Microsoft Great Plains in Aerospace & Defense industries – implementation & customization highlights Written by Andrew Karasev Microsoft Great Plains fits horizontal markets clientele and in case of Aerospace and Defense industry we’ll talk about contractors – parts and subsystems for government contracts. We do not necessarily talk about large corporation, however models described could be implemented for large publicly traded company. As a rule – market is represented by established companies with long history, including long history of its ERP and Computer Business System. It is difficult to stake on computer operating systems future, however you may try to give high level of trust to ERP coming from Microsoft Business Solutions, especially considering fact of acquisition of such market leaders as Great Plains Software and Navision Software. •Service Model. Typically your product has service contract with hourly or annual payments and you track repair and preventive maintenance cases, have a list of replacement parts. Microsoft Great Plains has several options to automate these services. You can use customized version of Inventory Control Module, where you track serial/lot number, locations, item replacements, etc. In Great Plains Dexterity you can write light customization, tracking service cycle. Another way is to deploy Field Service suite, where you have Service Call Management, Contract Administration, Preventive Maintenance, Return Management as well as a set of eXXX modules such as eService Call, eReturn. You usually have to tailor these modules to fit your unique requirements – do it via Dexterity, VBA/Modifier, SQL Stored Procedures or Web Application, working with Inventory and Field Service tables. Assuming your product has serial number – then by looking up serial number you can see all service history. •Bidding. Great Plains Sales Order Processing (SOP) module allows you to have Quotes, Sales Orders, Invoices. You might need bidding and negotiation documentation system. In case of Great Plains best and future-oriented approach is to implement Sales side in Microsoft CRM, integrated with Great Plains via MS CRM-GP integration tool. All calls and emails, plus contracts will be logged and documented in MS CRM and quotes are moved to or from Great Plains Microsoft Great Plains Chemicals & Paint Industry implementation & customization notes Written by Andrew Karasev Microsoft Great Plains fits to majority of industries, in case of Chemicals & Paint you should consider implementation with balanced approach of utilizing existing Great Plains standard module and light customization and reporting with Great Plains Dexterity, MS SQL Server stored procedures, Modifier/VBA and direct .Net publishing from Great Plains Company database. Let’s consider industry requirements and their implementation in Microsoft Great Plains: •Raw Materials Labeling. Microsoft Great Plains ReportWriter supports Barcode fonts and you can print out barcodes off inventory control items list. You should modify existing report or create new report – in case of new report – you should train GP users to change report restriction to print labels for your raw materials batches •Quality Check & Bin Locations. Great Plains Inventory Control (IV) module supports bins and you can allocate items from specific bins, quality check should be implemented as either light Dexterity customization in IV or set of Crystal Reports to print checklists •Quarantine/Blocked inventory. In Great Plains you deploy sites and when you need to quarantine your Inventory – you move it into quarantine site. The other way is to quarantine bins •Accident Procedure Sheet (APS) – this and others compliance reports should be printed off IV tables via Crystal Reports Cont'd on page 2 ==>   ImproveHomeLife.com © 2005 Terms of Use