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Engineering Change Management for Microsoft Dynamics NAV

January 5th, 2010 by Bill Martin

Change management continues to be an important process in the engineered product environment. It has great potential to deliver material benefits but also great challenges in getting it right. Managing engineering change has always been hard as well as a source of inefficiency, but in the ever-escalating pace of business driven by an increasingly global market, it is more critical than ever to improve the process.

Historically, engineering change management has focused on cost control and increasing process efficiency. Competitive pressures are now driving a new agenda for change management, one that targets a reduction in development lead times and, secondarily, the ability to quickly respond to quality issues. This is a very real change in perspective as companies are beginning to realize that a more optimized engineering change management process can provide top-line benefits in addition to reducing costs. In today’s dynamically changing marketplace, speed-to-market can allow companies to overtake, and even leap-frog, their competition.

The other key driver of this new view of engineering change management is the need for an accelerated response to quality issues. There are also the changing market requirements as competition, globalization and concept of “mass customization” have created a demand chain with the customers driving any number of product permutations. Change management’s ability to positively impact quality is important in both the initial product launch and in ongoing product management.

Through our work with discrete manufacturers of all sizes, American Unit has experienced the value of optimized engineering change management. That led to the investment to develop an add-on module designed specifically for that purpose that augments the functionality of Microsoft Dynamics NAV solution. American Unit’s Engineering Change Management for Microsoft Dynamics NAV can handle different types of engineering change requests including bill of material changes, routing changes, and released production orders which are in shop floor and updates these changes automatically. This add-on module is fully integrated with Dynamics NAV’s manufacturing.

The Engineering Change Management module is the third release in the American Unit manufacturing suite. More information can be found here.

Posted in Engineering Change Management, Microsoft Dynamics NAV | 1 Comment »

Inspection Management and Quality Control for Microsoft Dynamics NAV

December 22nd, 2009 by Bill Martin

One thing that we at American Unit have discovered as a result of our work with many manufacturing enterprises is that most modern quality control programs continue to rely on inspection management systems to ensure product and process quality. As a Microsoft Dynamics NAV solutions provider, we have viewed the lack of that specific functionality in the NAV platform as both a challenge and an opportunity. To that end, as part of our investment in building a unique vertical solution for manufacturing, we have developed a new add-on module for Dynamics NAV to address this gap in the solution. Our application, Inspection Management and Quality Control for Microsoft Dynamics NAV addresses the constant pressure on manufacturers to reach increasingly higher levels of quality.

Working seamlessly with Dynamics NAV, our solution delivers key process benefits that include more accurate inventory listing with individual item inspection information, reduced sampling time, automatic routing of rejected items back to vendor, reduced shop floor scrap, and use of historical vendor quality data to select the appropriate supplier for specific items.

As an example, Item Inspection using Inspection Management in Microsoft Dynamics involves the measurements, tests, applied to certain parameters in regards to an item with or without sampling techniques and skip logic rule. Inspection processes are determined by various characteristics including the timing, duration, and intensity of the collections and the details of the past processing treatment. Poor choices of these Inspection parameters can lead to poor Inspection performance. Proper choices of these parameters can make it easier to integrate the various Inspections into the overall service process. An Inspection is the use of a measurement in an intelligent fashion to drive some corrective action. Inspection might be one of shape, size, or even weight. Inspections need not be restricted to product characteristics.

The following screen shows inspection list that needs to be inspected and created automatically at the time of received.

Vendor quality performance is useful to determine the appropriate vendor for an item. This is a statistical measurement and it uses historic information. The following screen shows item wise vendor quality performance.

More information on this latest add-on module for Microsoft Dynamics NAV can be found here.

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Release of Shop Floor Control Add-On for Microsoft Dynamics NAV

December 10th, 2009 by Bill Martin

American Unit is committed to creating very robust vertical industry software platforms built upon Microsoft Dynamics NAV and Dynamics AX solutions. To that end, we have been investing in building IP to fill in key gaps in Dynamics NAV’s manufacturing industry functionality. Our strong background and continuing focus in the manufacturing ERP market, as well as our years of experience in Dynamics NAV, provides a strong capability for executing on this strategy.

This week, we are formally releasing our first module, Shop Floor Control, to the market.

This new Shop Floor Control module allows employees to register information in one easy-to-use system, providing greater fidelity and speed. The system supports the use of bar codes for even faster input of raw materials consumption and time used per individual task as bar codes are automatically printed on all relevant production reports. The solution can further reduce time spent on data input by designating a team leader to manage team member’s registrations. This feature simplifies the process and lowers the risk of data entry errors. Microsoft Dynamics NAV Shop Floor Control also enables the bundling of operations to reduce registration even more. Employees working on several operations can register their time spent on all operations at one time.

The primary benefits of the new module, improving the efficiency of shop floor operations and automating collection of employee time and attendance are enabled by a number of key features and functions that we believe existing customers and prospects will find attractive, including:

Collection of Employee Time and Attendance Information
Advanced time profiles for both groups and individual employees
Automatic profile search
A work planning tool for setting up shift schedules
Handling of personnel absences
Collection of machine time
Notice Board with individual messages and receipt feature
Two-step validation procedure available to check time
Calculation/approval status
Configurable registration forms
Password-protected validation
Direct integration with the production modules
Overview of the production situation
Simulation of when operations should be completed based on time allocated

Our goal with Shop Floor Control for Microsoft Dynamics NAV is to significantly decreases the time spent performing administrative tasks, while increasing the reliability of employee time and attendance data and we are confident that the module represents a significant enhancement to the functionality of the Microsoft Dynamic NAV solution while also being very user friendly.

Find more detail on our Shop Floor Control add-on module here.

Posted in Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Shop Floor Control | No Comments »

Shipping Shape with Dynamics NAV

October 8th, 2009 by Bill Martin

One of the critical challenges enterprises of all sizes face is how to realize the potential of their ERP investment. One avenue towards accomplishing that is to leverage existing customer data resident in a company’s financial system through integration with key external business services provider operations. One such example is for package shipping. UPS WorldShip offers companies the opportunity to integrate their enterprise system seamlessly to make the generation of shipping labels and other shipping forms much simpler.

Once integrated, passing enterprise customer data between the WorldShip application and Microsoft Dynamics NAV occurs in real-time, avoiding additional data entry on both sides of the transaction. Once processed by UPS within WorldShip, shipment data is automatically updated in the NAV sales document. This allows a shipment via UPS to be tracked within the NAV system using the unique UPS tracking number.

Beyond the obvious savings in time and resources, this type of integration increases the speed and accuracy of shipping activities, provides the exact shipping charges for each transaction, eliminates manual data entry and errors, and automatically communicates key delivery information to customers.

Establishing the integration between WorldShip and NAV requires the following steps:

Install UPS Software, NAV ODBC software and MS-Access on the system. A system DSN should then be created from the ODBC data source and the created data source database should be connected using the NAV license (license should contain ODBC granule)

Create tables in NAV to store the shipment-related dat required by UPS. Transfer the data in the tables into MS-Access and write the queries to send the required field data to the WorldShip system. Then, create MAPS in UPS WorldShip to import the data into the WorldShip application and export the data back to the NAV system. Map the UPS fields to the Navision fields.

To import data, write a query with customer-required conditions which when triggered, pass the information to the WorldShip system. Data will be imported automatically into UPS WorldShip by either batch import or keyed import depending on the specific situation and enterprise need.

To export data to the NAV system, the shipping department selects “End of the Day” in the UPS Worldship system and complete orders will be processed with tracking numbers generated for every package. The generated tracking numbers, shipment cost, shipment address, number of packages, and all other shipment information are automatically exported to the NAV sales database using a MAP which is created specifically to export data from UPS WorldShip. E-mails are then be sent to the customer’s address with tracking number and a pre-defined template.

Leveraging an enterprise’s investment in Microsoft Dynamics NAV can be made much easier by integrating with some of the many software platforms that have been developed by business service providers across all of the key business processes the comprise the modern business.

Posted in Microsoft Dynamics NAV | No Comments »