A conversation on warehouse challenges and solutions

In episode 34 of his podcast, Martin welcomed José Miguel Azevedo, a Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Senior Solution Architect with KPMG in the UK, one of the BIG4 consulting companies. José has more than 24 years of experience with different ERPs, ranging from SAP and Oracle to Dynamics 365 Business Central, his focus areas being Navision and Business Central, where he held various roles in consulting, like business consultant, functional consultant, project manager, program manager, etc. He has worked in companies of all sizes and with clients from the fashion, food, pharmaceutical, manufacturing, and services industries. Although Jose admitted that speaking foreign languages is not big fun for him, he dared to move to and work in London and join Martin for the podcast.

They kicked off their conversation by delving into José's personal journey, highlighting his move from Portugal to London. José's decision to leave his comfort zone and embrace new opportunities at KPMG underscores his passion for manufacturing. He emphasized that the industry resonates with him due to its dynamic challenges and the need for out-of-the-box thinking.

Martin and José explored the essential tools and strategies for successfully implementing Business Central in manufacturing, and José stressed the importance of identifying whether a company is make-to-order or make-to-stock and tailoring the approach accordingly. According to him, simplicity is critical for setting up Bill of Materials (BOM) structures and utilizing lead times to aid Material Requirements Planning (MRP) and Available to Promise (ATP) calculations.

When discussing Capable to Promise (CTP), José outlined that while it's a powerful tool, it should be introduced only after establishing a solid data foundation. He pointed out that most manufacturing companies already possess historical experience and can set lead times and workarounds at the item level to provide customers with realistic delivery dates.

The conversation wrapped up with a focus on the significance of relationships in the manufacturing sector. José recalled his challenging implementations, noting that successful projects were marked by solid professional relationships. Both Martin and José agreed that while technology is an enabler, the people behind it genuinely drive success.

Despite both admitting they're not particularly language-oriented, they exchanged friendly banter about Martin learning some basic Portuguese before meeting at Directions EMEA in Lyon. José ended the podcast by expressing gratitude for the conversation and the opportunity to share his insights.

In his latest podcast episode, Martin hosted Ivar Keskpaik, who, amongst a plethora of other roles and positions, works as a Business Consultant for Softera Baltic, Lithuania. 

He holds an MSc in Physics, is a chartered engineer, a certified Theory of Constraints (TOC) practitioner, and has been titled the “most famous Interim Manager of Estonia” by the Magazine “Director”. Ivar and Martin discussed how manufacturing companies working with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central can apply the Theory of Constraints.

Martin introduced the podcast's topic by asking Ivar to explain the Theory of Constraints (TOC) shortly. As Ivar outlined, this concept was developed by Eliyahu M. Goldratt in the late 70s of the last century and describes a management philosophy and methodology that allows one to focus only on the constraints in a process and to make good bottom-line results for a short period in any type of company. TOC is more complex than other management theories, such as Lean or Six Sigma, and Ivar admitted that it took him 20 years to grasp it fully.

As Ivar went on, the high complexity of TOC lies in its being based on a flow-based approach and not on a resource-based one. Flow-based thinking is about making sure things move smoothly and efficiently from start to finish, therefore trying to detect the constraints - or bottlenecks -  in a process and maximizing them to the maximum flow. Transferring this to the typical Business Central manufacturing customers, namely SMBs, their constraints are always on resources. However typically, the bottleneck isn't stable, but it keeps on shifting from one work or machine center to another.

Once the constraint has been detected - by scrutinizing the workload of the different capacities - the planning must only be done for this resource. The workload should not be distributed equally among all resources to remove the constraint.

Talking about best practices for implementing TOC at manufacturing companies using Business Central, Ivar related that it always starts with a visit to the customer and talking to the management board to understand the company's problems. Then, of course, there will be an inspection of the shopfloor to see and understand the technologies the customer is using. Based on these findings, the bottlenecks are then analyzed: where are they located? Are they floating or not? etc. After that, the planning and scheduling part will be dealt with. But, as Ivar stressed, the first step always will be to detect the bottleneck.

Often, customers mistakenly think that their most expensive resource is their bottleneck and hence are not happy when hearing that to remove the constraint, they will have to disbalance their resources and even take away workload from their most expensive machine. They fear that this will bring their production cost up or that the cost per unit of this machine will increase significantly. 

Ivar encountered these arguments, in which the conflict between the cost-based approach and the flow-based approach becomes evident, by pointing out that both approaches have the goal to make a profit but that the flow-based approach will bring results like better profits, a bigger turnover, and higher customer satisfaction in a comprehensively shorter time than the resource-based approach. The bigger flow through removing the bottlenecks will lead to delivering more work orders in time. Sometimes, Ivar even offers to set up a mini-project for the respective company so that the decision-makers can see the results and then discuss the main project. 

Martin's guest is Andrew Good, CEO of Liberty Grove Software from Canada. 

Andrew is an engineer, project manager, analyst, manufacturing expert, and Microsoft Certified Trainer. His extensive knowledge and background have been built from personal experiences with many companies, working in various operational and management roles. Projects have ranged from new implementations to streamlining business operations. 21 years of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and Dynamics NAV experience mean that he can fall back on many different perspectives when working with customers.  

He has helped clients get the most out of their Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central/NAV systems through integrations, upgrades, and extensions that allow them to deal with their changing business environments, regardless of whether financial operations, rentals, distribution, and manufacturing.  

Being asked whether providing the master data that are so essential for a functioning planning process also means fun to him, Andrew admitted that, overall, from an organization's perspective, it is a painful process. Nevertheless, as he pointed out, the dividends that are paid to the organizations are huge both in the short and long term because, in the end, they are rewarded by getting a single system that provides them with trustworthy financial, inventory, and manufacturing information. And according to Andrew, the process of providing and maintaining master data is an ongoing one. The system needs to remain trustworthy and stable also after go-live, and for this, the data must be kept in good shape continuously. Depending on the organizations' size, there are a variety of techniques at hand for this.

Martin then brought up the claim "Transform your business with human-friendly solutions to power progress" that he read on Andrew's website when preparing for the podcast and that he would like to investigate further. Starting with the "transform your business" part, Andrew outlined that when you look at the transformation necessity for the manufacturing companies, it is not primarily related to their "direct processes", meaning everything connected to manufacturing, but mainly concerns all their indirect processes, like engineering, purchase, finance, etc. where the day-to-day work can be significantly streamlined and improved to make people more efficient. Andrew sees a second area of transformation opportunity in leveraging the already massive data that are available in the organizations by using tools like Power BI to provide insights into how the factory is run. Of course, this also will impact production itself because Power BI can also be used to monitor real-time production data, thus finding out if production is running to its quote, finding fundamental issues with a certain part, etc.

Discussing the "human-friendly solution" part of the claim, Andrew stressed that he is no fan of productivity initiatives being introduced by top-down directives. Not including the experience and opinions of all staff members will generate a lot of resentment and resistance to those initiatives. Andrew advocates for a more collaborative approach where also the view and the voices of the "direct" people in the project count. According to Andrew, it is always key to get people on the shop floor involved.

Regarding the third part of the claim, "to power progress", Martin wanted to know whether and how Andrew measures and documents the progress his customers make. Andrew related that he encourages his customers to gather and analyze data and examine how it changes over time. They should also keep track of the activities having been executed during the same period to see the impact of these changes. He is a firm believer in constant measuring, monitoring, and then acting based on the monitoring. The typical metrics that get tracked in manufacturing companies, of course, depend on the companies' focus. 

In his latest podcast episode, Martin was super excited to have one of the North American Business Central manufacturing rockstars with him. Steve Chinsky is the Manager Dynamics Practice with Accelerynt. He has over 23 years of experience consulting, implementing, and managing Dynamics NAV and Business Central projects. His over 180 NAV and BC implementations were done in manufacturing, supply chain (aka WMS(, food and beverage, jewelry, retail, service, oil and gas, chemical, industrial equipment, and home goods industries. In addition, he worked over 16 years as an Accountant (CMA) in various positions (Director of Finance, Controller, and Director of Operations). 

Steve is, among others, a Microsoft Dynamics 365 Most Valued Professional (MVP), a Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP), and a Certified Navision Manufacturing Specialist. He is a Board Member and Program Committee Chair of the NAVUG (the NAV user group), Summit Program Committee Co-Chair, and he is on the Program Committee for DynamicsCON Live and the Content Committee for Directions North America. 

With this impressive background, the question naturally arose what is so special about NAV and Business Central that it qualifies for such a level of commitment.

Steve related that having worked for 16 years in accounting, it finally became somewhat repetitive and rudimentary, and due to lots of recommendations, he started to look at ERP and a "company called Navision." He was really fascinated because it was so easy and simple, and over time, he knew that he wanted to get involved with the community that was building itself in the early days. Moreover, he has always loved helping people, so when he started to work with different partners, he supported anybody new and wanted to know how the software worked. From there, it was a small step to organizing conferences and being part of advisor boards or committees. And this is what he really loves doing.

Being asked what piqued his interest in manufacturing, Steve said that, originally, he mostly worked in the supply chain environment. But when he met a customer who produced the glue for the United States postal stamps, he was intrigued by being involved with manufacturing literally, as he put it, "from soup to nuts." He likes to mold different companies that are coming to NAV and Business Central into the software and to accompany every step, and that's what kept him there.

Steve was happy to share some of the best implementation practices and tips he has ready for manufacturers in the NAV and Business Central environment:

1. Include some of the people from the shop floor who do the actual work in the defining and design processes. Everybody should have a voice because this is your new ERP system.
2. Don't ever second guess a process - have it explained loudly in the room.
3. Don't stick to processes because you have always done them that way - people change, steps change, equipment changes.
4. Evaluate every routing from its beginning to the end - consider the time elements associated with a routing, and don't forget the crap.
5. Let the people on the shopfloor test the system throughout the whole implementation process.

 As Steve outlined, implementing an ERP is always also a business process reengineering task because, if you want to move from an old system to a new one, you can't do this without analyzing all your processes and, most likely, subsequently also changing some things. He illustrated his point by saying that you can't change your favorite ice cream flavor from a chocolate chip to another one but want to keep the chips, the color, and the flavor. As Steve said, "Everything is on the table with a new ERP system." 

Our podcast is back! After a half-year break, Martin felt it was time to "revive" the podcast again, last but not least because many Business Central manufacturing enthusiasts reached out and encouraged him to continue with it. So, in episode 30, he was happy to talk to Jeff Brickler, solution architect at an ISV called CADtalk in Cincinnati, USA.

Jeff's background is quite outstanding because he hasn't been an IT/manufacturing person for his entire career. He started as a Latin teacher in high school with a master's degree in Classics. He joined CADtalk eight years ago and has worked closely with manufacturing customers as a support specialist, consulting and services manager, and solution architect since then. 

Dwelling on the fact that Jeff has been working with manufacturing companies for quite some time, Martin wanted to know more about Jeff's experience with these companies: what makes them unique and what is the intellectual challenge of working with them. Jeff described that, although the customers he deals with are very different, they all have some things in common: they are all quite "down-to-earth," meaning that they work hard to make good products and are also very cost conscious. What is more, he also meets a lot of engineers who are very detail-oriented and ask a lot of questions, so the challenge here lies in offering or showing them products that are really going to work and provide value.

When asked what he thought was the most important skill needed for working in such an environment and whether his teaching experience helped him in his new job, Jeff said there's not much difference between a demonstration for a software product and teaching. As he put it, a lot of teaching is really about trying to give a good overview of what you're about to teach or what the subject matter is, and then frame it in a way that makes it interesting to the audience, and then listening to that audience to know what's interesting to them. So what you need in both jobs is patience, not getting frustrated, and an ability to explain in multiple ways. Because sometimes, the way he thinks of something may not be the same as the way the customer thinks of it, meaning that we might have a different vocabulary or how we structure it in our mind might be different.

The two then talked about the similarities between the users of Business Central and those of other ERP systems and came to the conclusion that independent of their size (the Business Central companies are usually a bit smaller than the others), they share the same challenges. They all design and produce complex products with a relatively small lot size that require engineering. In Business Central, they have also to manage the BOM.

Regarding whether CADtalk's Business Central customers use the manufacturing or the jobs module, Jeff stated that their customers mainly use the standard manufacturing module because that helps them keep a standard BOM. In his opinion, even when customers have lot sizes of one, it is always preferable to create a standard BOM instead of just creating a job for that one-off. A BOM makes updates more manageable in case of engineering changes which would be quite difficult with the Jobs module.

Talking about the impact of having so many ISV solutions for Business Central, Jeff outlined that this makes working with customers a little bit challenging in the sense that at CADtalk, they need to keep being aware and up-to-date about the products on the market. Customers would very much appreciate them knowing the ecosystem and preferably having some kind of relationship with the other vendors so that they are always aware of how all the different products or software interactions work together.

Jeff and Martin ended their talk by expressing their hope to meet at Directions EMEA in Lyon later that year and continue their discussion.

Since a bit of time has passed since the last episode, let me briefly bring you up-to-date: In June, we at NETRONIC organized an event series that we run under our "next by NETRONIC" event brand. The idea of next by NETRONIC events was to host online events in which we just play a facilitating role for having panel discussions, dive into Business Central-related topics, and avoid NETRONIC scheduling demos. Hence, the "next by NETRONIC" event brand is ideal for running an event series in which actually other ISV solutions play a key role.

To some extent, we regard the Business Central Manufacturing Exchange as the "event frontend to Microsoft's AppSource". We want to provide manufacturing ISVs the opportunity to showcase their AppSource apps to a broader audience. We - by the way - will only allow presenters that have their apps in Microsoft AppSource. With the Business Central Manufacturing Exchange, we want to make it easier for our customers and partners to find manufacturing apps that close requirement gaps ... just like our visual scheduling apps do.

So, the industry vertical solutions webinar was the last of the events and two industry vertical ISVs presented their solutions:

• Michael Bradley works in pre-sales and marketing at PrintVis, USA, the Microsoft-certified Print MIS, a software solution specifically developed for the print industry which is built directly on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. Hence, Michael contributed a lot of print industry-specific knowledge to the discussion.
• Adri Cardol is the Product Manager at TO-INCREASE from the Netherlands. TO-INCREASE specializes in the development, delivery, and support of industry solutions, and connectivity tools for Microsoft Dynamics NAV/BC to Microsoft Dynamics partners. We had Adri in the panel discussion to share with us details about the industrial equipment manufacturing industry.

 Following last week's shopfloor discussion episode, here is the 28th episode of the Business Central Manufacturing Show. Again, this episode originates from our Business Central Manufacturing Exchange webinar series. It is a recorded panel discussion on warehouse challenges and solutions. I hosted this panel discussion and was excited to have Žilvinas Lapačinskas (Software Baltic), Mark Hamblin (Insight Works), and James Crowter (Clever Dynamics) as my guests. 

To some extent, we regard the Business Central Manufacturing Exchange as the "event frontend to Microsoft's AppSource". With the event series, we want to provide manufacturing ISVs the opportunity to showcase their AppSource apps to a broader audience. 

So, last week, we ran a warehouse solutions webinar in which three warehouse ISVs presented their solutions. At the end of the webinar, I hosted a panel discussion with all three warehouse experts. Namely, these are 

• Žilvinas Lapačinskas is a supply chain management consultant at Softera Baltic from Lithuania. Softera is a well-known Business Central partner in the Baltics. They understand how manufacturing, commerce, and service companies work so that they can offer fitting industrial and process automation solutions.
• Mark Hamblin is President of Insight Works, a Canadian-based ISV specializing in manufacturing and distribution apps for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.
• James Crowter is a Microsoft MVP and the Managing Director at Clever Dynamics from the UK. Clever Dynamics provides a range of clever apps for smarter manufacturing and distribution that are seamlessly integrated with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.

I highly recommend that you not only tune into this podcast which is the recording of this panel discussion. Instead, I also recommend that you watch the recording of the entire webinar to see how Softera, Insight Works, and Clever Dynamics can help you with your warehouse challenges.

The 27th episode of the Business Central Manufacturing Show is somewhat different than all the others that you have been listening to so far. This episode is not a conversation with one guest. Instead, it is a recorded panel discussion on shopfloor challenges and solutions. I hosted this panel discussion and was excited to have Bent Korsgaard (Naveksa), Mark Hamblin (Insight Works), and Matthew Woodhouse (Clever Dynamics) as my guests.

A bit of background: Recently, we at NETRONIC ran a webinar series that we called the Business Central Manufacturing Exchange. Oftentimes, when we speak to customers (and also to partners), we are confronted with requirements that are outside our scheduling core competency. Sometimes, we are asked for shopfloor solutions and time tracking. Another time, it is product configuration. And yet another time, it is that people request some warehouse functionality from us. Not seldomly, we are also asked for manufacturing solutions that are specific to one particular industry. 
 
Hence, we grasped a general need for more transparency on the Business Central manufacturing apps and solutions landscape. We took that need seriously and launched the Business Central Manufacturing Exchange to address this need. To some extent, we regard the Business Central Manufacturing Exchange as the "event frontend to Microsoft's AppSource". 

So, last week, we ran a shopfloor solutions webinar in which three shopfloor ISVs presented their solutions. At the end of the webinar, I hosted a panel discussion with all three shopfloor experts

I highly recommend that you not only tune into this podcast which is the recording of this panel discussion. Instead, I also recommend that you watch the recording of the entire webinar to see how Naveksa, Insight Works, and Clever Dynamics can help you with your shopfloor challenges.

The guest in episode 26 of Martin's Business Central Manufacturing Show was Andrei Panko. Andrei is a program manager in the Business Central engineering team at the Microsoft Development Center in Copenhagen, Denmark. Having a Microsoft employee as a guest on the podcast was really a novelty. In the other episodes so far, all speakers were Business Central manufacturing experts working for a Microsoft partner. So this podcast provides most interesting insider insights into how things work in the Microsoft Business Central development team.

Andrei started working as a consultant, developer, and project manager in 2004 - back then it was Dynamics NAV, of course - and was an MVP for six years running. He has extensive field experience in the supply chain and has engaged in many other aspects of the Business Central application and platform as well. Besides, he is the author of the book "Supply Chain Management in Microsoft Dynamics NAV", which was published in 2008, and he holds a patent for metadata-driven machine learning for systems.

Before diving into how things happen at Microsoft, Martin first wanted to know how Andrei got into manufacturing and how it does matter to him. Andrei related that one of his first customers was a small manufacturing company that needed to improve its processes and for whom he purchased and implemented Business Central.

According to Andrei, the great strength of Business Central, even back then, was that it could be easily and flexibly modified to fit specific unique company processes. While Andrei and Martin agreed that this strength still exists, they both think that the way of creating these enhancements has changed quite a lot. In their opinion what had been real customizations in the past, now increasingly get turned into apps.

This led to a discussion about whether Business Central has become a much more core part of Microsoft's overall strategy, by e.g., providing the AppSource infrastructure or integrating it with Power Platform.

Andrei gave a short "historical" discourse from how the ERP was deployed 20 to 30 years ago to how it is done today by way of SaaS. The red thread running through this development over time is one of the core initiatives at Microsoft Business Central. The team has been helping partners reduce the number of ad-hoc developments. This not only changed the selling and deployment model of many partners but also changed the requirements for Business Central.

In order to help partners and customers reduce the number of ad-hoc developments, Business Central has become tighter integrated with the Office products, tools are now much better integrated with the overall ERP and there is much more tooling support also from the power platform.

In this context they talked about another way of reducing ad-hoc developments, namely listening to, and using the feedback they get from customers and partners. Andrei related two interesting facts:

• The development teams do not receive much direct feedback from end-users and customers.
• Mostly, the partners only give feedback about their own needs instead of those of the end-users, and they prefer to get tools to solve their customers' problems instead of getting solutions for these problems directly.

Episode 25 of  Martin's podcast was all about the difficulties and obstacles that can stand in the way of a successful implementation of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.

The guest in this jubilee episode was James Crowter from the UK. He is the founder and Managing Director of Technology Management, an established Navision and Business Central partner whom everybody knows as TecMan. In addition, Microsoft has appointed him as MVP (most valuable professional) for business applications for the sixth year running. And if that was not enough, he last year volunteered to become the chairman of the Directions EMEA committee.

James is passionate about how businesses can improve their efficiency by getting process optimal more of the time. And for the last 25 years, he has been working to help organizations of all sizes and types implement the ERP and CRM software that typically they decide they need when things are going wrong. While he has seen projects run unbelievably well, at the same time he has also had some unbelievably hard projects.

Of course, this statement was the ideal hook for Martin and he wanted to know the reasons why projects become hard. Likewise, he asked for tips on how to avoid such negative experiences. James stated that in companies wanting to implement a new system, often the misconception prevails that buying software is a magic bullet to make them well organized.

But there is more to it. For James, accuracy is not achieved by just implementing software but is a state of mind. Hence, in some cases, in addition to changing the software, companies also have to change their people's approach to the way that they do things.

According to James, "garbage in, garbage out" is one of the main reasons why projects sometimes become so hard. To avoid this, ERP users should strive at having a well-structured and maintained database. You can have the best tool in the world but if you don't use it in the correct way and if you feed it poorly maintained data, you won't get a good result. Consequently, people need to know that they have to be prepared to put in the work to get the results they want. From James' experience, this bit is often what they lack. 

In that regard, an important parameter for many ERP-supported processes in manufacturing is precise time estimations. Often the responsible people only have a rough idea about what process is going to take how much time and will be done by whom. But it is vital that the processes get quantified precisely. You have to outline them as early as possible in as much detail as possible. 

As it is absolutely essential that a significant amount of time is put in for initial data entry and initial data structure definition, the question arose as to what extent this is manual work or can be automated. As James put it, the key question here is rather "What do you actually need?" than "What have you historically done?" and that requires not the data entry per se, but needs decisions about what the data should be. 

This is a process of evolving and revising and hence is very individual.

This led them back to the key message of their conversation, the importance of the manual and thorough and thoughtful parameter set up - now with a focus on item parameters. They agreed that it is vital that this is done by the production managers or whoever is in charge of the production because these people know their company's needs and hence should not delegate this task to temps or outsource it.

The conversation then ended with Martin's admission that before the two of them would meet again - this already being a done deal - he certainly would need to get smart on item parameter setting.