Product Configurator for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central
Product configuration is the act of customizing a product to meet the needs of a particular customer. With the help of this tool, the sales staff can give an exact quotation of a customized product at any time without help from engineering or any other department. Also, they can check whether the customer’s requirements are feasible or not.
Why Product Configurator
Product configurators represent one of the most successful applications of artificial intelligence principles. The use of product configurators results in reduced lead times, fewer errors, shorter learning curve for new employees, etc.
The Product Configurator enhances communication, increases control over production, reduces chances of human error, and helps identify product modularity even for manufacturing with high design complexity. Most importantly, it addresses the highly effective strategy of quick response manufacturing i.e., shortening the order to ship time from days and weeks to hours.
Product Configurator is designed to accommodate the needs of assemble‐to‐order, make‐to‐order, repetitive and even some engineer‐to‐order manufacturers.
Benefits of Product Configurator
Product Configurator provides a method of producing unique product configurations based on customer specifications and pre‐engineered sets of options and rules. This provides the sales staff with an elegant and easy‐to‐use product configurator and a product engineer with a wealth of powerful and sophisticated tools to define the configuration process.
It not only allows for easy selection of features and options, but performs calculations and presents specific choices, based on the parameters entered by the user. As a result, when certain options are selected, additional or alternate options may be presented based on the engineering‐defined rules and previously entered data.
Configure-To-Order (CTO)
Changing customer requirements and increased competition have created an environment where the aim is to have the fastest fulfilment at the lowest cost and highest quality. To be the fastest, requires eliminating non‐value‐added (NVA) activities, waste, rework, scrap and other factors that drive costs up and quality down.
Configure to Order is a solution that covers a range of processes from engineering to manufacturing to sales and delivery, and reduces lead times from days or weeks to a matter of hours.
CTO promotes standardization, increases product variety and decreases production variability by reducing the number of custom‐engineered orders. This decreases lead‐times by getting orders into manufacturing faster with predefined bills of materials, routings and fewer setups. Mobile CTO brings the manufacturer and customer even closer, and closer means faster.
Features & Capabilities
- Configured products are defined using a consolidated, integrated configuration management tool
- A friendly and elegant product configurator guides the operator through pre‐defined option and quantity selections.
- A shorthand configuration entry code is supported that allows the experienced operator to select or enter a configuration in a fraction of the normal time.
- The configuration process checks the configuration and if found new, then creates a unique item, bill of material.
- A set of unique costs and catalogue prices is created for each configuration. Descriptive information is also produced.
- Tightly integrated with Sales Quotation and Sales Order Process
- Powerful functionalities for configuration rules define:
- Product Model
- Product Assembly
- Configuration Parameters
- Options of Parameter
- Parameter Dependency
- Rate & Discount Policy Definition
Quality Control
Quality Control Management for Microsoft Dynamics NAV
Quality Control is an essential tool to monitor efficiency, effectiveness and quality in both process and production. Being able to identify problems in a process and/or defects in a product is the only way to be able to make changes to improve, to increase profits and customer satisfaction.
Quality Control Management for Microsoft Dynamics NAV looks after two important functionalities of a Quality control department:
In Bound QC
Create Specifications, Parameters and Sampling plans. Inspection Data Sheets are generated on the basis of the specifications, parameters and the sampling plan while Inspection Reports are generated automatically on the basis of the details of Accepted Quantity, Rejected Quantity etc. This module is integrated with the existing Purchase module and the inventory management.
WIP Quality Control
Define Characteristics, Inspection Groups, Specifications, and Sampling plans for any defined production process output or sub assembly. Inspection Data Sheets are created on the basis of the Production Order line, based on the Specifications and Sampling Size assigned to the defined item (finished Item or Sub Assembly) while Inspection Reports are generated automatically on the basis of the details of Accepted Quantity, Rejected Quantity, etc. This module is integrated with the existing Manufacturing module, Inventory and Warehouse Management.
The system yields Statistical Analysis in the form of graphs, charts, etc. and also draws interpretations of the data collected. This helps you in controlling all the processes for better productivity, increased efficiency and also to study the capabilities of processes.
Quality can be checked at many stages, from purchasing raw materials to delivering the final products to customers. Broadly, these are defined into four stages as:
Purchase
Maintaining a high-level of product quality by incorporating comprehensive inspection procedures of incoming
material.
Production
Unfinished goods are checked on the basis of many customizable parameters such as diameter, roughness, visual check, etc.
Sales Return
Checking the quality of the goods returned by the customers due to various reasons and then transferring those goods to either accepted inventory, rejected inventory, or rework inventory.
Transfer Orders
Checking the quality of the goods when you receive them from another location to yours so as to check whether any damage has been caused to any goods during transfer.
An important point to notice is that all these stages’ quality checks are linked with one another. This helps in maintaining a standard process of quality control throughout the organization.
The salient features of Quality Management for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central are:
- Define characteristics, parameters, sub-assemblies, inspection groups and specifications
- Prepare customized or standard Sampling Plans
- Generate Inspection Data Sheets and Reports
- Define Intermediate output of production process as Sub Assembly
- Track Inspection Data Sheets and Reports from Purchase orders, Receipt Notes or Production Order Lines.
- Vendor Rating – Quality
What are the benefits?
Quality check at every stage
As mentioned earlier, quality of unfinished goods and finished goods, both can be determined. Not only quality, but it will also guide you as to what to do next.
Define your own parameters
Apart from the default parameters included, you can define the parameters as per your need. You can define unlimited parameters of quality in the system.
Automatic Inspection receipt
Inspection receipt will be created automatically. In this receipt, a combined result of accepted, rejected, under deviation or under rework quantity can be entered and posted.
Tracking
The system tracks all the products and materials that will be used in manufacturing process. Also, any changes in the status of a particular product will be updated.
Defining sampling plan
You can define a specific quantity from a huge lot or a specific percentage of the total quantity of products for quality check. You can also standardize this sampling plan for future references.
Better control on the process
Subjective analysis of Inbound & Work-In-Progress to monitor each and every process efficiently.
Vendor Rating
Vendor rating, on the basis of quality, is comparing and rating the vendors at Item level i.e., a combination of Vendor-Item is evaluated. Vendors can be evaluated on the base of many factors but in quality control module, the focus is on quality factor.
