Deck the Manufacturing Halls with Business Central
Updated: Aug 16, 2021
Here's a special message from Santa:
Dear Manufacturing Companies,
I don’t have much for you this Christmas, except for this ERP software packed with features and functionality. The true gifts will be delayed, though. Expect them to come in increased productivity year-round.
Merry Christmas!
- Santa Claus
What is and what does this “ERP Software” include that brings these wonderful year-round manufacturing gifts? Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central of course! So let’s deck the halls with manufacturing features.

Machine Centers
Machine Centers are designed to help you manage capacity of a single machine/producing resource across many different levels.

Finite Loading
Manage finite loading of capacity capabilities; through Finite Loading, you can take capacity capabilities into account so that no more work is assigned to a work center than the factory can be expected to execute during a given time period.

Capacity Planning
Add capacities (work centers) to your manufacturing process through the creation of routings from production orders.
What’s the importance of manufacturing software? There’re two important aspects of a good manufacturing software. The first is the visibility provided into how operations are impacting your finances and the second important aspect is the specific manufacturing functionality of the software.

Sales and Inventory Forecasting
Use built in Azure Artificial Intelligence to predict future sales based on your sales history to help you avoid inventory shortage.

Demand Forecasting
Forecasting functionality is used to create anticipated demand; actual demand is created from sales and production orders. This way you can create “what if” scenarios and efficiently and cost-effectively plan for and meet demand. Accurate forecasting can make a critical difference in customer satisfaction levels with regard to order promising dates and on-time delivery.

Supply Planning
The production operations required to transform inputs into finished goods must be planned daily or weekly depending on the volume and nature of the products. Business Central offers features to supply for anticipated and actual demand from sale, assembly, and production as well as features for distribution planning using stockkeeping units and location transfers. Typical basic supply planning includes:
Automatic production/purchase orders
Action messages for fast and easy balancing of supply and demand
Setup for items with their own reordering policy, whether manufactured by or purchased from a third party
Support for bucketed and bucket-less material requirements planning

Version Management
Create and manage different versions of the manufacturing bill of materials and routings.

Agile Manufacturing
This enables you to run the Agile Manufacturing, Supply Planning, and Capacity Planning modules.

Production Orders
Create and manage production orders and post consumption and output to the production orders. After you have created a production order, you can calculate net requirements based on that production order. The Production Orders module includes a manual supply planning tool as an alternative to automatic planning. The Order Planning window provides the visibility and tools you need to manually plan for demand from sales lines and then to create different types of supply orders directly.

Production Bill of Materials
Create bills of materials and calculate standard costs.