This is part 3 of 10 in our series on benefits of AX 2012 for ETO organizations. Previously we covered Product Management and Technical Sales features.   Today we’ll explore several unique supply chain challenges, such as:

1. > Multi-site supply chain
2. > Material requirements pegged to project or project task (WBS)
3. > Unique, one-of-a-kind materials for specific product or project

Multi-site manufacturing supply chain

Many ETO companies build at multiple manufacturing sites, across legal entities.  Each site has their own supply chain staff working to handle the material requirements at their facility, even when there are common materials that could be planned and purchased for all facilities at a greater volume discount.  Many ERP systems are not able to handle the multi-site supply chain with ease.

With AX 2012, you can view and manage the supply chain across the enterprise, consolidate purchases and gain the benefits of lower overall material costs.   The multi-site company can automate many of the supply chain processes, create centralized supply depots where applicable and gain the cost savings of consolidated purchasing.  AX 2012 helps you establish a centralized procurement desk capability across the organization to support procurement policies and processes.

Project-oriented planning tools

Another interesting aspect of the ETO or BTO builder is the need to link or peg materials directly to specific projects or tasks within the WBS of the project.  Traditional ERP can’t handle project/task material requirements without obscuring material availability or diluting costs for common materials applied to a project.  ERP for ETO must link materials to projects and specific tasks while providing bucketed supply chain overviews, planned orders, exception messaging, rescheduling and order qualifiers.

With AX 2012, the Project Managers and planners have the best of both worlds.  Since requirements come directly from project tasks materials are delivered exactly when they are needed.   Planners have project- oriented shortage reporting and visibility.  They use a single bucketed supply screen to evaluate and execute the supply plan, including creating or firming purchase or production orders or Kanban supply.

Unique, one-of-a-kind materials

The ETO supply chain professional deals with unique, one-of-a-kind, materials.  Their sourcing often involves an extensive search usually followed by a bid or Request for Quote process.  In many cases the items may never be used again.  Minimum order quantities and other supplier constraints put additional cost pressures on the ETO builder.

AX 2012 makes it possible to quickly process these unique requirements through an integrated RFQ process.  From the RFQ they can be immediately converted to a purchase order that schedules and assigns the material directly to the project. The supply chain professional can save valuable time and reduce steps that add overhead and result in the potential cost impact of delayed materials.  AX 2012 ETO for ERP provides a means to handle non-stock items so unique materials don’t have to live in your product master data forever.

For more details on the enhanced supply chain features of AX 2012 ERP for ETO or BTO companies please visit our Engineer to Order page.

Streamline Systems has a long history working with Engineer to Order (ETO) manufacturers and large equipment builders.  Our team has been actively involved with Microsoft over the years to improve specific functionality geared to this market.

Today we introduce some of the “What’s New in AX 2012″ as it relates to Engineer to Order manufacturing.  Over the next few weeks we will discuss in more detail how the new features deliver benefits to a company with ETO requirements.

Here’s a quick list of new features that benefit ETO companies.  Over the next few weeks we will address each of these specifically.

• Product Management
  • -Improve product release process, better control of multi-organization master data
• Product Configuration
  • -Efficiently create, maintain, and reuse product models, components, and attributes
• Technical Sales and Program Management
  • -Improve Program and Case Management
  • -Strengthen proposal management, project quotation, and project budget control with complex work breakdown structures, milestone definitions, task assignments
• Supply Chain
  • -Enhancement of multi-organization planning and procurement
  • -Interactive views that enable users to react quickly to supply shortages
• Production
  • -Support for touch-enabled job registration to reduce burden of recording labor
  • -Enhanced lean manufacturing capabilities and visualizations

Learn more at our AX 2012 features page and stay tuned for Part I where we will explore some of the new Product Management capabilities.

Irvine, CA, 8/25/2011.  Shout out to the West Region Microsoft technical team of Trevor Gilchrist and Chuck Juhnke, who showed off  the new powerful, agile and simple ERP.   They delivered a compelling case for AX 2012.   Microsoft has already shown hints of where they could take ERP in previous versions, but they’ve nailed it with Dynamics AX 2012.

It’s powerful, with 1000 + new features, most of which are designed to extend the capabilities for the people who need them most, the knowledge workers on the front lines who get the work done every day.  A great example of this is the interactive demand and supply screen, that enables a supply chain professional to view and act upon all the actions required to keep the company supplies moving, in one, concise and easy-to-use workspace.

It was also easy to see its agility, demonstrated with new organizational modeling capability that will reduce administrative costs and overhead associated with dynamic organization changes, like acquisitions, company restructuring and responding to changes in the labor force.  In addition, the flexibility of the product is further extended with model-driven layered architecture to reduce development costs while providing the ability for rapid deployment of industry or company specific solutions.

The simplicity of AX is its ultimate power.   Nowhere is this better illustrated than with the pervasive inter-operability with Microsoft Office.  Any user can easily access company data with Word or Excel.  The user experience (UX), is even more intuitive greatly reducing user training costs and even accelerating user adoption.   More users can access tasks within their ERP system with self-service shopping carts for supplies, travel & expense submissions and personal information.   Licensing the product has changed to encourage casual user access at a reasonable cost. Simplicity is the overarching driver in the design of the entire system.

The roadshow reinforced why Streamline Systems has chosen to partner with Microsoft and feature Dynamics AX 2012 to help our customers optimize their businesses and become more competitive.  We’re featuring the new release with new landing pages, demos, videos and other content over the next few months. Whether you are new to Dynamics AX looking to improve your business, or an existing Dynamics AX user looking for training or upgrade assistance, you’ll find information that we think you’ll find beneficial all over our site.

Greenwood Village, CO — (SBWIRE) — 08/22/2011 — Larry Cohn, Managing Director of Streamline Systems noted, “ETO firms that assign revisions to end items and raw materials and need to track revisions throughout the product lifecycle, including Inventory, Production, Sales and Service, must store and use revision history.”

Engineer-to-Order companies manufacture complex products with intensive design requirements. The designs often create items that are one offs. One of a kind product do not require full-blown product lifecycle management, but need solid revisionary control through production (and later as spare parts are required.) Streamline Systems Manufacturing Revision Control provides visibility and control of item changes to ensure that products are manufactured to the latest specification and drawings and are always available under “as-used” condition.

Streamline Systems offers integrated Revision Management for Microsoft Dynamics AX that provides the following features:

- Flexible revision control at the item and bill of material level
- Revision visibility throughout the product lifecycle
- Revisions tied to bill of materials versions and approvals
- Automatic roll-up of revision during bill of materials updates
- Component revision changes in all “where-used” bills of material
- Ability to view and compare different revisions of the same item
- Ability to stock, produce and sell different revisions of the same item.

Read full press release on SBWIRE

Engineer-to-order manufacturers are constantly evaluating the cost of their projects to determine if they are meeting their budget estimates, and are looking for ways to improve profit margins for the company.  Microsoft Dynamics AX provides an excellent summary level cost control screen that provides the budget vs. actual breakdown of all project costs.  Unfortunately it does not expand this view down through the multiple levels of a projects manufacturing process to provide a comprehensive actual cost breakdown and comparison tool.  

Solving difficult problems for our customers is a top priority for our team.  Our approach is not boiler plate, but involves a consultative, analytical approach with one goal in mind, to streamline and improve your business.

For example, one of our Equipment Manufacturing customers builds complex electronic assemblies within a project/contract environment. Master Planning of purchasing and assembly is mostly done by project.  At the same time many lower level assemblies and purchased parts are used throughout different projects and require an “anonymous” way of planning for lower cost/higher efficiency reasons.