Finally! Assemble to Order in Projects

 

I’ve been using Microsoft Dynamics Business Central projects (previously Jobs) for project manufacturing type customers for years now. These kinds of manufacturing businesses are called by different names: Engineer to Order; ETO; Project Manufacturing; Custom Manufacturing and sometimes Job Shops.

 

We started to focus on Dynamics Business Central for Engineer to Order as far back as NAV 2013R2. One of the first enhancements we added was the ability to create a link between an Assembly Order and a Job Planning Line (now Project Planning Line).  Our approach was to create a Build To Stock/Take from Stock “soft link” - but Microsoft has now enhanced this even more.

 

 

 

There are a lot of Job Shop manufacturing companies and ETO manufacturing that don’t make the traditional “cookie cutter” items in large volumes.  They treat their work as a project, that is delivering a unique solution.  

 

The traditional use of the project module for Business Central was to consider a project more of a construction or service type activity. Certainly the ability to add materials is part of the system, but the concept of using the project for something that is being manufactured is not how the system is designed to work.

 

An additional enhancement that was made recently allows the tasks on the project to be assigned different bins and locations for materials. This is another feature that ETO manufacturing often needs.  Sometimes the different “sections” of the manufactured parts are made in different locations and brought together at installation or final assembly.

 

 

 

Another useful feature is the new ability to bill multiple projects for the same customer.  This isn’t quite as common a requirement as the two listed above, but it is a strong indication that Microsoft is recognizing the value of this module and investing time in it.

 

 

Finally, and this is a small thing, but Microsoft is renaming projects to … projects. For years the project accounting features of NAV and then Business Central was called a Job.  Job is usually associated with a production or manufacturing process (which I don’t mind) but it is confusing when you are trying to explain that these are actually projects.  

 

Now a Job is a Project - officially.