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Solutions for Manufacturing

The fundamental success factors in this manufacturing industry remain constant: produce the right products in the right quantities, at the right time, with good quality, and at a price the customer is willing to pay. However, flexibility and continuous improvements are also imperative.

Success includes the flexibility to respond to emerging markets, such as today's growth opportunities in China and Eastern Europe, and to the ever-changing needs of the customers. Capitalising on these opportunities and demands involves quickly adapting to new approaches, trading partners and procurement strategies.

Microsoft Dynamics offers integrated, adaptable business applications for small and medium-sized organisations, and divisions of large enterprises. These integrated solutions – delivered through a worldwide network of experienced Microsoft Certified Partners – work like, and with, familiar Microsoft software and help automate and improve financial, customer relationship and supply chain management. Watch these videos to see how Microsoft Dynamics solutions help in manufacturing.

Benefits of Microsoft Dynamics Solutions for Manufacturers

With Microsoft Dynamics solutions, your organisation can:

• Integrate communication and collaboration. Synchronize communication between engineers, manufacturs and subcontractors. For example, if engineering makes design changes, operations can know the details immediately. To ensure the increased agility in engineering is supported by your subcontractors, your communication solution needs to integrate with your enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. Product data management, and integration between computer-aided design (CAD) and Microsoft Dynamics solutions, has helped customers improve product design. Engineers can get an overview of reported errors in drawings, and manufacturers can confirm the latest design is being produced. Business portals let you share information within your systems through the web to the right people at the right time to keep your business moving forward and your customers happy.
• Deliver outstanding customer service. Landing a contract or making the sale isn't enough. You need to provide outstanding after-sales service to ensure customer loyalty. With Microsoft Dynamics solutions, you can track a project from design through 'as-built' configuration. The bottom line: your service personnel will be able to deliver the right parts – a critical first step towards effective preventive maintenance. Microsoft Dynamics CRM gives you access to deep knowledge of your customers' past experiences, helping you identify and meet or exceed your service-level agreements (SLAs) and contract requirements.
• Provide accurate estimates and quotes. You can efficiently align customer requirements with your capabilities by maintaining a standardised product line and using your previous experience with a customer to suggest the most effective equipment. Microsoft Dynamics solutions can help you plan for standard components, thereby reducing lead time. In many cases the subsequent discovery of omissions or mistakes poses the biggest challenge; Microsoft CRM can help you record customer requirements accurately and re-use the information in future quotes.
• Deliver flexible production planning. Production planners often struggle with keeping each job separate and visible in order to match specific customer requirements with resources. When production-runs encounter problems, planning or engineering needs to change the process. But in many cases, these changes are lost in aggregate production activities and data. To help you respond effectively, Microsoft Dynamics solutions support manufacturing modes such as engineer-to-order, make-to-order, make-to-stock or mixed/hybrid modes. You decide and define your best practices and how you want the planning system to work. What's more, wireless technology can help increase the capability and flexibility of your plant and workers.
• Efficiently manage projects. Good project management accounts for resources such as materials, capacity, engineers, service personnel, critical paths and slack time, helping you deliver on time. It also helps you identify the completion state of tasks and provides an overview status of the project. With Microsoft Dynamics solutions, you can set budgets, manage billing, review current costs and track activities and resources related to a project at many levels of detail. You can also extract knowledge and content from existing or previous projects to improve your processes and avoid mistakes.