Business Central Manufacturing Show

The wait is over! The Business Central Manufacturing Show is back with its 14th episode. In this episode, we talk to Olof Simren. A Dynamics 365 Business Central and Dynamics NAV expert who started working with Navision back in 2002. With over 18 years of Microsoft Dynamics experience, an awesome blog about Dynamics NAV manufacturing, and projects in different parts of the world, Olof now leads a US-based company called Naviona. In our interview, we discussed how an ERP system can help manufacturing companies go paperless through full-circle digitization.

Get access to all episodes of the Business Central Manufacturing Show here.

Episode number 13 of the Business Central Manufacturing Show was with Matthew Woodhouse. Matt is the Microsoft Dynamics Team Director at Technology Management and runs its project delivery team. Originally coming from a manufacturing & distribution background, Matt first came into contact with Navision back in 1999. Since then he has been helping manufacturing companies. The interview evolved in a way that we looked at manufacturing and Dynamics 365 Business Central from various angles (e.g. from shop-floor data capture as well as from artificial intelligence). But, independent of how we looked at it: Matt always came up with very concrete tips that manufacturers should apply when it comes to an ERP system.

Paul Hogendoorn was my guest for the 12th episode of the Business Central Manufacturing Show. Paul is an incurable entrepreneur from Canada and has founded, co-founded, or helped launch numerous ventures over his 30+ year career, including most recently, FreePoint Technologies. FreePoint's unique technology captures and delivers real-time productivity information, connecting plant floor manufacturing processes directly to managers and operators in innovative, practical, and cost-effective ways. I picked up one of his recent likes on LinkedIn and started the conversation with a question on gamification. This let to a vital discussion on why gamification matters for manufacturing companies. (spoiler: among other benefits, it can yield a 25% uptick in productivity for high-mix low-volume manufacturers). The good news is: we didn't stop with the why, but also looked at a hands-on recipe how it can get implemented, and what metrics can help with gamification.

I met with Chris de Visser for the 11th episode of the Business Central Manufacturing Show. Chris is from the Netherlands, but lives in New York and works as CEO North America for Continia. Before taking that role, he successfully ran the American business of Sana Commerce in Northern America. As such, Chris does not represent a partner being specialized in manufacturing with deep vertical know-how. Instead, he brings a lot of experience with horizontal topics such as sales and process efficiencies that are crucial for any company, and hence also for manufacturers. Hence, I took the opportunity to fly a full circle on back-office process efficiency, which includes administrative processes as well as sales and even marketing efficiency and effectiveness. 

This is the 10th episode of the Business Central Manufacturing Show. This week, I spoke with Christophe Billard, who is from France, but lives and works in Spain. After working as a business demand planner and in supply chain management for pharmaceutical and FMCG companies, Christophe became an ERP consultant 15 years ago. Since then has helped many manufacturing companies to fully embrace the power of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. In our conversation, we looked at best practices when implementing an ERP, getting started with MRP, and introducing an MES. Throughout this round-trip, Christophe's advice for manufacturing companies stayed consistent: do not try to take it all. Instead, start small with balanced information, before you then unleash the power of these systems by constant fine-tuning. He repeated this advice when we looked at the similarities of a successful wrestler and a successful manufacturing company.

For episode #9 of the Business Central Manufacturing Show, I met Mike Fontaine from Canada. He is a solutions expert at VOX ISM, and has 20+ years of experience with ERP software and manufacturing. Actually, Mike used to work with manufacturing companies as a buyer, a scheduler, and a production planner. After spending some minutes on the experiences that Mike gained working for manufacturers (quote: "I actually was the MRP system of the company"), we found ourselves chatting about scheduling. Interestingly enough, we did not speak scheduling software, but scheduling concepts. A major lesson learned is: we need to spend more time dealing with scheduling concepts. If we break down scheduling success, it is software plus concepts (neither just software nor just concepts). The scheduling concepts we discussed range from "applying how baseball works to scheduling" to the "frozen, slushy and wet schedule". Last, but not least Mike also shared some thoughts on why he is driving the Best Manufacturing Apps Conference (BMAC) 2020.

Michael Hering from Germany was my guest in episode #8 of the Business Central Manufacturing Show. As Industry Manager Concrete, Michael is responsible for COSMO CONSULT's products and solutions for discrete manufacturing. The conversation turned out to become a box of chocolate with manufacturing ERP best practices. We looked into a variety of aspects such as lean management and the IT required for it, artificial intelligence in manufacturing, concrete steps to make when implementing a manufacturing ERP system, and future data strategies if supply chains might become shorter again. Michael provided concrete tips & advice to not only each of these "pieces of chocolate", but to even more pieces.

I met Guus Krabbenborg from the Netherlands for this episode of the Business Central Manufacturing Show. He was my first guest without a dedicated manufacturing background. However, he is a highly-experienced business trainer and consultant with a well-earned reputation in the international Microsoft Dynamics arena. He has managed and co-owned several software companies and was Sales Director for Navision Software in The Netherlands. Guus and I quickly came to the topic of digital transformation, and I learned that transformation is the hardest of the implied challenges. However, Guus didn't end up making this clear in a provocative way. Instead, he gave seven insanely concrete and practical tips of what companies can do to achieve that transformation journey. These tips are not only inspiring, but they are also hands-on and ready-to-go aka ready to get applied. Starting this Friday ;-)

This week, I had the chance to interview Robert Jolliffe, CEO and President of Sabre Limited from Canada. He has been an ERP consultant in the manufacturing space for over 25 years, starting immediately after graduating University of Toronto Engineering. His two uncles and his father owned and operated manufacturing businesses, and hence manufacturing is in his blood. In our conversation, Robert not only explained the phrase "secret sauce" to me, but also made it very obvious, why manufacturers would do wrong if they try to search for the secret sauce of a product such as Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. However, we did not end up with searching for the secret sauce ... we also looked ahead into industrial revolution number 4 and the return of cottage industries.

I met Bart Pattijn from Belgium for the fifth episode of the Business Central Manufacturing Show. He is ERP consultant at Christiaens BV, and actually didn’t start his career in an IT company. Instead, he initially was a production manager in several food companies. Hence, he has plenty of hands-on experience when it comes to manufacturing and planning. He has been working with Navision since 2004. Our conversion quickly became very hands-on, and Bart managed to unveil two underestimated superpowers of Business Central to me: this is the upgrade-ability and the extensibility. Both in combination enable manufacturing companies to achieve more with Business Central, and to cope with the ongoing need for speed and need for change. 

In this episode of the Business Central Manufacturing Show, I met with Sune Lohse. Sune is Chief Strategy Officer and Business Unit Manager Supply Chain at Abakion from Denmark. He holds a bachelor in “manufacturing engineering” and helps customers optimizing supply chain processes. Sune is author of the book "200 ERP Questions: The most important things to think about when considering Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central" and initiator of the free Microsoft Dynamics learning portal UseDynamics.com, where he has contributed with more than 500 videos on Business Central. Our conversation started with some Marketing best practices, but then quickly turned into a round-trip from material requirements planning (MRP) to shopfloor execution, which culminated in the similarities of raising kids and raising Business Central manufacturing clients.

Football is a strategic team sport. Typically, those teams win that are able to quickly adapt their strategy to the changing dynamics of the game. This is called situational football, and in this episode, we develop the idea of situational manufacturing. 

My interview guest is AJ Ansari, a Microsoft MVP with 13 years of experience in the Microsoft Dynamics channel. Prior to his current role as COO at DSWi, he has built and led a profitable NAV practice from the ground up at InterDyn BMI (now Columbus) and held the responsibility for presale and product management. During his years as consultant and presale specialist, he has advised many industrial manufacturers and services businesses in the SMB space with respect to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and Dynamics NAV.

AJ is passionate about manufacturing, about Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and about (American) football and we bring together these three passions in this third episode of the Business Central Manufacturing Show.
 

"Focus processes, not functionalities" is the number one recommendation Peik Bech-Anderson gives to all manufacturing companies starting with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.

This episode is an interview with Peik Bech-Anderson. Peik is a solution architect and senior developer, and he first saw Navision back in 1984. He is the author of the best-selling book “Manufacturing with Microsoft Dynamics NAV. A comprehensive guide to the manufacturing module in Microsoft Dynamics NAV”, which can be applied 1:1 to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central as well.

In this interview, we 

This is the initial episode of the Business Central Manufacturing Show – the first podcast for small and midsized manufacturers that work or consider working with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.

With this initial episode, I am calling all global Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central manufacturing specialists. I cordially invite you to join me for this show.

Actually, this initial episode is an exception as I am the only person speaking in this episode. My plan is that nine out of ten episodes will be me interviewing folks that have much more to say about Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and manufacturing.

I am using this episode to share the background story of why I am doing this:

1. I want to make good use of some time that I won unexpectedly.
2. I always wanted to do a podcast, and so far could hide behind the “no time” argument.
3. I am an extremely curious person. In my leisure time, I am fully into football (some might it call soccer). But in my professional life, I truly became curious about all things manufacturing – especially in combination with Dynamics NAV and Dynamics 365 Business Central.
4. It seems that I know quite a bunch of people who know a lot more than I about manufacturing and Business Central. 

Let’s do the math and put all of this together. The result is the Business Central Manufacturing Show – the first podcast dedicated to small and mid-sized manufacturing companies that use (or consider using) Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. I know that this is a niche podcast. But I hope it will bring great value to this niche.

And with this: I am calling all Business Central manufacturing experts to join me for this show.