Manufacturing solutions for Microsoft Great Plains – overview for consultant

By Andrew Karasev

Alba Spectrum Technologies

1-866-528-0577, 1-630-961-5918 help@albaspectrum.com   

Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains has full-featured manufacturing set of modules.  In this small article we would like to give you highlights on what kinds of light customization you could deploy, before jumping into Microsoft Great Plains Manufacturing realm.  Great Plains Manufacturing is targeted to discrete manufacturing clientele, which is opposite to process manufacturing – food processing, mining, including precious metals/gold/platina, oil and gas / chemicals / agriculture.  Manufacturing from accounting stand point is moving inventory into work in progress and then into finished goods.  And this is where we have fundamental difference between discrete and process manufacturing.

• Barcoding – this would be the help in allocating your inventory to the manufacturing activity.  We saw clients who were asking about full-featured manufacturing, but later on we realized that they were envisioning barcode scanning people walking through their warehouse
• Bill of Materials – well if barcoding doesn’t do the job for you – you should look if Bill of Materials module will automate your operations.  In Bill of Materials you could program light manufacturing.  We saw the machinery manufacturing/assembly client in Chicago area who asked us to help them phase out Kiwell manufacturing, because of high annual maintenance cost.  So – our opinion is if you are manufacturing client in the USA – you should probably first look at the outsourcing part of the business – if 90% of manufacturing of going to China – you should consider Great Plains Bill of Materials module implementation only with light manufacturing extensions
• ERP/ Capacity planning –-- well this is were you have to consider manufacturing suite.  Great Plains Manufacturing has complete set of discrete manufacturing modules: Bill of Materials, ERP Capacity Planning, Cost Center.
• Reporting.  In our opinion the best way to save software money is to replace highly priced module with similar reporting.  Reporting is rather static, but in its prints outs it allows you to avoid expensive license fee (if you decide on SAP or Oracle Financials – this will triple your software expenses)

Good luck and you can always seek our help in customization, implementation, integration and support.  Call us: 1-866-528-0577 or 1-630-961-5918, help@albaspectrum.com

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies – USA nationwide Great Plains, Microsoft CRM customization company, serving Chicago, California, Arizona, Texas, Florida, Georgia, New York, Australia, UK, Canada, Continental Europe, Russia and having locations in multiple states and internationally ( http://www.albaspectrum.com ), he is Dexterity, SQL, C#.Net, Crystal Reports and Microsoft CRM SDK