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What the application actually covers
Master planning
Planning Optimization calculates net requirements across sites and warehouses, proposes planned purchase, transfer and production orders, and respects coverage groups, lead times and safety stock per item.
- ✓Demand forecasts
- ✓Coverage groups per item and site
- ✓Planned order firming
- ✓Intercompany planning
Advanced warehouse management
Location directives, wave processing, work templates and the Warehouse Management mobile app run picking, packing and put-away with scanners instead of paper.
- ✓Wave and cluster picking
- ✓License plate tracking
- ✓Cycle counting
- ✓Cross-docking
Production control
Discrete routings, process formulas with co-products and by-products, and kanban-based lean flows can run side by side in the same legal entity.
- ✓Formulas and batch orders
- ✓Catch weight items
- ✓Shop floor execution
- ✓Quality orders
Transportation and assets
Transportation management handles carrier rating, load building and freight reconciliation, and asset management tracks maintenance on the equipment that keeps the plant running.
- ✓Load planning
- ✓Freight bill matching
- ✓Preventive maintenance
- ✓Work orders on assets
Supply Chain Management or Business Central?
Where the fit is weak
Supply Chain Management rewards companies that have the volume and complexity to use it. A distributor with one warehouse and a few thousand SKUs usually spends more configuring warehouse work templates than the templates ever save. Business Central with directed put-away and pick, or a specialist warehouse add-on, tends to be the better answer there.
It also asks more of your own people. Someone inside the business has to own item coverage settings, location directives and production parameters after go-live. If nobody can take that on, the system drifts back to spreadsheets within a year, whichever consultant set it up.
Finally, the licence is sold per user on top of Dynamics 365 Finance in most designs. We explain the licence shape Microsoft publishes, but the numbers belong in a conversation with your licensing partner, not on this page.
How we approach a Supply Chain Management project
- 1
Walk the floor
Receiving docks, pick faces, lines and shipping lanes are walked with the people who work them. Paper forms and whiteboards on the floor tell you more about real process than any process map.
- 2
Decide the design choices that are hard to reverse
Legal entity structure, site and warehouse layout, item model groups, inventory dimensions and costing method are agreed in writing before configuration starts, because changing them later means reposting history.
- 3
Build in conference room pilots
Each pilot runs a full scenario, for example purchase to receipt to put-away to invoice, in a sandbox with your items and your locations. Gaps found here cost far less than gaps found after cutover.
- 4
Prove it with volume
Planning runs and wave releases are tested at production-like volume, since a design that works for ten orders can stall at ten thousand.
- 5
Cut over by site
Multi-site businesses usually go live one site or one legal entity at a time. The scoping call sets the order and the fallback plan for each.
Questions operations leaders ask about Supply Chain Management
Do we need Dynamics 365 Finance as well?
In almost every design, yes. Supply Chain Management and Finance run on the same finance and operations platform and share one database, and the general ledger, payables and receivables live in Finance. A few companies run Supply Chain Management against another ledger, but that adds integration work and removes much of the benefit of a single system.
Can we run only the warehouse part?
Microsoft does support warehouse-only scenarios, where Supply Chain Management runs the warehouse and another ERP keeps orders and finance. It suits companies with a demanding distribution centre and an ERP they are not ready to replace. The integration between the two systems then becomes the most important part of the project, so it needs its own design.
Is it too big for a company with a few hundred employees?
Headcount is a poor guide. What matters is the number of sites, legal entities, planning complexity and warehouse volume. Some mid-sized manufacturers with process formulas and several plants fit it well; some larger distributors with simple flows run happily on Business Central. A readiness assessment answers the question for your specific operation.
How are updates handled?
Microsoft delivers service updates to the finance and operations apps on a published schedule, and customers can pause a limited number of them. Customizations are built as extensions so updates can apply without code merges. We test your extensions and key scenarios in a sandbox before each update reaches production.
Can you take over an existing Supply Chain Management system?
Yes. We start with a written review of the configuration, extensions and open issues, and tell you what is sound and what needs attention before any support arrangement is agreed.
Talk to us about your project.
Tell us what you run today and what has to change. A senior consultant replies with a written next step.