Even if Your BOM is Deeper Than the Deep Blue Sea, Microsoft Dynamics GP Can Handle It!

Honestly, how deep is your BOM? It’s rare to find a BOM with more than 20 levels. Even so, what you probably didn’t know is that Microsoft Dynamic GP’s manufacturing suite can handle a BOM with as many as 999 levels. Maybe you’d need that many if you were building a skyscraper. I don’t know. It’s hard to imagine. Still, the potential exists. Here’s a screenshot to prove it:

As you can see above, there is an MRP utility that processes through the BOMs to ensure that the structure is accurate and it allows the user to enter a number as high as 999.

In case any of our readers are new to manufacturing, perhaps before I continue I should provide a basic definition of a BOM. It’s a bill of materials, i.e. a list of the raw materials, sub-assemblies, intermediate assemblies, sub-components, parts and the quantities of each needed to manufacture an end product. A BOM may be used for communication between manufacturing partners, or confined to a single manufacturing plant. Well-made products are documented with a well-made BOM. So getting the BOM right is critical to the manufacturing process.

Why you would NOT want to build your BOM in QuickBooks

An authoritative source for small business accounting solutions (that shall remain anonymous), in the spirit of full disclosure, once wrote that QuickBooks is only a rudimentary manufacturing system with the following limitations (I’m paraphrasing just a bit):

• While you can only add 100 different items to a BOM if you are using QuickBooks Premier, QuickBooks Enterprise is more flexible, allowing to enter up to 500 different items.
• BOM-based reporting is very limited.
• Yes, you can create multiple-level assemblies (that is, a part in an assembly can itself be another assembly), but a build will only work with a single level at a time.
• When it comes to costing, integrating non material items in a BOM can be tricky.

Why you would NOT want to build your BOM in Excel

While Excel BOM spreadsheets are a common tool for small and mid-size manufacturers just beginning to manage product data, managing multi-level BOMs in Excel can be extremely tedious and time consuming. Why? Because every cell in an Excel BOM requires data entry, copy-and-paste, formula creation, etc.. Thus it is far too easy to make costly mistakes.

Why you WOULD want to build your BOM using the Microsoft Dynamics GP Manufacturing Suite

Before we delve into the BOM, which I promise you we will, I just want to mention that the Microsoft Dynamics GP Manufacturing Suite is not limited to a Bill of Materials. Some of the other modules included in the Manufacturing Suite are: Manufacturing Order Processing, Job Costing, Materials Requirements Planning (MRP), Engineering Change Management, Sales Forecasting, Quality Assurance (QA), Sales Configurator, Capacity Requirements Planning, and Master Production Scheduling. In this article, I’m going to focus on your BOM. So let us now, finally, dig deeply into the nitty-gritty of what the BOM in the Microsoft Dynamics GP Manufacturing Suite can do for you. At a high level, it will deliver complete, consistent, and current product information. Your Microsoft Dynamics GP BOM will manage materials, components, and assemblies more precisely.

It goes without saying that the Microsoft Dynamics GP Manufacturing Module is a fantastic tool for building assemblies and finished goods.  It’s got everything you need to manufacture your product – Bill of Materials, Routings, Work Centers, Labor and Machine tracking, and more. Any BOM can assemble products. But what happens when you need to disassemble your product?  Most users create a negative Inventory Adjustment for their Finished Good (or Sub-Assembly) and positive Inventory Adjustments for their components.  However, thanks to our partner, WilloWare, there’s a better, faster, more efficient way to create disassembly transactions in Microsoft Dynamics GP.  And it’s called, not surprisingly: Quick Disassembly by WilloWare.

Here’s how it works. Quick Disassembly uses the GP Manufacturing Bill of Materials to disassemble inventory items into their component parts. The tool creates a simple disassembly transaction based on an Inventory Adjustment. This is obviously ideal for manufacturers that need a simple method to take apart an item and get the components back into inventory.

I should note that by default the system will use the MFG BOM. However, any of the other BOM Types can be selected. The disassembly process will use the selected BOM to figure out which components should be placed back into inventory when the made-item is removed.  The tool also allows the user to determine how Sub-Assemblies are handled via 3 different settings:

1)     Disassemble None:  Using this setting, the system disassembles the first-level of the BOM only.  Sub-Assemblies, therefore, are not disassembled. They are, rather, put into stock.
2)     Disassemble All:  When this setting is chosen, any item on the BOM that has a Bill of Materials is disassembled into its subcomponents.
3)     Disassemble Phantoms:  This last setting works in a manner that is similar to a manufacturing order whereby built subassemblies with a “Regular” BOM are drawn from inventory. Using Quick Disassembly they are then placed back into inventory. Since “Phantoms” are made while producing the top-level finished good, with Quick Disassembly the Phantom components are disassembled into raw materials.

Altico Advisors works closely with WilloWare because they offer an array of Manufacturing PowerPack Modules that integrate seamlessly with Microsoft Dynamics GP. This partnership ensures that our clients’ will absolutely get the most out of their investment in GP Manufacturing - their chosen solution. It’s a win-win-win situation for Altico Advisors, WilloWare, and our manufacturing clients.

Happy days are here again!

For more information about Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013, give Altico Advisors a call at 508-485-5588 or contact us online at http://www.AlticoAdvisors.com/Contact.

By Marcia Nita Doron, Altico Advisors , Microsoft Dynamics ERP and CRM Partner serving New Hampshire (NH) and beyond.