Business Central for Manufacturing | New Features in 2025
I am in Vienna Austria, settling in for my trip home to Canada. I have just finished attending Directions EMEA And I saw some exciting new things in
Business Central for manufacturing.
Directions EMEA is an opportunity for partners from around the world to gather in Europe to talk about Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. Of course being in Europe most of the partners who attended are local. North American partners do cross the pond in small numbers to join in, but in general, they go to the North American conference which is held in the spring.
Sabre likes to attend the European conference because we have an opportunity to talk to European partners, and see European add-ons, doing some shopping for our clients. We pride ourselves on constantly evaulating and looking for the best Business Central manufacturing addons around the world. Since many are not available in North America, visiting the Directions EMEA conference gives us a ton of opportunity to see what is out there.
This year 2 Sabre staff visited: myself and Jenn Claridge (a future MVP – keep your eyes out for her).
I also had the opportunity to sit with Microsoft developers in a round table setting where manufacturing oriented partners were able to give input on the next version of Business Central manufacturing.
I expect there to be some nice improvements in the Manufacturing modules of Business Central over the next six months. A few are available immediately (in the 2024 Release Wave 2 which was just released).
- Enhanced production scheduling capabilities: New tools and algorithms to optimize production schedules, minimize downtime, and improve overall efficiency.
- Improved integration with supply chain management: Seamless connectivity between manufacturing operations and supply chain processes to ensure better coordination and reduced lead times.
- Advanced quality control features: Comprehensive quality management modules to track, monitor, and ensure the highest standards in production output.
- Streamlined material requirements planning (MRP): Enhanced MRP functionalities to provide more accurate demand forecasting and inventory management.
- Expanded support for multi-site manufacturing: Capabilities to manage production across multiple facilities, ensuring consistency and scalability of operations.
- Improved features in Projects (formerly Jobs): Enhanced tools to support project-based manufacturing, facilitating better planning, execution, and tracking of manufacturing projects.
- Real-time analytics and reporting: Advanced data analytics and reporting tools to provide real-time insights into manufacturing performance and help drive data-driven decision-making.
- Enhanced traceability and compliance: Tools to improve product traceability and ensure compliance with industry standards and regulations.
- Customizable workflows and processes: Flexibility to create and modify manufacturing workflows to meet specific business requirements and optimize operations.
- Improved user interface and experience: User-friendly interface enhancements to improve ease of use and productivity for manufacturing personnel.
In addition to these new features the 2025 release wave 1 (due in April, 2025) is going to have a BIG push of new features and adjustments. The current version (Business Central 2024 release wave 2) had a lot of new features added for Projects. This helped with
Business Central Project Manufacturing a lot by creating strong integrations in purchasing and assembly. From the feedback I saw, the enhancements for manufacturing will be equally exciting.
I’m going to dive into these 2024 Release Wave 2 features as well as upcoming 2025 with some YouTube videos and other blog posts in future weeks and months, but today I wanted to say that the future of Business Central manufacturing is looking great!
