A Stroll Through Dynamics 365 Process Manufacturing: Formula Designer – Part 1
Today’s blog goes over the Formula Designer for Process Manufacturing in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain.
This blog post does not cover the differences between a BOM and a formula. To learn more about that topic, check out this blog: BOMs or Formulas: What’s the Deal?
The example we will be using today is a manufacturing company producing plastic products for the automotive industry. Let’s imagine the company hired a new product designer who has experience with other ERP systems, but no experience with Dynamics 365. The new hire will be known as “Ryan”. Ryan has been navigating around in Dynamics 365 for a few days and is getting comfortable, and now he wants to understand how to use and configure the Formula designer – after all that is what he was hired to do.
Please note that a very similar toolset is also available in Dynamics AX 2012.
First things first – Ryan navigates to the formula designer on the menu.
1. Click Product information management > Bill of materials and formulas > Formulas.
2. Select a record and click Designer. In this example, we are selecting Form-011.
When he opens the Formula designer page, the “tree” on the left shows the list of co-products (if there are any) and the active ingredients that make up the product. As can be noted from the screenshot below, there are two ingredients and one co-product in Ryan’s example.
To configure the tree view, click Setup.
For example, to see the quantity and unit in the tree view, set the slider for Qty. and Unit to Yes. Click OK to accept changes.
The Qty. and Unit fields are now shown in the tree view.
To configure the Route Operations FastTab, click Setup.
Another are of interest for Ryan is to explore the Operation field -> set the slider for Operation to Yes. Click OK to accept changes.
The Operation field is now shown on the Route operations FastTab.
To learn about analyzing and editing formulas and formula lines, and select a formula and route, check out part 2 of this blog series later this week!