Beyond support: Dynamics challenges resolved for chemical manufacturer

A $5 million global chemical manufacturer was experiencing Microsoft Dynamics performance issues with their original Dynamics AX implementation and needed help determining how to move forward to gain additional functionality. But that was only part of the story. The company was also grappling with an unresolved issue where warehouse scanners were not assigning the right codes to the right products, providing an inaccurate view of inventory.

Since the vendor who performed the initial Dynamics implementation couldn’t diagnose the problem, warehouse workers had to manually enter all data. Not only did that introduce human error, but the speed of production decreased, fulfillment time increased, and sales orders and purchasing/receiving were also adversely impacted. With their challenges snowballing, and having recently adopted Fusion Alliance as their new Dynamics support partner, the company turned to our team for answers and results.

Our client asked us to evaluate their Dynamics AX system, add functionality not available in their current Dynamics AX version, and address the performance and scanner issues. Based on their needs, our support team suggested performing a Dynamics AX CU 13 update.

• As part of the update, we fixed the integrations with third-party software, added additional custom code as needed, and addressed performance issues

• Our client has various partners, so we collaborated with both the client and their partners to get the job done successfully

During the course of this integration work, we were able to identify and fix the cause of the debilitating scanner and inventory problem. The issue was in inventory dimensions, the backbone of Dynamics. Everything in Dynamics relies on inventory dimensions to perform account reconciliation, cost evaluation, and reflect inventory quantities accurately. We coordinated with the client’s sales, purchasing, and production teams to correct the accuracy of the inventory.

After that, warehouse workers were able to resume using the scanners, and a domino effect of positive outcomes occurred. Productivity and warehouse activity increased, and one process after another became more efficient, including purchase receiving, production picking, production put away, inventory movement, transfer of stock to other warehouses, and shipping of product to clients.

With the update installed successfully and other problems identified and resolved, we continue to remediate fallout from the scanner issue and provide additional assistance as part of an ongoing support contract.