging technology solutions. Contact us today to schedule a consultation and benefit from our 30 years of experience in helping customers succeed.