Ryan: Welcome to the deep dive. If you’re operating in manufacturing, distribution, or really even retail, you know, the single biggest headache in compliance isn’t the lack of quality standards, it’s the inability to enforce them consistently.
Emma: That’s it.
Ryan: Today we’re doing a custom deep dive into the challenges of quality control, specifically within Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, and maybe more importantly, exploring the tools that let you finally ditch the clipboard and.
Emma: Put real quality gates directly into your workflow. The mission today is it’s pretty crucial because we’re talking about a fundamental failure, an architectural one.
Ryan: Okay.
Emma: The problem is the separation between your quality data, you know, your inspection results and your core operations. The stuff like moving inventory or finishing a production order.
Ryan: That separation, it just sounds like it’s designed to fail.
Emma: It is. It absolutely is. When your quality checks are on paper or, you know, in some disconnected spreadsheet, defects are almost guaranteed to slip through. Right. Think about the receiving dock. Time pressure is high. If the inspection process is separate from the physical receipt, bad items just get.
Ryan: Put into stock and then they move through production. Maybe they get shipped out.
Emma: Wasting expensive materials along the way, and then, yeah, they go straight to the customer. So our goal is to show you how to move away from that, that disconnected chaos toward integrated, enforced quality controls.
Ryan: Which fundamentally mitigates your audit risk and your compliance risk.
Emma: Precisely. If quality lives outside your main system, your erp, your audit trail is fractured, and the financial hit from a recall or even just customer returns, it just goes up exponentially. Integration isn’t a nice to have. It’s really a necessity.
Ryan: Let’s start with that disconnected reality. I mean, what’s actually happening in a lot of companies right now, right? You’re running Business Central for everything. Finance, inventory, purchasing. But when a truck shows up at the dock, the quality team is still walking around with a clipboard and a paper checklist.
Emma: And that clipboard, that’s the weak link. It really is. I mean, Business Central can record batch attributes, things like moisture content or color.
Ryan: Sure, but it doesn’t enforce anything.
Emma: It doesn’t automatically enforce the results. It’s just a database. It stores the data. So if an inspection fails, nothing in the system automatically stops a warehouse worker from putting that inventory away and making it available for sale.
Ryan: And that delay, the time between the inspection happening and the system actually knowing about it, that’s a massive vulnerability.
Emma: It’s everything. So the solution is to embed the quality check directly into the transaction itself. We’re looking at solutions like the Quality Inspector app that don’t just record data. They become mandatory gates in the workflow. They automate the inspection creation. They enforce the pass fail rules right there in receiving in production, and they manage quarantines automatically, instantly preventing that bad material from moving an inch further.
Ryan: That sounds great, but doesn’t that risk, I don’t know, grinding production to a halt? If the inspection process itself is clunky.
Emma: That’S a critical point. And it’s why these tools have to integrate with the hardware on the floor. The sources we looked at highlight how this app works alongside tools like Warehouse Insight and Shop Floor Insight.
Ryan: Ah, so you’re using barcode scanners.
Emma: Exactly. Barcode driven data capture. Real time validation on a rugged device. The inspector scans the item, the right test pops up, they enter the results and boom. The enforcement is instantaneous.
Ryan: So it actually streamlines the work. It’s not another delay. It’s just part of the process.
Emma: It becomes part of the natural flow. It replaces the clipboard, and it eliminates that risky time gap between logging a result and applying the consequence.
Ryan: You know, I hear companies say, oh, we use the standard fields in B.C. and our team knows the rules. Why is that such a dangerous assumption?
Emma: Because people make mistakes and systems designed for just recording data are, well, they’re insufficient for enforcement. When you rely on a manual process, you are betting that every single employee, every single time, will check a piece of paper, tell the right person, and then go into the system to manually block the item.
Ryan: That’s not going to happen, not consistently.
Emma: It’s not scalable, and it will not stand up to an audit. Disconnected processes just fundamentally increase your risk. For quality to mean anything, it has to be integrated. Okay, so if we agree integration and enforcement are key, the next step is to get more sophisticated than just a simple pass or fail. And that’s where this feature called customizable grades comes into play.
Ryan: Okay, so we’re moving beyond a simple red light, green light system. What do grades let you do that a standard field doesn’t.
Emma: They replace the old hard coded states. So now you can configure multiple specific conditions. You could have grade A for premium, grade B for standard, but you could also have grade C for seconds, or even specific failure codes like dimension failure.
Ryan: And that gives you control over what happens to the material.
Emma: Exactly. And the real power is linking those grades directly to transaction blocking. This is where the control really happens.
Ryan: This is the core of it.
Emma: It’s the absolute core. You set up rules that say for a lot with this specific grade. Here are the transactions it’s allowed to be in. So for example, if a lot has a grade of say in progress, meaning.
Ryan: The test isn’t even done yet, or.
Emma: A grade of fail, you can configure the system to instantly block it from all sales. The lot allow sales setting for those grades is just set to block.
Ryan: So you can’t accidentally sell a bad batch.
Emma: Zero chance. But the control is also granular, which is really clever.
Ryan: Okay, give me an example. Let’s say a batch of paint. It’s safe, but the color is slightly off. A grade C. Perfect example. You can’t sell it to your primary customer, but you don’t want to just throw it away, right?
Emma: Maybe you can use it internally.
Ryan: Exactly. So with grades, you block sales lot, allow sales. Yes. But you can set lot, allow consumption to allow. So it can be used in a less sensitive production process.
Emma: So it’s not just about compliance. It’s about better asset utilization. Reducing scrap 100%.
Ryan: It helps manage working capital. But how does it know which rule to apply first if you have like 10 different grades? Good question. The priority.
Emma: It follows a strict priority structure. Priority zero is always for in progress states. The system forces the test to be done before anything else can happen.
Ryan: Got it.
Emma: Then failure grades get the next lowest numbers and your pass grades get the highest numbers. So the system always evaluates an order, looking for the worst case scenario first. If a lot could be a pass on one test, but a fail on another, the failure grade wins and blocks the transaction. It’s foolproof.
Ryan: Okay, so moving from the rules to the rhythm of the floor. This automation is what solves that delayed inspection problem we talked about at the start. So let’s talk triggers. How does the system know when to create an inspection?
Emma: Well, the automation has to be tied to key operational moments in receiving. You want that test created, the second, the material is lost. Okay, you can do that two ways. Either when a purchase order is posted so it’s officially in inventory, or even faster when a warehouse receipt is posted.
Ryan: So the quality team gets the notification the moment the truck pulls away.
Emma: Not three days later when someone finds the paperwork. Exactly. So that handles the front end, but.
Ryan: What about on the production floor? That’s way more complex. You have checks happening mid run at the end.
Emma: Production needs more flexibility, more layers. You can create tests when a production order is released. Think of it like a mandatory pre.
Ryan: Flight Check a checklist for the machine setup or tooling.
Emma: Yep, A proactive check. Then you have reactive checks which happen when output is posted. This is your quality control on the finished or semi finished goods before they get put away.
Ryan: But the real teeth are the enforcement points, the digital gates that actually stop the workflow.
Emma: Right. And they can be very specific. You can configure the system to require a finish test before finishing the production order.
Ryan: So if the test isn’t done or it’s open or it failed, the system just says no.
Emma: It throws an error. You cannot finish the order. You cannot create that final inventory entry.
Ryan: But what about those long production runs? You can’t just wait until the very end to find a problem.
Emma: You can’t. You’d have massive amounts of scrap. That’s where periodic testing rules are so important. You can require a finish test before every X units, every 10 pieces that.
Ryan: Come off the line to catch machine drift.
Emma: Or you can do it based on time. Require a test before every X period of time, every four hours, for example, to make sure shift changes don’t cause issues.
Ryan: That continuous enforcement seems like it would dramatically reduce Scrap. Now, the sources mention something called auto output configuration. Why would you need that?
Emma: It’s for refinement. It lets you define what kind of output triggers a test. You might only care about a mandatory review when something goes wrong.
Ryan: Like when scrap is logged.
Emma: Exactly. You can set it to trigger on any quantity output, or only with quantity for normal production, or crucially, only with scrap. So if an operator logs 50 units of scrap, boom. A mandatory quality inspection is created before they can continue the run.
Ryan: Hmm. So we’ve covered the structured enforcement, but now let’s talk about moving beyond static, inflexible tests to something, well, something more intelligent. Dynamic. That phrase, dynamic expressions, it sounds pretty technical. How do we break that down so it makes sense?
Emma: It just means the system can do math and look up data in real time. So first there are calculated fields. Okay, let’s say your quality test requires measuring volume. Instead of the inspector pulling out a calculator, which is, you know, just asking for errors.
Ryan: Right.
Emma: They just enter the length, width and height into three separate fields. And the fourth field, volume, is calculated instantly by the system. It’s read only. Human calculation. Error is just gone.
Ryan: So the system does the heavy lifting. But you said the real game changer is using that to set the past conditions themselves.
Emma: Absolutely. That’s embedded expressions. It means the acceptable range for a field isn’t static. It can change based on data from another field. In the same test.
Ryan: Okay, give me an example.
Emma: Imagine you’re testing a material where the surface temperature spec is, say, 50 to 150 degrees above the ambient room temperature.
Ryan: On a paper form. The inspector would have to do that math in their head every single time.
Emma: And they’d get it wrong. Sometimes, with an embedded expression, the inspector enters the ambient temperature and the pass fail condition for the surface temperature field is instantly and dynamically set. The system now knows the only acceptable range is ambient temperature 50 to ambient temperature 150. It adapts.
Ryan: Good products don’t get failed just because it was a hot day in the factory.
Emma: Exactly. And you can also reference data from the item card itself or from item attributes. But the most advanced use is looking up data from custom tables.
Ryan: Let’s do the cheese specification example. Why is that so important?
Emma: In specialized industries like food or chemicals, your specs can change all the time based on the customer or the production version. You can’t hard code them. So this system lets you store those complex requirements in in a dedicated specification table.
Ryan: So instead of a static number on the test, the system goes and pulls the current correct spec.
Emma: That’s it. Precisely. For our cheese item, the nitrogen requirement might be in a custom table called example specification. The pass condition for the nitrogen result field is then dynamically calculated. It looks up the target value from that table for that specific version and then applies a tolerance, say plus or minus 2%. Wow. This ensures the test is always measured against the latest, most accurate spec. It transforms quality control from a static checklist into a living, intelligent database interaction.
Ryan: That dynamic testing is really impressive, but we have to talk about the elephant in the room getting the workforce to change. If you’ve been using paper forms for 20 years, how do you ease that pain of going digital?
Emma: You have to meet them halfway. You can’t just rip the clipboard out of their hands on day one. And this is where integrating with other tech becomes crucial. The sources highlight an integration with Azure.
Ryan: Document Intelligence, Formally form recognizer. Okay, what does that actually do to help a company ditch the clipboard?
Emma: It solves two massive problems. First, you can upload your old paper forms, a PDF, even just a picture of one. And the AI will analyze the layout and automatically generate all the electronic fields for you in the quality template.
Ryan: So no one has to spend weeks manually recreating every single field from the old paper forms.
Emma: Correct. It saves a huge amount of setup time. But the second part is even more critical. It can recognize handwritten forms.
Ryan: No way.
Emma: Yes. So if your team is still using paper because they’re in a dirty environment or out in the field, they can fill it out by hand, scan it. And the Azure tool imports the handwritten data right into the electronic test record.
Ryan: In Business Central, that is the ultimate digital bridge. You get the electronic record immediately without forcing a huge cultural shock on the floor staff. Right. Okay, let’s switch gears to high stakes compliance. We mentioned audit trails, right?
Emma: For highly regulated industries like aerospace or defense, you need more than just a list of passes and fails. You need things like a first article inspection report, a fair form three.
Ryan: And the quality inspector has templates for that. What makes that form so important?
Emma: It is the formal documented proof that every single engineering and design requirement has been met before you start full production. The system lets you set up these inspection templates as a balloon bubble type, which means each check is mapped directly back to the characteristic on the technical drawing.
Ryan: So it’s your liability defense.
Emma: It’s your entire liability defense in a high stakes contract, all in one place.
Ryan: And if a test fails, how smart is the automated response? Can it do more than just block a sales order?
Emma: Oh, much more. It plugs directly into the business central workflow system. So instead of a manager having to step in, the system can automatically set database values.
Ryan: Okay, give me a powerful example of that.
Emma: If a key component fails its receiving inspection, a workflow can automatically set the purchasing blocked field on that item card to all.
Ryan: Instantly preventing anyone from ordering more of that potentially bad part.
Emma: Exactly. It isolates the problem at the source. Or if a test reveals a serious design flaw in production, the workflow can automatically change the status of that entire production BM header to under development.
Ryan: The production biome header. That’s the master recipe for the item. So setting it to under development effectively quarantines the entire manufacturing process for that product.
Emma: The entire downstream process stops until the flaw is fixed. And beyond that, you can integrate with teams so non BC users can see test results or use power Automate for even more complex actions like triggering a formal corrective action system.
Ryan: We’ve covered a huge amount of ground here, from the pain of the paper trail all the way to this integrated dynamic enforcement. I think the most important takeaway is that shift moving from disconnected after the fact checks to integrated real time and intelligent quality control. You get that dual benefit, right? You prevent immediate defects, which is great, but you’re also creating this ironclad proactive audit trail for the long run.
Emma: The long term strategic value here, it really can’t be overstated. The true power of this isn’t just about stopping one bad lot today. It’s about what those detailed, timestamped, traceable digital records become over time. It’s about creating immutable records like that Fair form three that will stand up to regulatory scrutiny years from now. A system like this fundamentally changes an organization’s entire liability posture when it comes to product quality. For every single item you produce from.
Ryan: This day forward, integrated quality control. It moves from being an operational chore to a strategic defense mechanism. That’s a powerful idea for you to think about until our next deep dive.
