Dynamics Corner
About Dynamics Corner Podcast "Unraveling the World of Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Beyond" Welcome to the Dynamics Corner Podcast, where we explore the fascinating world of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and related technologies. Co-hosted by industry veterans Kris Ruyeras and Brad Prendergast, this engaging podcast keeps you updated on the latest trends, innovations, and best practices in the Microsoft Dynamics 365 ecosystem. We dive deep into various topics in each episode, including Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, Power Platform, Azure, and more. Our conversations aim to provide valuable insights, practical tips, and expert advice to help users of businesses of all sizes unlock their full potential through the power of technology. The podcast features in-depth discussions, interviews with thought leaders, real-world case studies, and helpful tips and tricks, providing a unique blend of perspectives and experiences. Join us on this exciting journey as we uncover the secrets to digital transformation, operational efficiency, and seamless system integration with Microsoft Dynamics 365 and beyond. Whether you're a business owner, IT professional, consultant, or just curious about the Microsoft Dynamics 365 world, the Dynamics Corner Podcast is the perfect platform to stay informed and inspired.
Dynamics Corner
Episode 402: The Main Event: Production Orders vs Assembly Orders
🥊💪 Welcome to the Main Event - Production Orders versus Assembly Orders 💪🥊
🧩 In this engaging conversation, the hosts, Kris and Brad, are joined by Jenn Claridge, who shares her extensive experience in the manufacturing sector, to discuss the differences between Production Orders and Assembly Orders in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. 🧩
Listen to the information-filled episode to learn about:
👉🏽 The differences and similarities between Assembly Orders and Production Orders
👉🏽 When to use an Assembly Order or Production Order
👉🏽Approaches to Using Assembly Orders and Production Orders
#MSDyn365BC #BusinessCentral #BC #DynamicsCorner
Follow Kris and Brad for more content:
https://matalino.io/bio
https://bprendergast.bio.link/
Welcome everyone to another episode of Dynamics, corner Brad. I need to build something. What's the best approach? I'm your co-host.
Speaker 2:Chris, and this is Brad. This episode was recorded on January 10th 2025. Chris, chris, chris, you build things. I didn't know you build things.
Speaker 1:Ikea tables.
Speaker 2:But that is a good question because within Business Central, did you know that you could use assembly orders and production orders? And with us today we had the opportunity to learn the differences between production orders and assembly orders and when you may want to use either one of those. With us today, we had the opportunity to speak with Jen Klarich.
Speaker 3:Hello, hello.
Speaker 2:Hello, good morning.
Speaker 3:How are things? Excellent, excellent. How about yourself?
Speaker 2:I'm good happy new year.
Speaker 3:You celebrate new year's up there that is a common one, yes, but I also do not really know the origin of that that of new year's, the canadian new year just in general.
Speaker 2:No idea, don't have any clue, no I have a little clue, and my clue is that it's a new year well, that like I, I guess.
Speaker 3:But who formalized it and when did they do that and where did it start? Start Like, tell me more, brad.
Speaker 2:I'm thirsty for the knowledge.
Speaker 1:Chris, help those are good questions Help us.
Speaker 2:But the other thing in honor of this conversation, we made it feel like Canada we're paying honor. We made it feel like Canada down here. Oh, because it is so cold. I don't know what to do.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you're just not leaving your home at any point.
Speaker 2:I'm embarrassed to say, but I didn't leave for the past two days. Wait, no, I did go out yesterday for a little bit Earlier in the week. Yeah, forget it, take that back.
Speaker 3:I am like contemplating my whole life at this point, because there's lots of times, because I work from home, that I don't leave for like four days or five days. So I'm now worried, like is is like glorophobia coming into play? Like am I like what's happening? Because if two days is a lot, well, don't you get excited though on the weekend so like you're coming on the weekend like you have Like what's happening Cause if two days is a lot.
Speaker 1:Well, don't you get excited though on a weekend, so like you're coming around the weekend, like you have to get out of the house, like I forced my family to get out of the house because define leaving the house define leaving the house when I when you say leaving the house, I mean literally stepping outside, because there are times where I'll go a whole entire week where I don't leave my property, but I do spend a lot of time outside so I'm at least getting the sunshine, fresh air, and I'll do yard stuff or I go running or walking or such.
Speaker 2:Well, I guess running leaves my property, but I'm saying physically not getting in the seas, it's, it's all I leave.
Speaker 1:We literally go somewhere. We go somewhere because it's like I'm here five days a week. I need to get out, and then we would either go to the next town over or find something like a little tiny museum, whatever that is just to get out of the house.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you do need those activities like the small town visits or doing something to step away. But not leaving the house during the week for me is very common, because it is a challenge. Working from home, because you get up, you do your routine or whatever. Maybe you work. Then at the end of the day it gets dark now because it's winter, and even down here it's dark, not as early as as you northerners, but when I'm here yeah, 4, 30 it's dark.
Speaker 3:You go to work basically in the dark yes, home in the dark, like you know, not quite as bad as like, say, alaska, but it's true, like at the end of the day, like I find that around my like 3.30, 4 o'clock meetings it's like the sun is going down. So by the end of the call at 5 o'clock I have like a little candle lit to be like okay, well, let's circle back is that?
Speaker 1:what is that what you have in canada? Just candles?
Speaker 3:no, no, you know, just for energy efficiencies and things. But we, it's like it gets progressively darker. But you know you're meeting to meeting so you haven't taken the time to just even go flick on a light so that when yes it does get darker. But then to your point, you're like, okay, now it's the end of the day, you go get into your you know pajamas, maybe your comfies oh, you never left your pajamas or maybe I do I do have jeans on I am somewhat professional okay, but uh, you know just I was nervous.
Speaker 3:I was gonna say it's not too crazy but, um, yeah, and then you, you know you have your dinner, you unwind. You, you know you have your dinner, you unwind, and before you know it, you're like, okay, well, it's time to trot up to bed. So but we have what I was saying like we have an old schoolhouse, we have a lot of, like wood burning fireplaces, so we'll go out a couple times a day to, like you know, grab extra pieces of wood and then, because we do rescue the feral cats, because we were going to talk about that, I have like an outbuilding where I segregate the feral cats from my indoor cats. So you know, we truck it. So I, I do brad, get the fresh air and the vitamin d, that's good, yeah, and that's good.
Speaker 2:The other challenge good though chris on the activity well, maybe you can start this week and take the cats out for a walk. Put a leash on them, put them in the car.
Speaker 1:Yeah, take your cat to the museum okay.
Speaker 3:So would you judge me, brad, if I said I already do that and, chris, excellent idea.
Speaker 2:I will jot that down I would not judge you because one I already do, because you're from canada, so that just supersedes any judging two yeah I think it would be good that you do something like that Three up north, because of the cold, dark and the wind, come 4.30, it feels like midnight. So I am right there with you. Come that time, I feel like just going to bed because it feels like it's so late. And then the other point yeah, and it's cold, oh it's miserable.
Speaker 3:That's why I'm like just going to bed, because it feels like it's so late.
Speaker 2:And then the other point yeah, and it's cold. Oh, it's miserable. That's why I'm here, but the cold came with me.
Speaker 3:I was going to say, though, you know, I feel like there's a really clear boundary with the US and Canada in your mind, right?
Speaker 2:It's called the border?
Speaker 3:Yeah, but she's from Canada, so she's on the wrong side of the tracks. Well, but isn't it a time to unite? You know like?
Speaker 2:are you saying you want to become? Are you saying you want to be a state?
Speaker 3:no, no, is this what you're saying? I'm saying why don't you come over to canada? It's a little cold, but I think you know, come over this way she said unite.
Speaker 1:I did that. I'm bringing politics into us.
Speaker 2:I am only giving you a hard time because I just like to no offense to canada, because people will probably be angry with me and chris put me up to it, but I think you should take Minnesota and Wisconsin and we'll just call it Okay.
Speaker 3:Okay, Really Like any special reason or just like as an olive branch we next in?
Speaker 2:are you going to be at two directions?
Speaker 3:Yes, yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay, when, uh when we have the meal. Chris, we owe her a meal, by the way. Um, just to let you know and we'll hold it to it and it will be part of our Canadian Thanksgiving that we're going to celebrate late.
Speaker 1:I'll give you the reasons why.
Speaker 2:I think, that those two states should become part of Canada.
Speaker 3:Oh so I have to wait.
Speaker 2:Suspense.
Speaker 3:The suspense.
Speaker 2:You have three months to wait.
Speaker 1:You can read up on those dates and you'll probably figure it out.
Speaker 3:I'll figure it out. So I have to actually come to the dinner and guess the reasons Right.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:Okay, fair enough.
Speaker 2:Don't be upset if dinner is one of those little street carts.
Speaker 3:That's fine, I'm not picky, I'm not saying we're going to one of these.
Speaker 2:We're not going to the michelin restaurant out in vegas. Uh, for this, this repayment that's fair.
Speaker 3:That's fair as long as it's not like a mcdonald's. You know streetcar, though, like I, don't I nothing. I was gonna say street meets fine, but let's edit that out. No, no listen listen.
Speaker 2:No, we're not editing that out, we're not. No, we have no filter. I will say, though, food trucks when I say a streetcar, I mean like one of the food trucks I.
Speaker 2:They're amazing. Some of those are absolutely amazing. Where it's? I will seek them out. And sometimes some venues or some places will have activities where they have multiple of those food trucks and I love that. That's one of the things I like to do on the weekends, for example, is if you go to these little, I don't call them fairs because they're not really fairs, but they call them like those fairs, no, but like a fest right, yes, or some event in that event where there may be, we'll have some food trucks, and I love it because I like to eat, but yeah we.
Speaker 2:We didn't want to talk about the weather or your desire to become a us citizen.
Speaker 3:Uh, next time there's no desire to be fair, there isn't.
Speaker 2:I love canada, you know are you born and raised in Canada?
Speaker 3:Born and raised.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Always in the Toronto area.
Speaker 3:Yeah, primarily just about like an hour kind of. I actually live in like the Cambridge Kitchener Waterloo area, which is an hour from Toronto, but it's also an hour from Niagara, where I live now. So I've always lived around here, but it's close to Buffalo so you know when I'm feeling itchy I can jump over the border. It's like a half an hour away.
Speaker 2:That's not bad. So you get the taste of the U? S. You're practically American.
Speaker 3:Sometimes, yeah, practically Right, yeah, dual citizenship. But I can like zip over and get things that you guys have that we don't like food products, stuff like that. Are you allowed to get a powerball, which is some food, some food you can't?
Speaker 1:no fruits, right, like limited in fruit I know coming into. Yes, you can't take certain types of fruits.
Speaker 2:I understand why because a lot of that is bugs, like a lot of the invasive species will come with foods. But I have not to jump around. I do have so many questions for you because yeah of your expertise. Uh, but you live in an old schoolhouse. Do you have like chalkboards and stuff on the wall?
Speaker 3:no, I don't, but not anymore, but it I do live in an old schoolhouse. So it's in 1883.
Speaker 3:So it's like amazing, like I love it. I love like just knowing that kids came here. People will stop by and say you know, I used to the the coal stove was here and I used to come in and I was the one that had to stoke the coal in the morning. Or you know, I used to come here. There's names etched into the brick of the kids who used to come. Like that, just for me, I love history I I like history.
Speaker 1:I love that nostalgic and that's amazing, I love that Nostalgic and historical.
Speaker 2:That's why I love Boston, because Boston has a lot of history, because it's the same type of thing there's a lot of in New England. There's a lot of old buildings, you know, back from the 1600s, 1800s, and you're like what fascinates me with that and you have to really think about it a lot of those buildings were made before tools, before electricity, right before lighting, and to see the construction of what they had put together.
Speaker 2:because they didn't have power tools and they didn't have a way to whip up these blades to cut the wood right, they had to. You know, if you really think what someone had to go through to build structures prior to technology, right, what do they call that error?
Speaker 1:Oh for sure, and their story too, like the people that you know put that together what they live, what their life was like.
Speaker 2:I love that stuff, chris. We'll have to make a field trip, it is.
Speaker 3:It's super cool. You should, if you're ever in the area like come on by, because it's super cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love it If you're ever in the area like come on by.
Speaker 3:But we've done like some renovations just to kind of bring it to modern, like standards, like we put a heat line and stuff. But when you take down some of the walls, like some of the beams, you can tell they're, to your point, all entirely different Because they just found a beam that fit that space. So some are long, some are short, some are thin, whereas like now you know, you just cut the beans to the size you need and everything kind of fits perfectly in the, in the insulation there would be like newspaper or yes, just to your point.
Speaker 3:They just I think they call it a horsehair plaster and yeah, so they just used to your point like what they had what they had and what what could work, yeah, so it's been interesting to kind of do little projects here and there and then see like you said uncovering things.
Speaker 3:Yeah, my husband is convinced that one day we'll take down a wall and find just like a load of cash that is, just like some old person who like hit it and forgot. We have yet to find that, but other cool, interesting things we've found I want.
Speaker 1:I was just going to ask you found anything?
Speaker 2:interesting. I've been into old houses, old buildings and you find some great stuff yeah, like how to do things. I went to a place the other day. You know what I saw on the wall they had an old can opener, like the can opener that screwed into the wall and it kind of flapped out. I'm like this is like back from the 1950s 1940s.
Speaker 3:It's amazing it brings you back in time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's super cool it's great and life was much easier then, I believe yeah, I think there were challenges, they had separate challenges, don't get me wrong. I mean we have modern medicine, we have some conveniences, but with those conveniences also comes more time, responsibility, you know, focus and stuff.
Speaker 3:It's like simpler times, I would call it.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:Like things were what they were, you accepted what they were. You weren't like always chasing the next thing. There was like a certain appreciation, I think, for what you had, whereas like now with technology and like social and stuff like that, I think people are always chasing something more. But I do find that, like you know, there was a woman actually. She came and she brought like all the pictures from when they converted it from a schoolhouse to a house and like just telling the stories and things like that. There was just like a lot of gratitude back then, you know they live in the moment, which is really nice.
Speaker 2:And I mean there were, it wasn't as much. I mean they did have crime, they did have other things. I don't want to say it was a time when, uh, when I'm going to the next thing perfect it wasn't perfect, but it was also very community. So if you could go to your neighbor and say hey, can you help me?
Speaker 1:build a barn right everybody have those barn raising parties.
Speaker 2:Yeah, ah man to be able to go back and see.
Speaker 1:Live in a small town. It's very similar. Everybody knows my neighborhood. Living in a small town is great, chris, as close as you can get and you live in a great area.
Speaker 2:I would like to live in Chris's deck, just live on his deck. I could live on his deck.
Speaker 3:Literally you could live on his deck. Oh, I want to see it.
Speaker 2:We'll have to do tours after this recording.
Speaker 2:We'll do, we'll do some house tours in the summer, though, because then oh yeah, it's kind of gloomy right now yeah, but we don't want to go outside that long now, no, no, but still, chris, even in the, in the area that you, the rural area that you live in, you still have like technology, you have the internet and yeah, that's a point everybody is. I do feel like everybody's always looking for the next best thing and not appreciating what they have and not. And then they realize they always want the next best best thing, because sometimes you already have the best thing, if you realize what I'm saying and yep sometimes you have to take a step back and say it is the best thing.
Speaker 2:All right, but enough of this I could talk about this we're getting deep we are. But before we jump into the conversation, would you mind telling us a little bit about yourself outside of the feral cats in the schoolhouse, and that you're from canada yeah, just like.
Speaker 3:So basically I've been in manufacturing since like forever like 20 years or so and I started off just as a basically hey, here's a filing cabinet and here's drawings and we need you to put it into Excel because the company was taking an old DOS-based system and moving them to an ERP. So I just started basically that way to an ERP. So I just started basically that way and then I learned about all the tables and how databases integrate and you know just how things run together and I just learned the system. I wasn't afraid of it, I wasn't afraid to play with it. So I sort of became their in-house process improvement person. And then the company that I work for now so I've been with Sabre for over 16 years, since 2008,. They were actually the partner that was implementing for us.
Speaker 3:So when I left that company they were like hey, have you ever thought about consulting? So I've been doing consulting since 2008 in the manufacturing space on a different ERP system, one called Visual, and then we actually got into GP for a period of time. So we did manufacturing implementations in the GP space for a few years and then we started looking at it and thinking like, is GP really the right product for manufacturing. So kind of came to the conclusion that really no, we should be in the NAV space. That's more the right product. So then we moved to NAV and then Business Central. So been doing that, like I said, since 2008. And just through the jigs and the reels over the last 16 years I've worked my way to be the vice president of the ERP practice at Sabre. So the whole ERP implementation side of the business runs under my umbrella. So that's sort of my day-to-day.
Speaker 2:Excellent. It's a lot of responsibility. It's a lot of responsibilities. It's a lot of responsibility and it's nice to see the progression. I like to hear the history of individuals that work within the community. Again, the community it's large, but it's small. I feel like everybody knows everybody, or at least it's coming across everybody.
Speaker 3:I always say that.
Speaker 3:And it's nice, yeah, and what's interesting, I think, about me is that I've been with Sabre for so long. Like sometimes you find, like you said, it's a large space but it's small because you see the same people. But you know you move around, you want to do different things and go to different places, but I've sort of been with Sabre for a really long time but you get to know a lot of really great people and that's why I love what you guys do, because it's so interesting to hear their different perspectives and different areas of expertise and it grows so much and it's such a good way to keep up with the features and you know all the integrations and the ecosystem and everything that's going on. So it's like you said, it's super big, it's always changing, but it's tight-knit and I feel like it's very like everyone always wants to help each other and share knowledge, which I I think is cool.
Speaker 2:It is. It's really cool and with that, so I couldn't think of anybody better to ask than you.
Speaker 3:Yes, okay, yes.
Speaker 2:So within Business Central we have the manufacturing I guess you call it module or manufacturing portion of it right when somebody can produce product using production orders. Also within business central we have assembly orders right and I often get asked what's the difference between a production order and assembly order? When would I use a production order versus an assembly order? What are the differences between the two?
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:And the questions go on and on and on.
Speaker 3:Right? So we get asked that a lot too, especially because we're in the manufacturing space, and a lot of the times, if they don't have a service component of their business, they're really trying to figure out do I need the premium license or an essential license? Right, because that's one of the key differences between using production orders and assembly orders is that assemblies are included with an essential license, whereas if you want the production orders you need the premium license. So that's one of the key differences. So if you start with sort of how are they the same? They both are supported by MRP, so they both can be considered supply or demand. You can do multi-level assembly orders, multi-level production orders. You have the ability to obviously create bills of materials and add items to both bills of materials and add items to both. You can make to stock or make to order. Like those things are the same.
Speaker 3:I would say some of the key differences would be and these would be the questions that I would ask how interested are you in capturing labor right, like capacity planning, labor collection? Within an assembly order, you can add resources. Resources can be people or they can be machines, but you're really just going to backflash a standard At the end of it on the production order side you'd have the ability to say well, I have a work center, in that work center I have individual machines and you want to look at the capacity between the work center group as a whole as well as individual machines. And you want to look at the capacity between the work center group as a whole as well as individual machines. You want to do things like capture, setup time, run time, wait time, move time. You can't do that in an assembly, you can only do that in a production order. Like I would ask them questions about the capacity planning side, like how do you need to see it move things around? And we can get into each of these kind of in more detail as we go.
Speaker 3:But the second thing I would ask them is how real time that order needs to be. So with an assembly you're really just you have an assembly, you produce something, so your ability to status that and say this is in the queue versus actively being worked on, your ability to consume material before you've output a finished good you need a production order for that. So you can kind of get more realistic costs, I would say. And then my third consideration would be whether or not you subcontract. Whether or not you subcontract. So if you send parts out for the routing or the labor to be produced by a vendor, production orders are better suited for that. So ideally I would say an assembly is more for like a kit scenario. You really care about inventory control and then production orders. You care more about capturing labor, the labor being real time capacity planning. You're maybe dealing with scheduling concerns.
Speaker 2:It's more details on the writing side. That was a good quick overview of production orders and assembly orders and I think we can be done now.
Speaker 3:Yeah, really, I mean we're good, that was perfect. Let's go back to the cats?
Speaker 2:No, I'm just kidding.
Speaker 3:Yeah, let's go back to the cats On the like each of them though you, you. There's differences too, right? So if you look at a bill of material, so for a kit or an assembly, you can't do what's called a phantom inside of an assembly. So that means that you have something that you're, you have a bill of material for. It's a component inside of your, your bomb, but you never actually stock it or you never actually scrap it. So you actually don't need to create the item, but you want to have a bill of material associated so that you can blow out the demand, the ability to add a negative like you can't do that.
Speaker 2:See, I've heard that word before. So a phantom bill of material is a bill of material for an item that you don't produce, but it's just a collection of items that you can group for planning and inventory.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so let's say you have a bomb and there's a component on that bomb a bill of material we don't have bombs here.
Speaker 2:I mean, we have bombs bill of materials, but we don't have bombs I know let's use the full.
Speaker 3:We got to use the full word one time I was in a meeting and because the microsoft, you use these acronyms all the time, right, I kept saying isv and the guy said what is an ISV? Stop using it. So I had to be cognizant to use the full word. But a bill of material. So within a bill of material you may have a component that you have like more components for. Think of it as like a multi-level bill of material.
Speaker 3:But you don't actually produce that component in the bond. You just you have a bunch of raw material that you collect, you put together. But think about it when you build Lego you immediately take that thing and you keep assembling it into its parent or whatever you're making for. So it would allow you to. In Business Central you could create a production bond for that item. You could list the components that you need for that item, meaning you could manage just one area. If that bond changes, bill of material changes. But then you never actually have to create an item card for it, you never need to output it and put it on hand and consume it. So your inventory control of that phantom level, you don't need it but you can manage a bond for it. I get it. So your inventory control of that phantom level, you don't need it, but you can manage a bomb for it.
Speaker 2:I get it. So it's almost like you had mentioned. If I'm putting something together, I take all of the pieces. I have to first put these three things together before I can do the rest of it. Is that a good way to think of it? So?
Speaker 3:I still have the inventory.
Speaker 2:I don't need to create an item for it. I don't need to plan for it. I need to plan for the components, but it's part of the process of building it. I need to build this thing maybe first, but build this thing with these pieces together, then take what is completed and then use that to continue building my product. Is that a good?
Speaker 3:that's right but that's a good way to think of it, but you don't. But that's a good way to think of it, but you don't like. My key thing is that once you take those components and you put them together, do you need to actually put it on a shelf for some period of time? Like, do you need to know that it's there, you know, for inventory valuation perspective, or just to consume it later or to scrap it? Like, if you take a bunch of components and you collect them, you put them together, but then you just immediately use that little weldment or sub-assembly to build something else. You just keep building it. So, from a planning perspective, if you were to look at your bill of material, you might see a phantom line which has an ID, but when you actually ran your MRP or your material requirements, it would actually tell you just to purchase or produce the components.
Speaker 2:Got it understood right.
Speaker 3:So in an assembly there's isvs that will allow you to do that what's so? Ben cole. Oh, I know sorry.
Speaker 2:Independent software vendor we're gonna get out there no, I, I say that in jest, but it is. It's true. When we have conversations with the acronyms, I do it myself I know it's, it's it's assuming a level of understanding, and I was just on a call with somebody who was new to business central and sometimes you forget after working with it for so long the terminology is quite different than what many expect, so it's almost like you have to have a language lesson when you first start in implementation, because this is what we mean.
Speaker 1:There's people that don't even use VAR. Some people use VAR and some people just say partner too. So that's kind of changed.
Speaker 3:Well, and it's good for you guys to do that is to like reset the expectation, to like what are they calling it today? Right? Because to your point, Chris, it does change. So it's like does that still mean the same thing? That I thought it was yesterday, but yeah, so for the independent software vendors they would be like the little apps that can plug in.
Speaker 2:So on the assembly side there is apps like ben cole from erp connect has one called advanced assemblies I'm gonna stop right there, I'm calling ben after this and I'm gonna tell him that he needs to like ben. You need to give us kickbacks or something, because we've had several episodes in a row.
Speaker 3:Now they have such great products.
Speaker 2:Everybody's brought up ben and it's like oh, ben cole has this, ben has this.
Speaker 3:So I'm gonna call ben after this yeah, he's like a little celebrity, I guess, in the ecosystem, but he does have things like the ability to do phantoms, the ability to do version control, which is something that production like the ability to do phantoms, the ability to do version control, which is something that production bombs allow you to do, but you can't do them in assemblies. So sometimes you can look at, well, what are the key things that production needs that isn't in an assembly and then just get a little independent software solution to be able to plug in or, depending on how much of that, you might just need the whole premium module. Okay, so I'm trying to keep track of the differences between as you're speaking the differences between production orders and assembly orders.
Speaker 2:So I just want to try to reset for a moment. First thing is licensing. So with business central licensing a difference is you need the premium license If you want to use production orders and manufacturing. You just need the essential orders. If you want to use assembly orders, only Right. So that's one of the first things. From a use case point of view, production orders have routings and you can track capacity as well as labor time and labor right.
Speaker 3:So I would say that both have the ability to track labor. Assemblies allow you to add resources which a resource you would just say is a machine or a person, and then you can put a time to it If you want. On production orders you can add either a work center or a machine center, so you can have that kind of big view or down to the machine level view.
Speaker 2:Okay, so a work center would be a department, potentially right, so you may have a department for casting assembly or something. Or yes, welding. And then the machine centers would be welder one, welder machine two, welder machine three, within that work center for welding.
Speaker 3:You could do that, yeah, or you could have a work center. That's just. I set up a work center for every single machine that I have and that's how I want to track it. But you can see you have flexibility there. You also have the ability to say, instead of just one overall resource time, which is what you would get on an assembly, on a production order, you could break out this is the setup time for that step, this is the run time for that step, here's the wait time, the move time. So it allows you to have a lot more detail in your routing. You can also do things like a fixed scrap quantity. So if you're in an environment where you say, well, I have a first piece inspection, every time I run this, I need to produce an extra piece, you can associate that type of thing.
Speaker 2:So production orders allow for scrap, assembly orders do not.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah, like, like I said, resource time is really just like very basic. You want to get a little bit of labor cost in, but you're really not trying to analyze it or break it out into too much detail.
Speaker 2:Okay, understood. And then you also said manufacturing orders have subcontract capabilities or subcontractor capabilities, and assembly orders do not.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So for the production side of things, I would say that you've got the subcontract worksheet which is in the premium. It works with production orders it's really designed for I am sending out a specific routing step or work center to a vendor for outside work. So on an assembly, could I indicate that I've got a resource that is an outside service vendor? Sure, but collecting the actual cost from a linked purchase order back into assembly I can't do that very well. If I were to have a production order, I can indicate that I've got a work center. That work center would have a vendor associated to it.
Speaker 3:So it's very clear to everybody that this is something that we don't do internally for labor. This is something a vendor does. And then you have similar to the worksheets inside of Business Central. You have what's called a subcontract worksheet where you can run that and it will calculate for you of all of your released production orders. So we'll get into this. But you can status production right, like is it released versus is it just in the queue. But for every released production order, what do I need to send out to vendors? You create a purchase order. That purchase order is linked back to the work center and that production order and then when you post that purchase invoice, that actual cost will go into the production order. So it allows you a lot more accurate costing for that subcontract service. So it's just a lot better designed for it. I would say so.
Speaker 2:You had mentioned production orders can have status codes so you can track the orders by where they are, and some of them were planned, firm, planned, released, finished. What are they?
Speaker 3:There's another one right gonna tell you let's, let's do. He's always trying to test me, chris, we should test him right now. No, I'm just, I'm not trying to test you. I'm just trying to get a better understanding of you were telling me earlier, when I meet you in vegas for dinner, I have to tell you know why you're giving me certain states. So I was just teasing with you.
Speaker 2:I see, I see what this is, yeah. So on the assembly order side, chris, we're just deleting this episode yeah, just throw it out.
Speaker 1:It's just for us. It's trapped. This is just for fun now.
Speaker 3:But the assembly orders, they're kind of they're created and you output to say something's produced which would consume the material, but then it's just finished once everything has been output, once you've made everything you're supposed to make. That's kind of. So it kind of gets created and then it goes into a black hole. Now, with a production order, you can create a simulated production order which is really just for like quoting, estimating, trying to figure out how costs would come.
Speaker 3:The planning worksheet can create you a planned production order, meaning that it's something that probably is needed. You're planning for it but nobody's committed to it. Think of it maybe like that. Then you can do a firm planned production order, which I like to think of this as I've committed to making it. It's firmed up, I will make it for this quantity, this item, this date, but it's not actively being worked on, so it's like in the queue. If you will, then you can release a firm planned production order or just start it as released To me. That indicates I've released it to the shop floor. Somebody's working on it. So if I want to increase the quantity, if I want to change a material or a work center, I know I have to go and find it, figure out where it is and maybe change paperwork and change it in my system, and then there's a finished status. So you've got a lot more statusing capability to be able to indicate well, where, like, has this even been started?
Speaker 2:Got it and so a simulated production order is for costing. So if you wanted to put something together to make like a cost sheet I've heard people say they wanted to do cost sheets right. So is that what you would use a simulated order for?
Speaker 3:Or quote yeah, like maybe you're quoting a new product line and you want to add some items and some work centers to it to figure out what your material and labor cost would be. You know, for the purposes of quoting, but you're not going to transact against it, you're not going to consume against it, you won't build against it.
Speaker 2:It's really just for the purposes of figuring out, like potentially, at like, what a cost could look like okay, and then a planned and firm, planned, released orders, uh orders that you're working on or you will work on, and then yeah, I would say release would be.
Speaker 3:You're working on it. Released is finished. Order you're done finished.
Speaker 2:What is that? You mentioned material requirements, so I'm going to guess here. Simulated orders don't show up in your material requirements. Planning do planned and firm planned, or does a firm plan and a plan doesn't?
Speaker 3:yeah, so most often a planned order is created because you're running some kind of planning tool like the planning worksheet, so it will plan for you what you need, depending, depending on the item setup, if you've included it to plan.
Speaker 3:But it can plan for you all the material down to your lowest level, so it can be your raw materials, it can be sub assemblies and so it will create basically a planned production order. Let's say, if it was produced item all the way down, like I said, to your lowest level, and typically you've got like a planning tool that does that, like that you're running, and then a person will look at the planned orders from, say, an MRP, and then they will firm them up because they commit to that quantity, that date. They've validated that it truly makes sense. Because a planning worksheet is just a suggestion, right, and I always say it's dumb and dutiful so it shouldn't replace a human that actually looks at that and validates that that was a good suggestion. And then they would create that firm plan which puts it into like the to-do queue so that the production team knows okay, this is what you should actually be building.
Speaker 2:Okay, and then released means it's released to the floor or released for work.
Speaker 3:Right and I mean there's no hard rules in the system. Like I know some people who say well, you know, as soon as we create the orders, we're running that production pretty quickly, so they might just create a released order right out of the gate. But the idea here, I think, on the production order side, is you have a lot more flexibility in how you want to produce items, where you want to collect, when you consume, how you consume if your consumption's related to output, like, you have a lot more flexibility instead of it just being like it exists and it's done.
Speaker 2:Perfect, Thank you. That explains the types. So there's five types of statuses for production orders. You also had mentioned we can do versioning of bill of materials in production orders with assembly orders. We cannot do that. And then also we can have say I wrote this down, phantom bill of materials and you cannot have them in the assembly orders. Can you have multiple levels on assembly orders?
Speaker 3:You can Yep, so you can have multi-level assembly orders. So if we look at like, say, the master data, so if we want to look at differences, we could start kind of from the masters and work our way down. So a kit or an assembly, its bill of materials, is created on the item card itself. So you would have one assembly bomb potentially for each of the items that you create On the production order side, items that you create On the production order side.
Speaker 3:You would create a production bomb in the production bomb page, so it's sort of separate from the item card. You'd create the bill of material and then you associate it back to an item or multiple items. So that's kind of a neat thing about production as well is if you have an item and you say all of these groups of items, they're, they're built the exact same way, they have the exact same material, they have the exact same quantities that are required and how I calculate those quantities required are the same. You could associate one bill of material to 50 items if you want, which means that you only have to maintain one bill of material if there's a change ah, so the assembly items assembled items have a bill material unique to an item and produced I'm just using assembled because of assembly orders, to my terminology here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and produced items because you're using production bill. Materials or production orders for them don't have a bill of material associated with them. They don't have a unique bill of materials directly associated with them. They have a bill of material associated with them. That's a group of items, but that bill of material can be shared, so a bill of material itself is its own entity that can be used as part of other items.
Speaker 3:Right so the bill of material is created separate from the item and then you associate it back later and it could be there's one bill of material for every item, or it could be there's one bill of material that, to your point, is shared between lots of items.
Speaker 2:Got it.
Speaker 3:Lots of differences mean lots of items got it.
Speaker 2:Lots of differences, see I in. So there is no. It is interesting because I've heard that question asked several times and I like to see you know what the real answer is.
Speaker 3:Right, so yeah, and it's like a conversation really right. It's not an answer, because it becomes well, how do you, how do you? And then you have to kind of strip back the onion and then you're trying to find like features or functions that would say, ooh, that's going to put you into this bucket. So like another one. As an example is, on your bill of material you have a quantity per, so basically what the system can do is calculate Well, assembly bill material.
Speaker 2:Okay, thank you, so on both.
Speaker 3:You have to indicate for the component items how much of that component item do you need to build one of the end item?
Speaker 3:On a production BOM bill of material, you would have the ability to say well, my calculation formula is take the quantity per that I've indicated, times it by the quantity that I need to produce, and then tell me that's the expected quantity. So if you had a bike and you need a front wheel, then you need one front wheel. If I'm making 10 bikes, I need 10 front wheels. You could, though, change your calculation formula on a production bill of material to say well, I want it to calculate based on length, therefore you're going to put in a length dimension. Or you could say I want it to calculate based on length times width, and therefore you're going to plug in those fields, and it will calculate the expected quantity based on taking a length times a width, and therefore you're going to plug in those fields and it will calculate the expected quantity based on taking a length times a width. So there's a few different options there. You can do weight, you can do a fixed quantity. You don't have that functionality when you look at an assembly built material.
Speaker 2:That's a big difference. So if somebody's a producer of something that's. I want a desk that's four feet by six feet. My materials would vary, because I may also make a desk that's three feet by five feet, yeah, like there's definitely different ways to do it, but the yeah, when you're calculating your expected quantity there's.
Speaker 3:It's not always just well, I've got so much of an item and if I'm building 10 of them, I need 10 times that amount. Like it's not always that cut and dry. So it's it's the most common one that I see people use it that way, but there is, there is flexibility around that.
Speaker 1:So so you're saying, like if you get, like if you order two 10 foot tables and then you have to, you have to order the material of. Let's say, they only come in 30 feet, 30 feet table, so you have a, you would, you would somehow break it down how much you need to build those two tables, in a sense.
Speaker 3:Like ultimately that's what like a building material would do is you're breaking out how much material do I need to build those two tables? And you can do it different ways. You could do it by calculating, like you said, different dimensions. You could do it by having just different unique items because maybe they come in those cut pieces already. You could have it with like an item and a variant. But when you start looking into that scenario, like you said, where it's like I've got variation, it's not always the same.
Speaker 3:Sometimes you want to look more at like a production order because it just it doesn't close your door as quickly. Yeah, yeah. So we talked about the like. If you think about master records, you can copy BOMs, production bills, materials and routings. You can't do that on assemblies. You can do version control, like we spoke about. You've got I'm trying to think of like other main ones.
Speaker 3:The other thing on a production bill of material is you could add a negative quantity. So when it's calculating what materials are needed and it's coming up with your production order component list, let's say you're in an industry where you have some scrap recovery, like we've dealt with customers where they say, well, I've got a certain material that is left over and I can actually turn around and sell that back and get a profit for it. So when they produce something, they need to be able to capture that scrap recovery. So on a production bill of material you're typically indicating the items that you want to consume, which is when you post it. It's going to decrease your inventory. But you can add a negative quantity to a production bill of material so that when you post your consumption of it it would actually increase an on-hand value or quantity.
Speaker 2:So it's like a byproduct maybe.
Speaker 3:Yes, that's like a common term for it, but like basically you're saying that like you've got material coming back and increasing.
Speaker 1:So, like I said, the most common one that I do see is that like sort of scrap recovery on an assembly Like cable, like a cable where, like you use a certain amount of cable and it's like I don't need, didn't need all of that to have scrap, you can resell some of those cable. Is that a good example?
Speaker 3:you'd probably just buy in like a roll and then on the actual order you would just indicate the inches or the feet that you actually need. So you're you would only put in what you expect to use. Um, this would be like if you're expecting to get a product back that might be different. So, like in the scenario you're using of the cable, it's all one part, right, like it's just how much of that one part did I use? In the scenario you're using of the cable, it's all one part, right, like it's just how much of that one part did I use? In the case that I'm using, I'm indicating I'm making this part, I'm consuming these raw materials, but I'm also going to get and Brad, you kind of mentioned it, like I'm going to get this other product that's going to increase my on-hand that I might sell or I might use to consume in another part. So it would have unique part IDs. What I think is the key difference than what you're talking about.
Speaker 2:So it's a different item that you're getting back and it's not a component item, nor is it the finished item. It's another item that's a byproduct of putting all of those together and falling off. I guess you could say so you put all this together and there's something left over, and that's something after.
Speaker 3:left over is not those components, it's something different and then that's something that you can do something with, you can sell it back to you know, get some uh revenue from that because it's a high value product or things like that. So that's that's what I mean by that, yeah okay, okay, another one that I've heard conversation on.
Speaker 2:What about you? You mentioning scrap tracking and you can do scrap with production orders, not assembly orders. What about loss? Is that the same as scrap, or is loss different?
Speaker 3:yeah, like um, I think that's the same, I don't know in the context that you're thinking of it, but like yeah, you would indicate the other thing. I think to kind of maybe what you're talking about, maybe not, but the ability to be more specific in what you're consuming. So, for example, on an assembly order you have an expected quantity that you need to consume. So if you want to consume a little bit less than you're expected, that's very easy. You can consume less, you can have a little bit left over and you know. Just clear that out and close your production order. If you wanted to say, oh, I used more, like I use this product, then I realized, oh crap, that's not really what I want and I had to use a little bit more. Or maybe I was training, so I used a little bit more and I'm okay to have that cost go into the cost of the production order.
Speaker 3:Over-consuming your expected quantity is, I'll just say, a lot easier in a production order, because if my expected quantity was 10 and I want to use the production journal or the consumption journal to say I consumed 11, the system lets 11 be the number and you post it and it decreases 11.
Speaker 3:If I have a assembly order and I list that I expect to use 10 and I enter 11, I get an error. So now potentially I have to play with that quantity, per that calculated my expected quantity and have it come up with making sure that my expected quantity is 11. Like it's just a. It's not easy, right? I can't just easily go in and say I didn't use 10, I used 12 and post it. So that's what we say on the production order side. It allows you to be a little bit more detailed and accurate and like real time with what really happened, whereas I would say on an assembly you're more looking to just backflash the expected items, the expected resource time and indicate that you made something. You're not as interested in the exact resource time or maybe even material, because it's just standard all the time, it doesn't change very much or it's just not important yeah, that that's just like liquid, right, I think liquid was.
Speaker 1:Um, I was on a project once and I just didn't quite understand how you would capture overflow and loss and liquid stuff.
Speaker 2:That's what I was thinking. I worked with someone who worked with precious metals and they had gold, and so they made something with gold, right, and then the gold would expect. I'll just keep it simple. Do you use ounces up there?
Speaker 3:Yeah, we use ounces. That's a serious question. Y a serious question because in canada, because the imperial metric thing, yes, the imperial, versus metric.
Speaker 2:But in canada what I've learned is they use the imperial sometime and the metric sometimes, but sometimes for the same thing, because certain things they use inches and feet for, and there's certain things you don't meet us for so they're trying to like, yeah, they're trying to satisfy both systems, so they kind of straddle the fence we're people, pleasers up here, that's right but no, they were talking about where they had something that may use an ounce of gold and they want to recover the scrap, obviously because gold is precious and has a lot of value.
Speaker 2:So I need to give you one ounce to produce something that may use 0.75 ounces. The scrap right there should be 0.25 ounces, but in the manufacturing process they may lose 0.02 ounces due to you know, if you're cutting something, you're going to have a slight loss. That's where I was coming up with being able to try. See, I'm trying to learn some things here.
Speaker 3:Well, and scrap too is good If you know that you're always going to get some scrap, like you always know that it's going to be 2%, 5%, 10% more. On the production bomb you can indicate a scrap percent. So if you're using something like a planning worksheet or an automated system, it will calculate that you need to buy a little bit more or make a little bit more, but then when you actually go to do the consumption it'll account for that and it will even break it out sometimes in the entries when you go and look at it, so you'll be able to see this much was good material, much was scrap material. So, yeah, there's different like levels of detail, for sure, on that. Um, yeah, I'm trying to think of another one that would be different on the assemblies well, the assembly orders.
Speaker 2:I know, on the item card. I've seen replenishment systems. You know, is it assembled? Is it produced? I've seen replenishment systems, you know, is it assembled? Is it produced? I've seen assembled to order. What is that play into this at all?
Speaker 3:So on a assembly, or so you can, you can have both of them auto reserve, to like sales orders as an example.
Speaker 3:So you can do an assemble to order or assemble to stock.
Speaker 3:So when you do an assemble to order, that would essentially mean that as soon as you put a quantity on a sales order, it's going to automatically create a kit item or an assembly order. The key thing with that is that when you see that assembly order, you aren't able to post that assembly quantity and put it into inventory. You essentially, when you ship it, it's going to automatically post the output of the assembly order and use that for the shipment. So that's something that you want to be careful of, right, because you might say but I do want to stock it, even though it's for this order, I want to stock it and I move it around my warehouse. So in that case and you can do this on both you could create an assembly order or a production order. That's just for stock, for inventory, so it's not tied to an order, but you could reserve it manually to an order, which would allow you to be able to output both. You could put it on hand, you could move it around your warehouse. That functionality would be available in both.
Speaker 2:So the assemble to order option with an assembly order. When you put an item on the sales line with a quantity, it automatically creates an assembly order for that quantity, which at that point just becomes a document because it doesn't get produced. I use the word produced or the output doesn't happen?
Speaker 3:Transacted yes.
Speaker 2:Thank you, I'll use that from going forward. It doesn't get transacted. Thank you, it doesn't get transacted until you ship the order and then it automatically posts the assembly order, increasing the inventory then shipping, decreasing the components.
Speaker 2:Yes, decreasing the components, thank you. Increasing the output of the assembled item, then shipping the components. Yes, decreasing the components, thank you. Increasing the output of the assembled item, then shipping it. So that's not really something that's meant to be tracked, because how would you put it through the system? It's something that maybe, when they're shipping it, they kid it. So the right.
Speaker 3:So I'm just trying to think of a use case for that to, to get a better understanding of when yeah, and that could be like a kit scenario, right, Like I've got these kit items as I only kit them together when somebody orders them. So when somebody orders them, you want to be able. And again this drives back to like I need the inventory control of the components and that's what you really care about. But you don't really care about the labor, because it's such a quick process and the labor time might be like very small. So an order comes in, they need 10 of these kits. Somebody goes, they pick the components, they put them together, put them in a bag, put them in whatever, they ship them out. So by the time somebody gets that order, picks those parts and ships it. It's so quick that I don't need to consume in one step, output in one step, see it on the shelf, then use it for shipping. It's just too many transactions, it's too many touches, it's not. It doesn't run over a long enough period of time to justify all those transactions.
Speaker 3:Which answers or dovetails into like what you were talking about. Like when would you use one? Right, you would use a production order if you tend to start something and it's produced over like a few weeks or even a few months, and with a production order. You would have the ability to be able to consume inventory without outputting a finished good. You would have the ability to a finished good. You would have the ability to tie a certain operation step to material components using what's called a routing link code, where you could say, well, without outputting and saying I finished the end product, I finished it at this operation let's say it's the saw cutting operation, so I want to consume these materials because at that point they're in my whip, I no longer have them on my shelf.
Speaker 2:And then maybe you've got more items that are listed on your bill of material and you could consume those just at the end when you produce them or through another operation so with the production order, you can have components consumed as they go through the routing at certain steps, because that's where you expect the consumption to occur, because it is, you know, maybe have a routing step of assembly, so assembly is going to take x components are, and then it's going to automatically consume those when an assembly order it does it whenever you it's basically when you say you're finished the end part
Speaker 3:it will consume whatever you have in your consumption quantity, like whatever you've indicated there. So basically, on the operation, the work center or machine center and the material, you have something called the flushing method. So your flushing method, to your point, brad will indicate when do I want to consume material? And you don't have this capability with an assembly order. So if you've got manual, which means that somebody will manually go in at some point, they will use what's called the consumption journal or the production journal to enter in the date, the item, the quantity, both support lot and serial tracking, and they'll indicate I want to consume this specific component on this specific order. Nothing to do with what was produced, nothing to do with operation.
Speaker 3:You can do what's called a forward flush, which means we talked earlier about the status codes as soon as somebody changes the status from firm plan to released, it would then consume any forward flush material. So at that point, whatever the expected quantity is, it will decrease that inventory and it will issue that cost. You could do backward, which means that you are going to when the status changes from released to finished, it will automatically consume. At that point you can also use backward with a routing link. So the key difference there is that when you have just backward turned on, it means that it's tied to the status of the production order as a whole With a routing link you're going to associate on this operation step.
Speaker 3:You'd have the same routing link on your bill of material items and it will say when you finish this operation, that's when I want you to consume the inventory. So it could be all. At the end or during the process you can also do the same forward and backward associated to picks. So you can see there you've got a lot more. I call it like real time. It's not like when it actually happens, but it's like close enough, it's it's, but it's more. Throughout the process, over a couple of weeks or a couple of months, you're in stages and steps consuming inventory, and stages and steps you're outputting production. Um, you're tied to a step in process.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So you can have manual flushing, backward, flushing backward with router link codes flushing and forward flushing, and those all determine when the components get consumed and put into your working process. So for your inventory evaluation or your component tracking, you have a better control of your inventory. Whereas an assembly order is, I post it. It's done, that's it.
Speaker 3:Right. So if you have like a bunch of assemblies and you say, well, I start them, but then they're not done for a month, it's going to be an entire month before any of that inventory component is going to be consumed. So if you're doing like MRP planning, which it really does rely on a good, accurate on-hand quantity, that's too long. You can't wait an entire month after you've done something or used product to tell your system that it's been used. So with these flushing methods it allows you to be able to consume inventory more around the time that you're actually using it.
Speaker 3:And you can do the same thing with, like I said, labor time. So you could say, well, certain operations, I want to capture actual time. So someone's going to indicate this is when I started, this is when I finished. Or there might be certain operations where you're like, meh, that's just inspection, it's always a half an hour. I want a little bit of cost track, but I really don't need anybody to clock in and be that accurate. If it's 28 minutes or 35 minutes, I don't care. Then you can also put a flushing method on your work center.
Speaker 2:Excellent. One thing I was thinking of as you were talking about this, and you were talking about assembly or production, or producing in Business Central. Is there a way to do disassembly? So what happens if we produce a product that goes on our shelf and we either want to break it down because those components can be used in other products, or if a customer returns a product, there may be some value in the components that are part of that product to reproduce something, or if there's a defective output. So again, same thing we're making a desk. Go back to the example that Chris was talking about earlier.
Speaker 2:So again, same thing. We're making a desk. Go back to the example that Chris was talking about earlier. We're making a desk and we realize, you know, the desk may have a top and it may have legs and may have little rubber feet, but it gets produced and there's damage to the top Right.
Speaker 3:But we want to salvage the legs and the rubber feet because they're still intact and the way that they're fastened. We can, you know, in essence unscrew them and then use them for, else use them elsewhere, excuse me, or for another desk. Yeah, so again you've got like flexibility on that with the production order side, because when you do the output you can indicate a good output quantity. That's what I made, that's good, usable on hand, I can use it to ship and then you can indicate a scrap quantity and then in places like the output journal you can actually have it calculate for you what the or sorry, in the consumption journal, what it should consume as an expected quantity based on what was expected, which wouldn't include the scrap.
Speaker 3:Or you can have it calculate if you've already done the output and you've indicated that there was some scrap, and it will actually calculate a little bit more to consume, because it will look and say well, I assume that if you made 10 and two were bad, you needed enough components to make 12. But then you can go through those consumption journal lines and maybe, to your point, you can salvage some of them so you could change the quantities Like those things would be a lot easier to manage in a production order On an assembly. Like I said, you've kind of just made it or not, and you can't really go back after easily and say, oh, I want to add inventory back or I want to change what I consumed for just a component, for just an assembly item, like some of these things you can do, but they're just clunky and they're a workaround if you will right, like you're kind of manipulating it to make it work.
Speaker 2:I can add numbers together on a piece of paper or I could use a calculator. The calculator is much easier than a piece of paper. So I understand that what we're talking about. You can get things to work, but the more efficient way, it's more designed for it. Yeah yeah, I appreciate that. I appreciate that well. I'm learning a lot about production orders and assembly same this is good that's the goal I did.
Speaker 3:Um, I have done a couple presentations on it. That's why it is a good topic, because a lot of people do ask about it, because they don't know which one to use. And I mean I always say this, like the more you want to do inside the system, probably the more pages you have to set up and maintain, the more transactions maybe you have to do. So you do want to justify, like, what data am I capturing? Like sometimes you look at things you're like that'd be great, but if you're not doing it now, like a common example of that would be capacity planning. Right, people are like, oh, I want production orders because you know, down the line I really want to be able to schedule and capacity plan and see what's loaded to work centers and individual machine centers.
Speaker 3:But if they're not experiencing bottlenecks or they're not experiencing things where they go to produce something and they can't because they've got machine breakdowns, like maybe you just start with assemblies and then down the line you move to production orders.
Speaker 3:When you do find that you have set up and run times and you're actually going to use them and they're accurate and people do need to collect actual labor, like you could always move to it, need to collect actual labor, like you could always move to it. And one of the things I always say about assemblies and production with configuration worksheets and like being able to import and export data the structure of, let's say, an assembly bomb and a production bomb is very similar. So if you exported all your assembly bombs and then you could pretty easily paste that into a production bomb template and then just upload everything, what you're going to find is just your production BOM template has a lot more fields, right, like your calculation formula fields, or it has length, width, weight. You know those things because you need them. So sometimes it can be easier to start with assemblies, if you don't need subcontract, if you don't need advanced capacity planning, and then later down the line increase your license to a premium and just I'll call it migrate. You'd have to massage your data a little bit, but just migrate your assemblies over and then create the routings that you need, which, again, if you've got resources, is pretty easy no, that's that's a good
Speaker 2:that's awesome no, that's a good thing to look at because I like what you had mentioned and it goes back to something we spoke about when you were on with us towards the end of last year. Really, understanding the differences between the two can help your implementation, because there's a cost difference between the premium and the essentials license at this point. Is a cost between difference between the premium and the essentials license at this point? And the other key point that you had mentioned was the setup. Assembly orders are easier to set up and process than production. When I say easier, there's less to do so it's, it's if you're in, there's less to do.
Speaker 3:Yeah, if your business doesn't need, there's a cost to setting it up. Yes, if your business doesn't need all of that, there's a cost to setting it up.
Speaker 2:Yes, If your business doesn't need all of that detail, then assembly orders may be perfect. Where production orders, you can do the same thing in essence, but it has a lot more detail which may not be relevant to you. And I do like the point that you had mentioned. You can start off with assembly orders and then move to production orders relatively easy with configuration packages. So even if today you start off with assembly orders, you can grow into.
Speaker 3:I guess is grow the right word? No, I would say that Progress grow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, as your business evolves and you realize now I need the additional information, I can move over to production orders. Or, if there's not some clarity on which may be the best to fit for whatever reason, right, I'm not saying that if everybody understands the differences in an organization moving to use assembly orders or production orders, or even just a business central may not understand which is better.
Speaker 2:They could start with assembly order see if it meets their requirements or their needs and then easily move over to production orders without having to pay for that licensing and set up upfront to find out. They have to automate a lot of steps or do something that would have been done with assembly orders.
Speaker 3:Well, I was just going to say like one of the things I always kind of keep in the back of my mind as I'm implementing is you want people to prove they need something right, so to your point, you want to start simple and then prove that you need production like prove that you need more. So you start with assemblies where you know you can add items, you know you can add some resource time, you know you can add quantities that you need. You know you can do multi-level builds of material. You know you can associate them to items, you can build them to stock and production. You build that and then somebody's like but I really need to see my setup time and my run time. Or but I really need to capture that saw cutting is done, but this next operation is not done. Then you start to realize, oh okay, maybe assemblies are too simple and then again, migrating that over, it's just not a like, it's not like, it's no work, but it's very much transferable it may be easier to transfer it than to set it up.
Speaker 2:It's easier to transfer assembly orders. If you need production owners to set up, then to set up production orders and not need them maybe. Yeah, does my logic sound sound?
Speaker 1:yeah, I think I think to your point earlier. Just want to make sure that you know, when you do evolve, that there is a cost to set up and there is also a cost to maintain it as well, and there's also a cost to maintain it as well Is that.
Speaker 3:can you hear people laughing or talking? That was me. I hit that by mistake, I was like, okay, because I was like Chris, everyone's excited for what you're saying.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're laughing at me, yeah.
Speaker 2:No, but there you go. But the, you brought this back.
Speaker 3:I think the thing is too, is that Hold on. I love that.
Speaker 2:Well, we have a soundboard and when we first switched to using this platform, I was using it all the time. If you go back to some of the episodes I used to do like the door knock and, like I used to, this is what we used to do before. We would let somebody in. I can't even see. This is my eyes. I really need to figure this out. Uh-oh, but we would do you. Don't remember that.
Speaker 1:You should do that when you have a special guest coming through. We have done that too.
Speaker 2:No, we have done that. So you have the door knocking Surprise guest. So we do this. I like it.
Speaker 1:Chris, who's at the door? Yeah, I don't know. Who did we invite this time?
Speaker 2:Let me see. I'm going to walk over and see.
Speaker 3:Oh.
Speaker 1:Guys, this is a lot. Hold on, hold on.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh, look who it is. It's jen, all the way from the north.
Speaker 3:Welcome hi, hello.
Speaker 1:Thanks for having me take a bow and it didn't play out really well, because we start doing videos, it's like oh, they're not really walking.
Speaker 3:Yeah, then people are like trying to compete what they're seeing and hearing yeah do you have a joke for us? Oh gosh, I like do love jokes, but I a they're dirty and b on the spot, like, like, what are you? Because, you well, you, um, you love, like the canada us thing. So if you Well, you love the Canada-US thing. So if you're Canadian when you go into the washroom and you're Canadian when you come out of the washroom, what are you while you're in the washroom?
Speaker 2:What.
Speaker 3:European. See, it's a little dirty. See, that's what I wanted to do.
Speaker 2:That was good, that was really good that I wouldn't classify that as a dirty joke, just to let understand.
Speaker 3:Let you know a little dirty, it's potty joke, that's.
Speaker 2:That's the definition joke and it's dirty because it's potty, but it's not what I, what americans call dirty and maybe what you canadians that's what I'm saying it's a canadian, I forget. The canadians are a little more sensitive, so right, yeah, sure sometimes well, I hope I never go to canada.
Speaker 3:I probably will never get out like I'm steering you off, wanting to come to canada.
Speaker 1:It's horrible no, no, they'll stop you at the border unless you become the 51st, I will say no.
Speaker 2:No, I say all this in jest, and I think anybody who knows me knows that I like to have a lot of fun and sensei yes, I appreciate that and that's what I say, for I have no distaste for canada at all. I have gone to canada before, by the way where'd you go, montreal?
Speaker 3:oh?
Speaker 2:I love montreal.
Speaker 3:That's a great place to go, but I had only gone to Canada before, by the way, where'd you go? Montreal, oh, I love Montreal. That's a great place to go.
Speaker 2:But I had only gone to Montreal when I first started consulting, because we had an implementation in Montreal. So that was when did I start doing this?
Speaker 3:Back before, I think both you and Chris were born. Oh, come on, look that means it's working, we were probably in high school.
Speaker 2:I've been doing this since 1998.
Speaker 3:Yeah, okay, so I don't know. So I was born, yes.
Speaker 2:You just weren't implementing Business Central.
Speaker 3:I wasn't yet Not thinking about it. So where did you get time to actually tour around and see it? Because I know sometimes we don't spend a lot of time actually touring the place that we got. Is that the point where, with video, conferencing screen sharing and.
Speaker 2:Internet connectivity you can get a lot of things done remotely. Sometimes you may need to go on site. It is also beneficial to go on site, sometimes even at least once, through an implementation, because the individual is doing the consultation at least can visualize properly the layout of an implement. You know the layout of what they're talking about. So if I, you know we're talking about manufacturing or producing product, if I can visualize what somebody's doing, then when we're having conversations, one it helps me understand what they're talking about because I can physically see what they're doing. And the big thing that I've learned going through, because I've started off conversations, then I've gone site after we started I understood more what they were talking about, with some challenges based upon what they had in their environment, whereas when you're just talking to somebody you may say it's not that difficult, you know, but then you actually look and you physically see exactly and then you realize now I remember distinctly saying to someone I completely understand what you were saying, why that was impossible.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:It was impossible physically, it wasn't impossible systemically, and that's some of the challenges. Being a consultant, if you get to physically see, is beneficial, but you don't necessarily need to sit there and say, okay, well, now I'm going to train you and show you how to do a production order.
Speaker 3:You can do some of that stuff Well that's such an interesting like thing too is the like what do you need in your ERP versus what's physically happening on the shop floor? Like, and then too, like, depending on what your shop floor looks like or how things are structured or laid out, like sometimes it's like you could put that into your ERP but really, based on the proximity or based on like other factors, you just don't really need it. I find the other thing too is that when you go on site now we do a lot remotely but we have kind of debated, like are there key times where we really should go and do, like during kickoff or during the pilot, just to, like you said, collect what I will call like the oxygen stuff? Right, so when you are talking and you're like, hey, what do you do? What's your process? They explain it and they try their best to think of everything.
Speaker 3:But let's say you go on site and you're like I always say to people pretend like you won the lottery. You're moving to Fiji and I'm your replacement. I'm just going to sit here and watch what you do and I'm just going to ask questions as I go. Well, they'll do things and they'll be explaining as they go. Well, I enter this and I do that, well then they'll do a series of stuff that they don't talk about and because to them it's like well obviously I do that right, Like that's so obvious.
Speaker 3:But it's like for me, I've been doing consulting for, like you, like a long time over 16 years, so it's like that's not super obvious. That's actually kind of different what you're doing there, like I need you to explain a little bit better. Are you doing that because a customer asked you is that a business rule? Is it just because that's what somebody showed you and that's how you've always done it like? So when you see it, it just asks like different questions in your mind. You hit.
Speaker 2:You hit that perfectly. I will go back to why we got that. But it even goes back with even acronyms because we we were doing that ourselves with some of the conversation, making the assumption everybody can fill in the blanks and know what a BOM is, instead of it being B-O-M Bill of Material, or like we talked about the ISV. So that on-site sometimes can be helpful with technology, with the video conferencing and I promote video with everybody because if I'm talking with you I can take a look at your reaction right the first part is to see if one of you paying attention right, or do you have the look on your face of I really don't understand what this person is saying or doing and, as you had said, it goes back with the being able to physically see what someone's doing, you can pick up a lot more detail.
Speaker 2:So there is value to it. Is there value to be there all the time? It's debatable. But to go back to what you're saying, that's what I had said earlier on Cause I started working with this before the internet. As I say, right, we used to have to use dial up with a remote control Like the internet, wasn't? You know, the internet's been around obviously longer, but it wasn't mainstream for businesses and for remote connectivity and teleconferencing it was. You know, if you had. It was quite costly. But I just tell everybody I've been everywhere, but I've been nowhere Right, because when I first started I would go to New York almost weekly on the. And here we are all these years later and I can tell you I've never been to the Empire State Building. I've walked by it 3,000 times but you never take the moment.
Speaker 2:You never take the moment because, as a consultant, you get on the train, you go to a place, you go to the office. You eat lunch, you get out of the office. Usually you work late to maximize how much you can get out of your trip. You go to dinner. You go back to the room. You have to catch up on the stuff that you may have missed while you were gone emails and stuff like that. Then you go to bed. You wake up. You're tired because you had a long day. You may have to do a few emails or something before you go into the office. You eat breakfast. You go into the office, you have lunch, go back. Repeat again Next day. Repeat get back. Get on a plane, train, automobile, go home.
Speaker 2:You know, so you don't you know, a lot of times individuals don't take the opportunity to see anything other than a method of transportation, a hotel and an office.
Speaker 1:Well, you take advantage of that in conferences.
Speaker 2:Now, right, like to me, I do that now with conferences, yep, I try to get out as much as I can. Again, it depends on where the conference is how easy it is to get out and you know what the schedule is like. We just went to san antonio and you know, jen avoided us, but um no, I did not I went to take to go the river walk and all that other.
Speaker 2:You know the other the other type things that were close by. So I was able to at least say I walked the river walk. I was able to see it. I did the little boat tours to see the history I love that, that stuff right there is great for me the history that I love that too anywhere you go, like I was up in boston and I had someone come visit and I had never done it.
Speaker 2:You know this was many years ago but they had like the duck tours and I did it in cape cod in massachusetts and I also did it in boston and I knew a lot of history about boston and I even learned a lot of history while I was on the you always do, yeah they driving around, because you talk about some of the, just the uniqueness of the buildings and stuff. So anywhere I go now I want to try to do one of those what I call chris, and I talked about this too the historical type events, the best you know yeah, anyone who's doing conferences include those.
Speaker 2:I mean they did with san antonio but include those historical type things. I mean, it was even great going to the alamo, just as you know. It's just Same.
Speaker 3:I totally agree, like. So back, like you said, like we used to always go, and to your point you're tired, trying to maximize the visit. But I recently it's funny you guys say that because I did the same thing where I started to say I'm going to tack on an extra day, come in a day earlier, stay a day or two extra to see the city that I'm in. And it was the same thing. And with San Antonio, it was amazing because, like, I had a morning, I did the river walk, I read a book, I had a coffee and I'm like this is amazing, like saw the Alamo, was able to see it, and making it part of the like, making it part of the trips that you actually see it, because you don't know necessarily if you're ever going to be back there, right, and one of the things I'm a big fan of, that I love, and I've loved it forever, is the hop on, hop off bus tour.
Speaker 3:So I love those for your purpose, brad where you have the history.
Speaker 3:So basically it'll be like a double decker bus and you pay and they'll take you all around the city and usually there's different routes, but throughout the bus tour you've got headphones in nowadays, before it used to be somebody on a microphone and they're like you know, here you are in Manhattan, where the average rent is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and here you are and you can, if there's somewhere you want to see, like the empire state building or the statue of Liberty or whatever, you can get off, walk around, explore it, and then there's little pickup points where it'll pick you back up and you just keep going around.
Speaker 3:But what I have found is that, like you can do the same route like three times and you can learn something new every single time, because maybe you have a different instructor or they just can't tell you everything about every building in like three minutes that you're driving by. So you always learn so much and that's why I love those walking tours or bus tours for that purpose I agree with you and I learned the uh go, go ahead, I like chris, it's hard for him to get a word in with me, and brad isn't it?
Speaker 3:he's like I'm used to it you saying I talk too much I'm bad. I'm bad too.
Speaker 2:I love chris, we'll give you the moment continue, you speak.
Speaker 3:You guys are having a very Canadian moment no, you go, it's just a repeat it's all good continue with the technology today, I also appreciate the self guided as well like you're
Speaker 2:talking about with the buses, because I have done some self guided tours here and they have the points where you go through and you play and you have a narrator so you can go at your own pace. But there's some attractions I spend more time at because I like to see. I did like I did the edison and ford estates tour, which was self-guided and that's what it was is. You went to certain points and they said, okay, now play point number one. But some of it had so much for you to take in, visibly right, that if you were to hear the, the, what the narrator was saying about the history of the location or or the point of the tour where you were on, you would have missed a lot of the intricate details, like when you're looking in the house and you're seeing just the old beds and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:It was just I don't know.
Speaker 3:We're just digressing and I know, I feel like I shouldn't talk anymore no, no, I'm just kidding, it's just we're having a moment.
Speaker 2:Well, miss jen, mrs jen yes, thanks for yes thank you for taking the time to speak with us. We do appreciate your time. We do appreciate your support. We do appreciate you also sharing the information about production orders versus assembly orders with us. Hopefully I cleared some questions for any that may have had questions, or even taught everybody something new about it as well. I know I have a better understanding of production orders and assembly orders and have a good idea of which questions to ask when trying to determine which to use and the benefits of each of them.
Speaker 2:If anyone has any additional questions or needs additional assistance with the business, central implementation or manufacturing portion of the implementation, what is the best way to get a hold of you?
Speaker 3:So they can go to saberlimitedcom. All my contact information's on there. I'm on LinkedIn, just Jen Claridge, so I think you guys have a bio now of the speakers, which is great. So my LinkedIn connection is up there. Those would probably be the two best ways. And then my email is just jennc at saverlimitedcom and I love sharing my knowledge. Like I said, I've done this presentation at a few of the different conferences because people really did seem interested in the topic and I think it was helpful to kind of see. So if anybody even wants like a PowerPoint sort of this, where I actually do like a walk through of creating the exact same order through as an assembly and through as a production order, I love to just kind of like help people and just share my knowledge. So if you wanted to reach out and just get more information, like I said, people have been very generous to help me understand concepts better and I'm happy to do that for others as well.
Speaker 2:I appreciate that and I think I do think that sounds interesting to have a comparison of setting up an item in assembly order and setting up an item in a bill of material and processing.
Speaker 2:That is a great way to see it and, like you, chris and I feel the same way. We share a lot of information because of that. I mean some people have always shared for me and it's almost at the point where it's time to give back. Speaking of presentations, will you be going anywhere soon for presenting any conferences, user groups or anything?
Speaker 3:So there's a yeah user group in February for the Dynamic Communities user group. I know we've put in the call for speakers. I usually speak at DynamicsCon summit directions I have the last couple years anyway so I've submitted. I haven't yet heard back. I don't think that they've selected the speakers, but I'll be at most of the same conferences that you guys probably will be, In February.
Speaker 2:Which user group are you going?
Speaker 3:to. I think it's just a virtual. You know how they have the Dynamics Community monthly virtual user groups that everyone can connect to, so I offered to do one on data decisions. So I'm going to talk about just like different ways to be able to use the data in your system to analyze, like errors and troubleshoot and fix data. There's a lot of different, like configuration worksheets and edit in Excel and packages, and what are the differences?
Speaker 1:Very cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's great wherever I can.
Speaker 3:So if you guys have ideas too on things, I was thinking about starting up a little like blog or youtube channel of just things, because I find there's like these quick little hitter things where people are like, yeah, I don't know, I'm I'm thinking about it. So if you guys, you know, have any ideas, but just the idea of like quick little hitter things on things, where it's like I just want to see it. You know, I love to share my knowledge in any way that I can.
Speaker 1:So you can probably do in smaller pieces and smaller pieces.
Speaker 2:We'll talk with you after, not today, but I will follow up with a conversation on that.
Speaker 3:I have over dinner in Vegas.
Speaker 2:Well, no before that, because I've been working on putting something together for that portion of it and that user group meeting that you're talking about, the virtual user group meeting, is February 20th at I think it's 1300 Eastern time.
Speaker 3:I believe so, yeah, usually two hours.
Speaker 2:I know I shared it the other day and you had it as well, and if you're presenting there, I know I already uh uh elected to attend that. So I have that on my calendar as well. So I'm looking forward to seeing your presentation and other than that, I think I'll see you in Vegas, hopefully, hopefully, we all can make it there, uh yeah it'd be great, and we can uh get you the um food truck meal, that uh meal that we promised you.
Speaker 3:That would be awesome.
Speaker 2:Other than that, happy new year. Thank you again for your time. We look forward to talking with you again soon, Ciao ciao, yes you too. Take care, bye, bye. Thank you, chris, for your time for another episode of In the Dynamics Corner Chair, and thank you to our guests for participating.
Speaker 1:Thank you, brad, for your time. It is a wonderful episode of Dynamics Corner chair. I would also like to thank our guests for joining us. Thank you for all of our listeners tuning in as well. You can find Brad at developerlifecom that is D-V-L-P-R-L-I-F-E dot com, that is D-V-L-P-R-L-I-F-E dot com, and you can interact with them via Twitter D-V-L-P-R-L-I-F-E. You can also find me at Mattalinoio, m-a-t-a-l-i-n-o dot I-O, and my Twitter handle is Mattalino16. And you can see those links down below in the show notes. Again, thank you everyone. Thank you and take care.
