Dynamics GP in Manufacturing and Logistics: Implementation, Procedures

 However, being adaptable often means for you that you should expect reasonable consulting budget for your Microsoft Dynamics GP (assuming here that you are taking that route) to be implemented.  Also we recommend you to check with your Dynamics GP Reseller or implementation consultant if Great Plains has modules, where expected business logic is available or if not – what would be ball park estimation to program missing logic from scratches.  In today’s publication we would like to give you some ideas on how Dynamics GP could be implemented in the company, where you do light discrete manufacturing and then ship finished items to your customers USA and Canada nationwide and internationally:

 

1.       Dynamics GP Manufacturing Suite.  GP is often associated with mid-market Corporate ERP niche, where your production is reasonably simple.  But, Great Plains Dynamics has full-featured Manufacturing Suite of modules, where you could expect full automaton of discrete manufacturing.  There are also options for process manufacturing via Dynamics GP ISV channel.  If you are looking for Manufacturing suite implementation, we recommend you to have your business processes mapping to be done by Dynamics GP Partner with specialization in production and MRP.  Also, as our experience tells us – manufacturing firm often has unique requirements (such as complex serial number assignment logic, warranty requirements, quality assurance, medical and healthcare equipment regulation, pedigree, “best before…”, scheduled maintenance, etc.).  If this is applicable to your company, you should expect some custom programming on the top of standard Manufacturing implementation

 

2.       Bill of Materials.  As we mentioned above, Dynamics GP is good fit for mid-market.  If you are not pretending to be thousand employees manufacturing mill and rather have small production warehouse with several dozens of workers – Microsoft Dynamics GP might be the best fit (comparing to large scale ERP packages, such as Axapta, SAP, Oracle eBusiness Suite).  Ask your Dynamics GP VAR to give you a demo in Bill of Materials module – maybe this simple and cost efficient solution is covering your needs with moderate alteration (modification is often done in VBA/Modifier, Dexterity, Extender)

 

3.       Manufacturing Automation.  When you are in simple manufacturing business and you are deploying Manufacturing Suite or Bill of Materials, you may have a need to “automate” bill of material entering, processing and posting.  Through our consulting practice we saw the cases, where you do manufacturing procedures on the warehouse floor via barcode scanning and this is automated in custom in-house programmed application (Microsoft Access with VBA, Visual Studio C# or VB.Net projects, Delphi, Fox Pro and other popular coding instruments).  Then BOM needs to be integrated directly to Dynamics GP Manufacturing (with some exceptions, where Great Plains user needs to make a decision on expired component replacement).  We recommend you Alba Spectrum Posting and Workflow Server where you can post Manufacturing, Bill of Material Batches (as well as the batches of all the origins: GL, Payroll, AP, AR, etc.).  Plus, you can program workflow or preprocessing in Dexterity Sanscript, VBA, EXE or simply call DLL library procedure or function

 

4.       Warehouse Management System.  Manufacturing is often associated with Barcode scanning (in transferring items from one site to another, picking and packing, stock count, order fulfillment, merchandise replenishment).  Dynamics GP WMS is available as extension to such Great Plains modules as Sales Order Processing, Inventory Control and Purchase Order Processing

 

5.       Direct outlet from the factory.  Here you may need to explore the options to implement such POS and Retail applications as Microsoft RMS (Retail Management System, including Store Operations and Headquarters modules), Counterpoint, plus RetailPro, Cybex, Epicor, Cegid, Comcash, QuickBooks POS System, Aldelo POS, Logic Control, Essential Retail and others

 

6.       Manufacturing Placement Order exposure via EDI and e-Commerce (B2B and B2C).  Dynamics GP has various ISV modules to handle EDI (Electronic Document Interchange), these add-ons might look too expensive if you have moderate EDI needs.  We recommend you to contact our office for more budget oriented options regarding Dynamics GP EDI.  Dynamics GP B2B or B2C ecommerce (Business-to-Business or Business-to-Customer).  We recommend Alba Spectrum ecommerce Dynamics GP ISV module, where you can integrate such popular ecommerce shopping carts, as Magento (PHP and Linux), ASP .Net Storefront in the matter of several hours

 

7.       Local Service.  We provide local Dynamics GP support in Michigan (area code 269 – St. Joseph, Benton harbor, South Haven, Kalamazoo), Chicago (downtown, 773 northern sub-down town, with western and southern suburbs reinforcement from Naperville location area code 630).  Next areas for local support are Houston, San Diego, Los Angeles, Orange County California.  For local service please feel free to call us 1-866-528-0577, email us help@albaspectrum.com 

 

8.       Worldwide and International Dynamics GP support.  Please, feel free to share your Dynamics GP implementation or support case with us.  We are especially geared to help you with Dynamics GP implementation in such countries, as Honduras, Mexico, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Columbia, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, Bolivia, Venezuela, Canada (including French speaking Quebec), Turks and Caicos, Bahamas, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland

 

9.       Andrew Karasev, Great Plains Dynamics GP and eEnterprise Certified Master, Microsoft MVP and consultant with 10 years and plus experience and expertise.  Well, if you are giving me the word – my personal opinion is strong believe in the revolution in the barcoding scanners, Microsoft Windows mobile computing devises.  eCommerce will be picking up (as it should be – we are living in the technical epoch)