Microsoft WinDays 2008

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No, it is not a new piece of software; although I admit that to anyone not knowing exactly what it is it might just seem so. Microsoft WinDays is the largest and most important business and technology conference in Croatia (and the region), traditionally organized in Opatija in the last week of April. This year it is taking place from April 22 to 25, with a pre-conference day on April 21. Last year it gathered over 1,900 attendees from Croatia and neighboring countries, and this year it is expected to even surpass this number. During the conference the attendees will have an opportunity to visit 160+ presentations covering 28 different topics, 9 pre-conference seminars, plus enjoy themselves and mingle about the evening parties, or simply enjoy the mild weather, sea and fresh air.

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Inventory method UFO :-)

  • Reading time:2 mins read

Sorry for this series of totally irrelevant posts, by now you must be thinking that I am either out of ideas, or totally uninterested about the future of this blog. Neither is true, I am actually spending practically all of my time preparing for ten hours of content I have to deliver at a conference next week, and about which I hope I will post a blog in its own right.

Continue ReadingInventory method UFO :-)

Flying Dynamics

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Do you want to fly Dynamics? A friend of mine has just done so, and he took a handful of pictures as well. It seems that Adria Airways, a (or the, I am not really sure) Slovenian airline, has entered into some kind of deal with Microsoft, and are now promoting Microsoft Dynamics brand on their aircraft. My friend, also a Dynamics consultant, couldn’t resist taking a few pictures, and with his permission, I give you a preview of what you can expect if you fly into, or out of Slovenia these days.

To the best of my knowledge, Adria Airways has recently implemented Microsoft Dynamics NAV, and seems to have entered the full operation phase with it. What kind of message does it send? I can think of this one: “With Microsoft Dynamics, sky is the limit!”

You can find the pictures here:

Picture 1
Picture 2

Goodspeed, Adria Airways!

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A new flavor to my feed

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I have a humble request to all of you subscribing to my blog’s feed. I’ve just configured a Feedburner feed for this blog, which will allow me track the blog statistics in a better way, and through this understand the needs of my blog readers better. In the end, I hope it will result in this blog being a better place for all of you.

So, would you care to configure your readers to read this blog’s feed from http://feeds.feedburner.com/NavigateIntoSuccess?format=xml instead of current default WordPress.com feed? I would highly appreaciate it.

I’ve also put a feedburner subscription link to the sidebar, so you may also subscribe from there.

Thanks!

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Peugeot – Engineered to be enjoyed (or A simple way a car dealership can profit from an ERP system?)

  • Reading time:5 mins read

About six months ago, when I was buying a car, a friend of mine, in a typical The Good, the Bad and the Ugly fashion, told me that there were two kinds of cars: good cars, and French cars. I bought a French car. I bought a Peugeot 407 SW (Peugeot says their cars are engineered to be enjoyed) and although I could do so, I am not going to make this a post about what went wrong with this car already so far. This is going to be a post about how the simplest of the features of an ERP system can influence customer (dis)satisfaction, and create long term decisions for, or against a car vendor. Also, not typical for me, I am speaking from the shoes of a customer, rather than consultant, this time. Quite a change for me.

Continue ReadingPeugeot – Engineered to be enjoyed (or A simple way a car dealership can profit from an ERP system?)

Not-so-elementary costing: The Change

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They say the only constant is change. I’d say that the only other constant is error. We humans tend to err. Give a repeatable task to a human, and they’ll mess it up every once in a while. Some call it the human factor.

One of the many repeatable tasks in Microsoft Dynamics NAV is setting up items. If you remember my rant about mandatory fields, and how I said they were baaad, there might be an even more baaad kind of fields: the default value fields. Because the system simply inserts a value into these fields without asking for your say, and if anything is easy, it’s only so easy to overlook these. Yep, you have a chance to voice your oppinion on these, but having got to hurry for a cup of coffe with Mary from accounting, admit it, you’re gonna leave that default FIFO costing method for an item every once in a while, even though it should really have been Average. Then you’ll start posting. Then your phone rings and starts screaming at you about a moron who screwed up items again.

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Purchasing Services: Inventory Value Zero

  • Reading time:4 mins read

I’ve stumbled recently upon a support request, where a partner asked if there was a possibility to register purchases of services in Microsoft Dynamics NAV. When it comes to selling services, such as consulting, or repairs, NAV is your true friend, because you can use Resources to register sales against them. However, purchase documents don’t offer a possibility of purchasing resources, so you are left to some workarounds.

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Output journal confusion

  • Reading time:6 mins read

A few days ago, I’ve got a question from a customer, about an alleged bug in Microsoft Dynamics NAV. According to online help, when you are posting output in manufacturing module, the last line of the type Output in the journal will actually adjust the inventory level. However, what is not explained is how the figure in this field is calculated, and why exactly that way.

When you decide to post an output of a production order, you specify the released production order for which you want to post the output, then call the function Explode Routing. After this function completes its chore, users unfamiliar with how manufacturing works can get quite confused, because two of the fields the procedure fills in contain unexpected values. These two fields are Output Quantity, and Scrap Quantity.

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Scrap doesn’t just happen

  • Reading time:6 mins read

In reality, if you need 1,000 of whatever product, the manufacturing process is rarely going to yield exactly 1,000 of it, even if you feed into the first operation the exact quantities of raw materials system calculated as gross requirements. The process may produce 980 or 1,020, but is hardly ever going to be exactly 1,000. If you didn’t take scrap into account, or you took incorrect scrap into account, your actual output from the process might be much more unpredictable, with huge variances. Variances are always a problem, only they don’t have to be that big a problem in all scenarios.

Continue ReadingScrap doesn’t just happen

Scrap the crap

  • Reading time:1 min read

Scrap happens. So does sh*t. In my last blog post about scrap I gave a crappy explanation of how forward calculation of fixed scrap works. So instead of disgracing myself by leaving the incorrect explanation there, I’ve just corrected it, and posted this lame excuse here. Anyone who is interested in how it really works, please accept my sincere apology for not testing my hypothesis thoroughly before posting it here. I’ve now tested it thoroughly, corrected it accordingly, and there you go.

Today is April the 1st. The April Fool’s Day. I hoped to be posting a prank here today, but it seems I’ve posted a prank few days ago. Sorry.

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