Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain is a comprehensive solution that offers a wide range of functionalities to help businesses manage their supply chain operations effectively. Let’s take a closer look at some of the key features of the solution and how they can benefit businesses.

Asset Management

Asset Management is an important feature that allows businesses to manage and service different types of equipment efficiently. This includes machines, production equipment, and vehicles. The solution supports various industries and uses functional locations to manage assets on locations. The hierarchical structure of functional locations helps to track asset costs on functional locations, which is critical for project controlling and reporting.

Cost Accounting

Cost Accounting in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain helps businesses manage their costs effectively. The solution allows businesses to configure base entities, create dimensions, and define policies for cost allocation and overhead rates. The solution also provides data sources and data providers for processing general ledger, budget, and statistical measures. Additionally, businesses can use the solution for overhead calculation, analysis, and reporting. 

Cost Management

Cost Management helps businesses manage the valuation and accounting of raw materials, semi-finished goods, finished goods, and work-in-progress assets. The solution enables businesses to define cost policies for inventory accounting, manufacturing accounting, indirect cost accounting, and ledger integration. The solution also provides workspaces for cost administration and cost analysis to give a comprehensive overview of the current status, KPIs, and deviation detection.

Inventory Management

Inventory Management in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain covers all the tasks related to inbound operations, quality assurance, inventory activities, outbound operations, and inventory control. The solution provides functionalities such as inventory journals, inventory locations, inventory statuses, and inventory count. It also supports consignment and batch management and provides a mobile workspace for inventory status checking.

Sensor Data Intelligence

IoT Intelligence, now known as Sensor Data Intelligence, helps businesses drive their supply chain processes based on IoT signals from machines and equipment on the production floor. The solution allows businesses to collect details from machines and equipment to update maintenance asset counter values in Supply Chain Management and drive predictive maintenance. It also provides a simple onboarding wizard for solution setup and supports customizing the solution as per business needs.

Master Planning

Master Planning allows businesses to determine and balance the future need for raw materials and capacity to meet company goals. The solution assesses what raw materials and capacities are currently available and what is required to complete production. Master Planning uses this information to calculate requirements and generate planned orders. The solution provides three main planning processes: Master planning, Forecast planning, and Intercompany master planning.

Procurement & Sourcing

Procurement and Sourcing covers all the steps from identifying a need for products and services through to procuring the product, receipt, invoicing, and processing of payment with vendors. The solution allows businesses to configure purchasing policies and workflows and supports spending limits and budget fund allocation. Additionally, businesses can identify suppliers for required products and services using request for quotation or purchase inquiry, and the solution allows for vendor catalog and approved vendor list attachment.

Product Information Management

Product Information Management involves a shared product definition, categorization, identifiers, and specific configurations of a product. Product information is essential to supply chain and commerce applications across all industries, and shared product definitions, documentation, attributes, and identifiers are necessary. A product is defined by a product number, name, and description, as well as product type, product subtype, product variant model, association with categories, attributes, images, attachments, units of measure, and translations.

Warehouse Management

Warehouse management is a critical component of supply chain management. A well-organized warehouse layout and management processes can significantly improve warehouse efficiency and enable companies to respond more flexibly to changing needs. Warehouse layouts can be divided into zones with various storage needs, such as temperature requirements or different turnover rates for items. Entities such as zone groups, zones, location profiles, location types, and locations must be defined to set up the warehouse layout. Work templates are then created using these entities to drive work.

Service Management

Service management is another important feature of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain. This feature enables businesses to manage customer service requests, service agreements, and service orders. The solution provides various features such as service level agreements, service orders, service agreements, and service requests to manage customer service requests efficiently.

• Service level agreements help businesses define the response and resolution times for different service types. Service orders help businesses create and manage service orders, assign resources, and track the progress of the service order.
• Service agreements help businesses manage the service level agreements, service pricing, and service coverage. Service requests enable businesses to create, manage, and track service requests from customers.

Transportation Management

Transportation management is another critical feature of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain. This feature enables businesses to manage their transportation operations efficiently. The solution provides features such as route planning, carrier selection, load planning, and shipment tracking.

• Route planning helps businesses create efficient routes for transportation, considering various constraints such as delivery windows, driver availability, and vehicle capacities.
• Carrier selection enables businesses to select the best carrier for a specific shipment based on factors such as cost, lead time, and service level.
• Load planning helps businesses optimize the loading of goods into vehicles, considering various constraints such as weight limits, volume limits, and stacking rules.
• Shipment tracking enables businesses to track the status of shipments and monitor their progress.

Sales & Marketing

Sales and Marketing feature enables businesses to find and build relationships with potential customers through marketing campaigns and activities. The module provides a comprehensive view of the sales flow, including the creation of quotations, up-selling and cross-selling, sales orders, sales agreements, and invoices. In addition, the Service Management feature allows businesses to establish service agreements, manage service orders, and analyze the delivery of services to customers. The reporting tools enable businesses to monitor service order margins and subscription transactions and print work descriptions and receipts.

Overall, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain is a comprehensive solution that covers various aspects of supply chain management, including asset management, cost accounting, inventory management, IoT intelligence, procurement and sourcing, production control, sales and marketing, service management, transportation management, and warehouse management. By leveraging these features, businesses can manage their supply chain operations efficiently and effectively, ensuring timely delivery of high-quality products and services to their customers.