Top new Supply Chain Management features from 2021 release wave 1

Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management is an intelligent solution that automates and optimizes all aspects of the supply chain from production to transportation. The first of two release waves of 2021 for Supply Chain Management rolls out updates from April to September with new functionality in product information management, planning, inventory and logistics, manufacturing, and asset management.

Below is a summary from our team of experts on key new Supply Chain Management features from release wave 1.

The Asset Management add-on for Supply Chain Management received updates to help companies perform maintenance for their customers at the right time. Maintenance workers can now be more efficient with the ability to establish rules for grouping work order lines under a single work order. Additionally, companies can now be more transparent with the new ability to bill customers for maintenance work. The update allows the creation of maintenance work orders on assets owned by customers, plus registering time, material, expenses, and fees when processing work on assets.

This release for Manufacturing enables users to perform mission-critical manufacturing processes without interruption and at scale.

• A new Asset Management tab added to the production floor execution interface where workers can read key measurement counters, record maintenance requests, and record and edit downtime for each machine.
• Extension of cloud hub with cloud scale units that deliver dedicated processing capacity in the regional cloud and scaling capabilities required to support processing without interruption.
• Enhanced production floor execution interface for manufacturing where workers can easily search and filter the jobs list and manufacturers can configure the interface to only supporting clocking-in and clocking-out.
• New no-code experience to automate repetitive processes using Microsoft Power Apps sensor signals to invoke a Power Automate flow. The feature includes a template for event-driven creation of quality orders on manufactured items.

New Supply Chain Management features from release wave 1 includes updates to the Planning Optimization Add-in:

• Ensures the add-in only generates planned orders for the longest lead time plus a buffer
• Enables the add-in to generate planned orders based on purchase requisitions and removes the need to create purchase orders manually
• Planners can now include demand forecast input from multiple sub-models linked to the forecast model used during master planning
• Enables material requirements planning (MRP) based on scheduling from route information Previously, MRP scheduling with the add-in was done with a static inventory lead time set on the related product
• Inclusion of safety margins of types reorder margin and issue margin during master planning. Safety margins enable a setup that provides extra buffer time beyond the normal lead time.

Updates to product information management in release wave 1 brings improvements to simplify the task of ensuring product master data is complete. New features include:

• The ability to convert standard products into engineering products, thereby applying the benefits of versioning and Engineering Change Management to their existing products.
• Improved performance and usability of the Variant suggestions page when you have a high number of dimension combinations from which to create variants.
• Added functionality to perform formula management and manage changes to process manufacturing master data.
• Extended support for product readiness checks to all products, which was previously only available to engineering products, with three types of checks: system check, manual check, and checklist.

To start utilizing these new Supply Chain Management features, contact Rand Group to schedule and configure your system update. Looking to get your organization up and running with Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management? For more information, talk to our experts today.