Have you found yourself pondering these questions: Where is my inventory? When is it coming? Does it have a shelf life? When should we reorder to be ready for the next manufacturing cycle?
Keeping track of and being able to access information related to your supply chain operations is critical for business success. You need insight into where your products are located, when it’s time to order more, what is currently being manufactured, as well as what is in the pipeline.
To run your business effectively, you need visibility across purchasing, manufacturing, inventory, and warehouse distribution at your fingertips. You need insight into what is happening in order to adapt as your business changes and deliver products to your customers when they want them. Optimizing inventory and supply chain management is possible through a system like Dynamics 365 Business Central.
Establish an Effective Supply Chain
To establish an effective supply chain, you need to know when inventory is arriving, where it is in the manufacturing process, and you need insight into the purchase of raw materials to distribute or manufacture. When building a widget, you need to know if products have arrived at the factory and when production will be completed.
A management tool like Business Central, offers a holistic view of your inventory–providing you with a baseline of visibility into operations that enables your team to establish an effective supply chain.
A Holistic View of Your Inventory
When demand is high–such as during the holidays–the tool can provide advanced insight into how much inventory you need in stock before demand hits. Once you know how much to produce, you can use insights from the tool to determine which warehouse the inventory should be stored in. Know exactly what your inventory levels are, which warehouses the inventory is located in down to the actual bin, and track the inventory’s arrival/departure with Dynamics 365 Business Central.
Through Business Central, you can replenish inventory based on actuals, demand and availability using built-in intelligence, sales forecasts and expected stock-outs, to automatically create purchase orders. Additionally, you can use the same costing method or different ones for inventory items, and easily move items between locations to control the quantity on hand.
Optimally Manage Your Warehouse
Not sure how best to manage or set up your warehouse? With a tool like Business Central, you can eliminate the guesswork. The intelligent system takes your real-world environment and digitizes it, allowing you to optimize your warehouse from the comfort of your computer.
Does your business have multiple warehouses around the country spread out from the east coast to the west coast? As people start making purchases, you want to be able to ship them out from the closest warehouse to reduce shipping costs and compete with the competition. To offer low-cost or free shipping, it’s important to minimize costs and get products out of the right warehouse.
With the system able to provide suggestions on where to store inventory, you can improve organization within your storage facilities. If a certain product is a best seller, the system may suggest it’s placed on a lower rack as it will be more efficient to take it off the shelf.
Business Central provides the ability to set up bins and zones that reflect the layout of your warehouse, including its racks and shelves. Additionally, you can use a template to determine the best placement of items based on type, size, and bin capacity to streamline receiving and capacity. By optimizing your space and the picking process, you can expedite docking.
Provide Optimal Manufacturing Outputs
Start the manufacturing process only to find out you don’t have enough materials on hand? With a management tool, you can implement manufacturing processes according to plan by producing within supply and capacity constraints.
The system holds the answers to the information you need. If you plan to manufacture 1,000 units of a widget, the system will inform you if you only have enough material to produce 500. Instead of being stalled, you can continue operations by building 500, ordering and tracking the arrival of the necessary materials, and resume production on the remaining widgets once the materials have arrived.
“The system does the heavy lifting for you. Instead of having to deal with a spreadsheet and manually copying and pasting information that can easily get lost in translation–or is difficult to decipher–your business can run efficiently all from one place,” shared David Eckel, Senior Vice President of the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Practice at Intellint.
Business Central offers additional features such as supporting assembly-to-order allowing you to capture special requirements within a bill of materials and pull directly from the quote and sales order during the assembly-to-order processes. Additionally, you can use production orders or more complex processes by registering consumption and output across multiple bills of materials and routes.
Improve Supplier Engagements
Positive relationships with your suppliers improve business outcomes. Improving supplier engagement through strong supplier relationships allows you to convert the best offers to orders. Through Business Central, it’s easier to work with suppliers and do business together. Giving suppliers the ability to log onto an online portal to view orders, acknowledge receipt of orders, update shipping dates, etc. consolidates information, giving everyone the insight they need to keep business moving forward.
How We Can Help
Business Central was built to help small and midsize businesses optimize supply chain management. With visibility into every step of the process, Business Central makes it easier to effectively manage inventory and deliver products to customers on time. Contact our team to learn if Business Central is a good fit for your small or midsize business.
