My true passion always has been manufacturing projects. I have started in 2008 my professional IT journey after my unsuccessful 6 months mission at University (It wasn’t for me really to follow boring Uni schedule and I just needed money). Due to my previous gaming experience where I was working as Counter-Strike Head Admin on the biggest Czechia server around 2003-2005 (I was organising CS player tournaments, providing email/ICQ player support, writing articles from community etc. I was earning good money when I was 14) I got opportunity at small software company in little village in Czech Republic. At that time around 2008-2010, we were doing cool things with software and hardware to automate manufacturing companies’ processes. Using barcodes to track production progress and material consumption etc, assemble own hardware to cater various barcode scanning operations, using RS485 I/O modules, and developed an app for them and linked whole thing with CNC machines to capture automatically production cycles (e.g. when you open the door of CNC, you either produced cycle or scrap; we then had been producing JPG every 5 minutes and distributed current production state of 20 CNC machines as screensaver so everybody in company sees how machines are running live). It was all linked-on touch screens for CNC operators and providing real production output live – real MES (not like some products you see on BC Extension Marketplace; I will compare them one day too). We were making production digital 15 years ago, I’m grateful for the experience.

In 2012 I have been told to find a job elsewhere as we didn’t have too much work and new projects (I can now see myself as Microsoft CSP the difficulty of getting new customer in). I was doing my best, but it took me few months during which I heard quite a few times “No” or I didn’t hear anything at all from potential employers. But then after about 3 months of searching for a job I have seen caption “Microsoft Dynamics NAV Junior Consultant”. I heard very little about NAV before when I was 23, but I was so keen to get the job that I bought a book about NAV. I’ve gone through it in few days, came on interview and smashed it. After few years working for my first Microsoft Dynamics Partner the company owner told me that before the interview, he wasn’t about to hire anybody as he already sorted the situation internally but due to commitment I have shown in few tens of minutes, he must have given me a job. I was working for “Manufacturing team” which handled only manufacturing companies from support to big implementation end-to-end projects. I have learnt so much, thanks for patience and commitment my dear teachers (RH; ST) Here you have me after 11 years!

During my first week learning NAV in 2012 I thought I will never be able to understand this software well. I kept learning everyday and when I moved to England in 2016 I came as “manufacturing expert”. I always wanted to experience life in the different country so in January 2016, I contacted hiring company to find me something in the UK. It didn’t take long. In April 2016 I was working for one of traditional partners on the market and settled in Wolverhampton United Kingdom.

Let’s come back to manufacturing. Most of my implementation I have mentioned in my confessions (part 1; part 2) were manufacturing companies. Most of them were using reservation module. All of manufacturing companies more or less needed to see their capacity load and production data in some visual form. I have helped companies to implement visual production scheduling tools, so I have decided to provide independent feedback, share experience, and compare available Business Central Add-ons let you can make best qualified decision if you about to implement these types of tools. On Business Central, it can be so easy!

Well, when I say independent, I sat in the room in February 2019 in Aachen Germany with James C. (owner or Technology Management) and Martin K. (owner of Netronic) when PlannerOne busted and these two guys decided to create better alternative to PlannerOne and that’s how VAPS has been created. I have been there as a manufacturing expert, who implemented successfully PlannerOne and other production tools before. I have been part of the Tecman VAPS team around 2019 and 2020 and have helped design module in VAPS called EMAD (Earliest material date availability), since then, I wasn’t involved. I left Tecman in December 2022 to become Business Central Entrepreneur Partner on my own. Today I can implement these solutions for your company without fluff and listening to anybody else.

I will compare two main products on extension marketplace for graphical visual production scheduling:

Netronic VAPS (Visual Advanced Production Scheduler; sucessor of VPS)

InsightWorks MxAPS 4.7

I will test five different scenarios I have seen in my consultancy experience:

1) Machine is broken, production will not be finished when we promised to customer.

2) Supplier postponed critical component and production can’t happen as planned.

3) Produced subcomponent is late, main product can’t be shipped on-time.

4) Despatch from distribution centre, production in manufacturing location.

5) Multi location production – producing subcomponent on different location than final product and using transfer orders to move stock between locations.

Before we start comparing, I need to explain one thing I have learnt during my consultancy experience. Visual Production scheduling topic is not for every manufacturing company. It’s such a complex topic where if you implemented it well, it’s game changer for organisation and invaluable competitors advantage. Although I have seen very high ratio of failed implementations (Ortems PlannerOne was saying in 2015 themselves more than 50% implementation have failed; Planner one was the only really usable tool for Visual Scheduling around 2013-2019) of these visual tools. I have seen various things in projects related to visual production scheduling e.g. customer which wanted money back from Microsoft in NAV2009 for Visual Production Gant Charts (Do you remember MS Gant Charts in old NAV classic client? Oh, they were so expensive and so useless; did you know they were using back-end Netronic components?) I’m glad that nowadays you don’t have to buy any BC modules as it was when I joined NAV community in 2012. The other extreme I have seen was blind presales where inexperienced guy motivated by commission wanted to implement parallel visual production system using PlannerOne alongside running NAV2009 (without any integrations between the two, in 3 months). Sound nice, but mission impossible as I knew before we started. No, it couldn’t succeed long term, you have basically been mis sold. As always, from same guy. All these tools look so good during presales but are they applicable to nowadays production environments? In this type of implementations (Visual Graphical Tool or APS?) is absolutely required experienced presales consultancy which recommends the right solution and is not trying cash in commission (right Partner has processes in place to not allow this things to happen). Right solution can be off system excel process using self-generated ERP data, implementation of APS system which can take years and cost hundreds of thousands of pounds or just simple addon to your ERP system (it can be very easy if you on Business Central Public Cloud).

Scenario 1: Machine is broken..

I have created very simple Item & Production BOM & Routing for this scenario. Two components, two routing lines, different machine required. Product lead time around 8 hours (incl. setup time; 2 different operation and machines). Imagine this as a typical tooling machining product.

MBDynBC365 Item Structure screen:

BC Work Centres/Machine centres:

Netronic visual plant representation (Work Center > Machine Center scenario with production order created for above):

This to me looking fancy. The screen is very adaptable. Netronic did great job on this, you can adjust screen to cater various production scenarios. Typically, you want 65” Inch screen in Production “Hello Houston” room.

As a part of this scenario, I will create non-planned maintenance on the machine.

After replanning, the production order been moved to October 2023!

It also shows me that it collides with the Sales order date. How is this handled? Once we Publish Simulation (The Plan):

Oh wow, this is cool. It automatically changed Shipment Date on Sales Order line, on the sales order you can then Flag that you have communicated with customer and the change had been fully executed. We were trying to do this for customer in like 2013 and it wasn’t simple process. Ten years after, you have it “out of the box”. In real life you can’t always move production beyond customers expectation, but this a good solution. This can be very easily linked to MS PowerAutomate and any new records in this table can notify the users by email. Out of the box. I like that.

Score for scenario 1: 10 out of 10

Scenario 2: Supplier postponed critical component and production can’t happen as planned.

The data used for this scenario have baseline in previous example. I have a Sales Order from customer for one of my products for end of September 2023 (lead-time typically 4-5 weeks, components not hold on stock, only on order; prod order created through Planning on Sales Order). I have zero stock for my components, so I have created Purchase Order through Planning Engine:

As a part of VAPS, there is something called EMAD (abbreviation for Earliest Material Availability Date; that’s the one I helped design foundation when worked for Tecman in 2019; it’s basically reservations without Microsoft reservations, calculated on reoccurring basis on JQ/manually):

Oh, sweet again, system knows I can’t start producing before my Purchase Order will be satisfied (you have to rely on dates in the system, if you don’t maintain them in the system, your mission on this journey inevitably fails; rather come back to Excel 2003):

Component and Production Order line keeps information about Earliest possible date and the status. How is it then displayed and scheduled in the VAPS?

Automatic scheduling will plan after the Earliest material date and will not let you manually move prior to this.

Good stuff!

Score for scenario 2: 10 out of 10

Scenario 3: Produced subcomponent is late, main product can’t be shipped on-time.

I’ve added on more level to the Production BOM:

Subcomponent requires cutting and different raw materials. I have sales order and I created two production orders through Planning Worksheets. I’m considering following scenarios:

Reserved Produced Component (using Reorder Policy Order; e.g you need to pass Lot No/Serial No as it’s all make to order)
Non-reserved Production Order (Tracking only)

In first case, nice and expected behaviour:

Cool, it knows about the link between prod order 1 and prod order 2.

Then I switched to non-reserved scenario. This is very often the case for manufacturers with multiple levels of the BOM where possibly all levels can be saleable items. Some of these Items (Low Level Codes), you would produce on stock (as they will be used in many products or sold as is) and some of them will be specific so you produce them on order only (but they use the component produced on stock). It’s not uncommon scenario. Surprisingly, VAPS in this one fail (unless I missed some config which I checked very carefully few times; we all humans).

It does not see the link between Tracking Entries. So, add Capacity Exception on your Subassembly machine, replan, publish. You literally missed the boat for CNC machine in scenario above. Come on NETRONIC, PlannerOne was doing better job. Tracking entries are literally exact replica of entry with type of Reservation. For nowadays production scenarios this should be out of the box.

Score for scenario 2: 5 out of 10

Scenario 4: Despatch from distribution centre, production at manufacturing location.

This is very common scenario typically for mass repeatable products where you want to be close to your customer so you would supply to your distribution centre where your final despatch comes from.

So, this will be more without reservations, you supply batches of products for customers you will possibly acquire in future.

Planning worksheet results before creation:

So, you produce at production plant, and then make to order to distribution centre.

VAPS Planning screen:

It knows about passing reservation entry date, but when Publish, Transfer Orders don’t have same thing as “Sales Changed Lines” so it literally breaks the reservation. Transfer order before:

Transfer order before Reserved Inbound = 3; Reserved Outbound = 3; After 3 and 0??

Reserved outbound gone. Result to me is a failure. Once planning moves order beyond the date on Transfer Order it breaks reservation link. Guess what happens when you next time run planning? The MRP will suggest to produce again and maybe suggest cancelling existing late order if you haven’t set Planning Flexibility to None. Very dangerous. You can literally easily double produce expensive part.

I don’t need to describe non-reserved right?

Score for scenario 4: 0 of 10

Scenario 5: Multi location production scenario, multi chain transfer orders.

This scenario might sound rare, but I have seen these few times. Typically, companies having these difficulties from non-system related processes (physical space limitation; multi plants environments; company acquisitions) and more typically, these need help and have money to automate system in the most possible manner.

The BOM for this scenario is same as in scenario number two. Addition is that PRODSUB is produced at location PROD2, then transferred to PROD1, where is consumed into FINALPRODUCT. Planning worksheet results:

Netronic automated schedulling answer:

Results? Automated scheduling ignores transfer orders and plans to start cutting in parallel with Milling. You don’t have part for it though. Total fail. I guess I don’t need to go into detail reserved and non-reserved scenario. Planned regardless of Safety Lead time etc.

Score for scenario 5: 0 of 10

Netronic final scoring

I really like how VAPS progressed, although as you see in the article not all reservation scenarios are supported. I spoke about high ratio failure above and this is reason why. Presales analysis was not done properly in these cases. It’s so difficult to cater for everything and very likely, customers which seeks for help, are these “exception” scenarios where the system can really bring extreme value if it supports all required process logic. But I believe all above is probably on the roadmap and we can look forward to having full APS system in Business Central app eco system. As it stands, it’s not there yet. Nearly there though! One big gap I see is something where you can link non-relevant production orders (e.g. processes for heat treatment, cutting various lengts etc.) PlannerOne could use synchronisation links e.g. (Full synchronisation, Start-end, end-end) which I think it they would be introduced and issue above sorted, we can talk about real APS in BC app eco system.

Conclusion

There are scenarios where visual production scheduling might not be efficient:

Very short production cycle (e.g. cutting 1 min cycles; do you really need to see 300 cutting orders visually? I think you more need to have them sequenced by thickness and material, which has nothing to do with visuals)
In-efficient layout of manufacturing data (e.g do you really need 25 operations in the routing? It prevents you from any visual planning, you would have to buy 65inch screens for manufacturing planners to display this somehow; sometimes you need to add level to the Prod Bom to split products and routings)
Company without proper IT equipment – I very often hear “We are not IT company” but there is no excuse in 2023 to have non-working WIFI and people having 17” inch screens.

Did you like content? Do you need help with implementation of these type of tools? Please like, share, comment or let use know. MB365 is ready to provide expert consultancy and implement any of these systems.

Who is next? Canadian MxAPS from InsightWorks. So far Germany is 25 of 50. Who is going to win? Subscribe to my blog to know as first

Business Central Visual Production Schedulling Tools