Automate Production Scheduling and Visualize Workflows in Business Central

Welcome and Webinar Overview

Hey, good morning or afternoon, everyone. This is Mark here.

On today’s webinar, we’re going to go through production scheduling capabilities and options within Business Central—specifically the ones we at InsightWorks produce.

Here’s the plan: I’ll do a quick overview of who we are and what we do, then we’ll discuss the applications we have on the manufacturing side, and then we’ll jump into a demo.

If you have questions as we go, feel free to enter them in the question box in the GoToWebinar panel. I’ll do my best to answer during the session, and if I don’t get to your question, we’ll email you afterwards with the answers.

About InsightWorks

A little bit about InsightWorks: we’ve been around for a little over 10 years now, and we work primarily through our resellers.

Your existing Business Central partner—if they’re one of our resellers, which is quite likely—can get you pricing and details like that. But if you have questions, you can reach out to us directly as well, and we’ll do our best to help.

We’ve got lots of tools on the manufacturing side and lots on the warehousing and inventory management side. So once you’ve got inventory in stock—or as you’re receiving components—we have a ton of tools to help manage that part of the business too.

Free Applications for Manufacturing and Distribution

Let’s talk about some of the free applications that help with both manufacturing and distribution.

The top two are the Enhanced Planning Worksheet and Enhanced Forecasting Worksheet. The planning worksheet is more for the manufacturing side. The forecasting worksheet does a basic sales forecast, and if you’re doing make-to-stock or repeatable items, you can use forecasting to drive production demand.

Once you have that demand—sales demand or production demand—the Enhanced Planning Worksheet is what you use to actually plan your production. It’s like the standard Business Central planning worksheet, just better.

It’s free for a single concurrent user. That means you can have multiple people set up to use it, but only one person at a time can use it for free. If you want multiple concurrent users, you can purchase it.

There are a few other free tools as well:

• Graphical Scheduler (free scheduling visualization tool, covered today)
• Doc Extender (document management—store in SharePoint, share to the shop floor interface, etc.)
• Order Ship Express (free app for shipping label generation within Business Central for domestic parcel shipments; shipping itself isn’t free, the app is)
• WMS Express (free barcoding for Business Central: receiving, picking, shipping, inventory counts, bin movements)

Those are the free tools. But today we’re focusing on manufacturing, specifically production scheduling.

InsightWorks Manufacturing Applications: Planning, Scheduling, Execution, and Shipping

We generally start with planning. The Enhanced Planning Pack supports production planning—purchase planning, MRP, and generating production orders and the related documents like purchase orders.

Within that planning pack, there are also tools for production analysis—comparing actuals to expected, on routings and production orders, and more. The Enhanced Planning Worksheet and Enhanced Forecasting Worksheet are free; if you buy the whole pack, you get additional tools.

Once you’ve planned, you need to schedule. Business Central often uses the shipment date on the sales order to determine the due date for production, and that may not be realistic. So you send the work to a scheduling tool to figure out how you’re going to build it on the shop floor.

The Graphical Scheduler is a free tool that visualizes the schedule Business Central generates. You can drag and drop operations to manually reschedule. It can also be configured to show other types of documents, like warehouse shipments, sales orders, or purchase orders.

However, Business Central’s built-in scheduling does infinite capacity backward scheduling (or “infinite loading”), which doesn’t care whether you can actually manufacture within capacity constraints. Graphical Scheduler shows that result and lets you manipulate it, but it doesn’t add new scheduling logic.

If you don’t want to spend the day dragging and dropping schedules, that’s where MX APS comes in. APS stands for Advanced Planning and Scheduling, and I like to call it Automated Production Scheduling because that’s what it does.

MX APS can run in a job queue (for example, every day at 7 AM or every couple hours), or you can run it interactively. It looks at constraints—capacity, labor, tooling, floor space, and more—and generates a schedule you can actually execute on the shop floor.

Once scheduled, you execute on the shop floor. We have Shop Floor Insight (an MES) to capture labor, material, output, quality inspections, and more, feeding that back into Business Central so the next schedule run reflects what actually happened.

We also have Quality Inspector integrated with Shop Floor, and our Quality Inspector module is the basis for Microsoft’s Quality Management module planned for December (Microsoft has licensed a portion of it).

For maintenance, we have Maintenance Manager for production asset maintenance—repairs, preventative maintenance, work requests—and maintenance downtime can be included in the production schedule. We also have tools like Safety Logbook for tracking HSE events.

After production, we help with fulfillment and shipping. Order Fulfillment Worksheet helps determine what can ship today. Warehouse Insight or WMS Express supports barcoding. And for shipping, Dynamic Ship (or the free Order Ship Express) supports LTL, full truckload, parcel, and more—all inside Business Central.

Scheduling Tools: Graphical Scheduler vs. MX APS

Graphical Scheduler is completely free and gives you drag-and-drop scheduling using Business Central’s built-in logic. Dragging and dropping in Graphical Scheduler is essentially the same as changing routing dates directly on the production order.

It also supports lots of extensions and configuration—calendar views, projects, picks, quality inspections, color coding, different views, and more—so you can tailor it to what you want to see on the shop floor.

At minimum, you’ll want Graphical Scheduler to visualize your schedule. It’s free and has no restrictions on use.

But if you want finite capacity scheduling—realistic schedules based on constraints—that’s MX APS. MX APS supports setup minimization, sequencing rules (like allergens vs. non-allergens, or color sequencing), alternate routings, and other advanced production modeling so you can systemize scheduling instead of relying on tribal knowledge.

Demo: Enhanced Planning Worksheet

I said I’d look at the Enhanced Planning Worksheet, and we’ll do that briefly. My demo environment had a hiccup—Business Central crashed briefly during the live demo—but we got back in.

From a production perspective, Enhanced Planning Worksheet adds a bunch of features that make a planner’s job easier. We also add a purchase plan for purchasers that’s nicer than the standard Business Central MRP purchasing experience.

It helps reduce noisy messages like reschedule and cancel that you might be seeing in the standard planning worksheet. You still run the regenerative plan (standard Business Central logic), but once you have the plan, you get better fact boxes and easier access to relevant planning data.

For example, you can see availability by location, supply/demand overview, vendor planning summary, and other supporting details. You can also view item history, review planning parameters for the item or SKU, and change parameters like minimum order quantity or reorder point right there—without clicking through a bunch of screens.

Again, Enhanced Planning Worksheet is free for a single concurrent user. If you purchase it, it comes with other tools as part of the Enhanced Planning Pack.

Demo: Graphical Scheduler Views and Drag-and-Drop

Next, I jumped into the Graphical Scheduler, another free tool. When you first install it, the default view is simple: it shows production orders in a single color, and clicking a production order shows related operations. You can drag and drop to reschedule, and you can also move an operation from a work center to a specific machine center.

I’ve customized my view to add different colors and additional data sources like maintenance work orders, registered absences, working days, and non-working time shading (or hiding). You can build these views by copying the default view and editing it.

You can also add data sources from Business Central tables, including built-in tables like sales orders, or predefined document types like service orders and assembly orders, so you can see more than just production.

Graphical Scheduler supports zooming (in/out) and “zoom to document” so the full production order fits on screen, along with quick navigation presets you can customize.

But this demo also shows the limitation of relying on standard Business Central scheduling logic: you can end up with multiple operations piled on top of each other at the same time on the same work center, which is impossible to execute in reality. You could drag and drop everything to make it work, but that’s not the goal.

Demo: Generating a Finite Capacity Schedule with MX APS

Instead of manually dragging and dropping, I ran MX APS using “Generate Production Schedule.” This can run on a job queue—typically once per shift or once per day, and sometimes once per week—depending on how volatile your shop floor is and how closely you can adhere to the schedule.

In the demo, I scheduled the next 30 days starting at 8 AM (even though the demo data is in the past). You can choose longer horizons too—hundreds of days if you want—and apply filters like which production orders to include.

MX APS crunched the schedule and summarized results, including counts of late, early, and on-time orders. You can drill down to see which orders are late and by how much. By default, we don’t automatically update sales orders because different organizations want to handle that differently, but you can set up alerts via Power Automate, use reservations, or extend the system if you want automated updates.

You can run “what-if” scenarios: change priorities, add shifts, work weekends, subcontract work, and compare outcomes—then commit the schedule when you’re happy.

You can also view the schedule in a detailed list for specific work centers (like welding booths), and print it, report on it, or expose it to the shop floor using tools like Shop Floor Insight.

Demo: Visual Schedule Results and What’s Being Produced

To visualize the result, MX APS opens the Graphical Scheduler and shows the scheduled output. When I navigated back to April 10th, you could see the difference between the original “piled up” schedule and the finite-capacity schedule MX APS produced.

Before digging into the schedule, I showed what we’re manufacturing in the demo environment: battery boxes, including stainless steel and aluminum versions. The schedule is created at the work center level, with machines underneath work centers, and MX APS chooses the best machine based on capacity and rules.

In the schedule blocks, purple represents setup time and green represents runtime. MX APS supports setup elimination by scheduling similar products together, and it can also do partial setup elimination—for example, eliminating a color changeover while keeping a mold changeover (or vice versa).

I also showed an example where a “preferred” machine was overloaded, so MX APS selected an alternate machine—even though the alternate takes longer to set up and run—because it results in a better overall schedule. The key idea is that MX APS evaluates options holistically and chooses the best outcome, rather than making a quick local decision.

Advanced Constraints and Scheduling Logic

MX APS can also support infinite capacity scheduling for specific work centers (like a subcontract process or a batching process). This can be useful for bottleneck analysis: you can switch a work center to infinite capacity and see when and where it becomes a bottleneck, then evaluate mitigation like extra shifts or subcontracting.

Sequencing can be based on attributes. In the demo, I sequenced welding work so aluminum runs first and then stainless steel, using a sequencing rule tied to a material-type value. This approach can also apply to food allergens (non-allergen first, then allergen, then CIP/SIP), paint/powder coat color sequencing (light to dark), and other attribute-driven sequencing.

Labor can be modeled as a secondary constraint. For example, if the shift changes at 4 PM and you only have one welder available, MX APS will schedule only one production order at a time—even if the equipment could handle more—because the labor constraint limits throughput. Fractional labor is supported too, such as one operator running two machines simultaneously, or different staffing requirements for setup vs. runtime.

Material constraints are included as well. If material isn’t available, MX APS schedules the operation based on inventory, expected receipt dates from purchase/transfer orders, or lead time settings when there is no inbound supply.

For downtime, you can reduce capacity using standard Business Central registered absences, or you can use Maintenance Manager work orders to include maintenance activities in the schedule. If a machine goes down, you can rerun a net change schedule to reschedule around the downtime.

MX APS also accounts for shop floor feedback. If you record actual progress in Business Central—ideally using Shop Floor Insight for real-time feedback—the next schedule run only plans what remains. If an operation is complete, it won’t be scheduled again; if it’s partially complete, only the remaining time is scheduled.

Drag-and-Drop with MX APS and Committing Schedules

You can still drag and drop in the visual schedule, but moving something doesn’t automatically recompute the whole schedule on-screen. Because a small change can impact many other orders (materials, priorities, downstream dependencies), you need to rerun “Generate Schedule” to see the full impact.

The general recommendation is: use MX APS to generate and commit the schedule, and then if you need ad hoc execution changes, use the standard Graphical Scheduler to drag and drop. The next time MX APS runs, it will take those changes into account.

Setup, Rules, Routings, and Alternate Machines

I briefly showed what’s required to set up MX APS. Setup is straightforward: install MX APS, run the setup wizard, and it fills in the defaults. If your routings are set up properly—typically scheduled at the work center level with machine centers underneath—you can often generate a valid schedule immediately.

I also showed scheduling rules. Most customers use the standard rule without changes, but you can configure rules (including different rules for different production cells) to determine sequencing logic. In my example, the schedule evaluates:

• Production order priority first (higher priority schedules first)
• Due date next
• A user field representing material type (for sequencing aluminum vs. stainless)

Sequencing patterns can include sawtooth behavior (like moving light-to-dark and back to light), triangle patterns (like ramping temperature up and down), and other parameter-driven strategies.

Routing setup is important. I showed a routing where one operation is scheduled at the work center level (letting MX APS pick the best machine), while another operation is scheduled on a specific machine center (like a 10-foot press brake). MX APS also supports alternate routings where the preferred machine can be supplemented by alternate work centers or subcontracting options, with configurable tradeoffs like longer setup/runtime or minimum quantities for subcontracting.

Other routing controls include things like “allow breaks” (preventing operations from being interrupted by end-of-shift) and lot splitting, which lets you break a large production order into smaller lots without changing the production order itself, so work can be split across machines or interleaved with other orders.

User fields on the routing can be added via personalization and used for sequencing and scheduling logic.

Pricing, Support, and Implementation Approach

Graphical Scheduler is completely free. Support resources include a knowledge base, community forum, online videos, and sample code for extensions.

MX APS is subscription-based. Licensing is based on the number of production orders you schedule at one time. If you have 1,000 production orders in the system but you’re licensed for 200, you set filters so you only schedule up to 200 at a time to stay within your license.

License tiers range from smaller tiers (like 75, 200, and so on) up to unlimited scheduling. Implementation can start with a fixed-price discovery project where we review requirements and determine what needs to be set up. Sometimes that’s all that’s needed; other times additional help may be required for complex environments.

For context, the lowest tier was described as around $180 USD per month for scheduling up to 75 production orders at a time, with annual or three-year discounts available, and it increases from there. Pricing is not per user; it’s based on how many production orders you schedule simultaneously.

For more information, there are links for the Graphical Scheduler and MX APS at schedulingfordynamics.com, including videos and documentation. The knowledge base and forum are accessible through the support section.

Q&A Highlights

We had a few questions come in toward the end of the session:

• Where do you enter the priority code for the order? It’s on the production order header.
• Can you schedule finished production orders? You can, but it generally doesn’t help. Typically you filter your schedule to include only the production orders you want (for example, firm planned and released), and finished orders are ignored.
• Can you schedule simulated orders? Yes—simulated orders for quotes can be included in the schedule to get an expected date.
• Is capable-to-promise (CTP) coming? A CTP capability was mentioned as coming soon, allowing a quote (not just a sales order) to quickly return a deliverable date by running the schedule against all demand.
• Can you hide Saturdays and Sundays in the scheduler? Yes, non-working days can be hidden using the non-working time/day display options in the view.
• If an operator works on two machines simultaneously, can you model that? Yes, including fractional labor, and segment-level requirements (setup/runtime broken into multiple segments with different resource needs like cranes and staffing).
• How does sequencing work if the attributes are on the item card or item attributes? Sequencing is based on fields on the routing, so you’d either enter attributes on the routing manually or use an extension to copy them onto the routing.
• If you start with free products and move to a paid version, do you need to redo setup? Graphical Scheduler and MX APS are separate setups; MX APS uses Graphical Scheduler to visualize results, but there isn’t overlap that forces a reset. For Order Ship Express and WMS Express, moving to paid versions generally requires only minimal additional setup, and most people stay on the free versions.
• Will the recording be sent out? Yes, a copy of the recording will be sent to attendees after the session.

Closing

With that, I’d like to thank you all. I went longer than I expected, but hopefully it was useful.

If you want additional recordings or more information on MX APS and Graphical Scheduler, you can find videos and documentation on the website and in the knowledge base and forum.

Thanks everyone, and hopefully we’ll be talking again soon. Bye.