The use of Machines as Production Resources in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain

Dynamics 365 resources are used to perform activities in the manufacturing process. Resources can be of many types, these include machines, human, tools, vendors, location and facility. Each of these having different properties and set up. With the advancement and automatization and the need for quicker and more efficient manufacturing processes, machines are amongst the most used type of resources. In this blog, we will focus on how machine type resources can be used for productions and how these relate to routes, operations, efficiency, capabilities, and even production scheduling.

Navigate to your Production resources by following the path,

• Production control > Set up > Resources > Resources

Let´s look at an example resource, some of the most relevant set up and how it can be used for production in D365. The image below shows a machine type resource called hydraulic press.

One of the most important tabs within a resource is the Calendar. By associating a calendar to a resource, we are setting up its working times, which can also be described as the Resource capacity. How does this relate to production? If you are a production manager scheduling production orders for a given week, you will only be able to schedule it within the working times specified in the resource calendar. It is important to consider that a Machine can have scheduled down-times for a number of reasons, therefore keeping an updated resource calendar will allow us to make sure that no production orders are scheduled during these times.  Keep in mind that there´s additional set up that can affect the way a resource is scheduled. Within the operation tab,  we are able to specify efficiency percentage and even check a slider to set the resource for finite capacity.

D365 allows for the creation of Resource groups which are  multiple resources that correspond to  a work cell or a grouping of resources belonging to the same area/department.

How exactly are Machine type resources used in production?

A production/batch order may have a route associated. A route is the process you must follow in order to produce the finished product/subproduct. A route is composed of operations, which can be described as the individual activities or tasks that take place in the production process. In order to perform an operation, you may need to use a resource, which means that within each operation, we are able to specify a resource or resource group that can be used to do that operation.  You may link a resource to an operation by navigating to the path.

• Production control > Operations > Route > Route details

Locate yourself on an operation and select the tab Resource requirements. Add a new line and set the requirement type as resource/resource group. In the requirement field search for the resource that you want to link to this operation and save.

Setting this up impacts each production order that uses this route. If you use job scheduling, the corresponding job on the production order will contain the resource that specific job will use and start and end time of that job, which in turn is the time that the resource will be scheduled. This will be reflected on the job card journal. Similarly, the resource used will also be reflected on the route card journal if you use operations scheduling instead.

From the resource itself, we are able view what that resource´s actual capacity is for a given day.  This takes into consideration everything we´ve talked about thus far. If we navigate to the hydraulic press we talked about earlier, click on capacity load on the top side of the screen under the view tab.

1. This data on this screen corresponds to the Hydraulic press.
2. For a given date, on this case, 9/4/2023,
   1. This resource has a capacity of 8 hours, which is given from the working times on its calendar.
   1. 6 out the 8 hours available for the resource have already been reserved by jobs.
   1. Only two hours left remaining for the capacity of this resource.
3. On the reference tab, we can see a breakdown of the jobs that have reservations on this resource. For this example, we can see that currently there are 2 jobs that have made a 3-hour reservation each.  We can see start and end times for these reservations and a direct link to the production order to which these jobs correspond.

We may also see this graphically with a chart of the resources capacity against the hours booked for production.

Machine type resources are a key part of modern manufacturing. Being able to track where it´s being used, how long it is being used and by what process, is key to not only manage your resources effectively, but also scheduling your production accordingly. Each production process is unique and require different levels of control over how they schedule their resources. When setting up a resource´s capacity, make sure that it reflects as best as possible how your resources really work day to day.  If you´d like to read more about resources and how they can relate to production. Check out Microsoft´s documentation. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/supply-chain/production-control/operations-resources