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Hi all,
I’m keen to learn from those who’ve been through a fresh or reset Business Central manufacturing setup, particularly where initial item setup and costing choices had long‑term consequences.
We’re revisiting our foundations following a 2‑become‑1 consolidation, and it’s clear that many of the problems we’re now solving were effectively locked in during the original setup phase — especially around costing methods and item design.
Our environment:
- Manufacturing / ETO‑leaning
- Very high mix, low repeat
- Sub‑assemblies common
- Large volumes of order‑specific parts
- Finance needs credibility without over‑engineering operations
What I’d really value input on is:
1. Costing method selection (early decisions that matter)
- We have set out engineering / production business up at averaging costing (we consume specific material against released production orders in a project based business - feel free to comment) which are lot tracked
- Standard Cost vs FIFO vs Specific / Actual:
- What has actually held up in high‑variance production
- Have people run hybrid approaches successfully (e.g. standard for bought‑out items, actual for manufactured)?
- At what point did costing become “noise” rather than insight?
- How do i 'fix it'?
2. Initial item setup principles
- When starting clean:
- Did you define strict rules for when a part must be an item?
- Or allow item creation to grow organically and tidy later?
- Any success using:
- Generic/template items?
- Dimensions or variants to absorb uniqueness?
- What item attributes turned out to be essential vs clutter?
3. Sub‑assemblies: cost drivers or cost confusion?
- Did you:
- Cost sub‑assemblies as standalone items, or
- Treat them mainly as routing structures and roll costs up at top level?
- How do you stop sub‑assemblies becoming a cost reconciliation nightmare when every job is different?
4. BOMs, routings & “truth”
- During setup:
- Did you prioritise speed & simplicity, or theoretical accuracy?
- How accurate did BOMs/routings need to be on day one to give finance confidence?
- Any strong lessons on:
- Over‑engineering routings early?
- Missing setup/overhead costs that surfaced later?
5. Finance vs operations alignment
- How did you align finance expectations with operational reality during initial setup?
- Did you define:
- “Cost we care about”
- vs “Cost we accept will be approximate”?
- Any governance models that helped avoid constant re‑work?
6. What would you lock down sooner next time?
Looking back:
- What setup decisions would you freeze early if doing it again?
- What would you deliberately:
- Leave flexible?
- Prototype outside BC first?
- Any clear anti‑patterns you'd warn others to avoid?
- What actually works
- What breaks at scale
- What you wish someone had told you before go‑live
All perspectives welcome — especially from those who’ve lived with their setup choices for a few years.
Thanks in advance.
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