We’re excited to announce a new project onboarding feature is now available in the Dynamics 365 Implementation Portal. The portal makes it easier to deploy Dynamics 365 projects successfully by guiding you from the start of your project to the end, giving you valuable insights and recommendations along the way. All you need to do to get started is create your implementation project in the portal, and the new onboarding wizard makes it easy. Here’s how:

User-friendly interface removes technical barriers. The onboarding wizard’s intuitive and user-friendly interface is designed to make the onboarding process accessible whatever your technical background. It acts as a virtual assistant, walking you through each step of project creation with clear instructions and prompts.

Projects are ready to use immediately. On completion of the onboarding process, your Dynamics 365 implementation project is instantly available, streamlining collaboration and ensuring that stakeholders have swift access to project resources.

Data is protected automatically. If the implementation project targets a tenant other than the one you’re signed in to, the onboarding wizard starts an approval flow. Two reviewers for the targeted tenant must both approve the request before information such as the customer name and telemetry insights are made available. This automatic review process ensures compliance with data protection regulations and builds trust with customers.

Successful Dynamics 365 implementations by design

The Dynamics 365 Implementation Portal is based on Success by Design, a systematic approach for successful cloud deployment that was developed by Microsoft. Success by Design provides prescriptive guidance for designing, building, and deploying your new Dynamics 365 solution. The onboarding wizard represents a pivotal advancement in the journey towards a successful Dynamics 365 implementation. By guiding you through the creation of your implementation projects, facilitating reviews, and offering relevant insights, the Implementation Portal and the onboarding wizard help your business harness the full potential of Dynamics 365 with confidence and efficiency.

Next steps

Sign up for the Dynamics 365 Implementation Portal and read the documentation.

Learn more about the onboarding wizard.

Have feedback or questions about the onboarding wizard or the Implementation Portal? Let us know! Email us at ftd365ip-support@microsoft.com.

Not yet a Dynamics 365 customer? Take a tour and get a free trial.

The post Create Dynamics 365 implementation projects easily with the new onboarding wizard appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Editor: Denis Conway

Who should use it, why and for what?

Introduction

Performance evaluation has been revolutionized by technology, extending its reach to the individual level. Consider health apps on your smartphone. They gather data breadcrumbs from your daily activities, providing analysis of your movement patterns. This isn’t a generic data compilation, but a near-accurate reflection of your physical activity during a specific period.

In the future, it’s conceivable that these apps might be equipped with an AI companion, or Copilot, to guide your next steps based on your past activities. It could suggest rest days or additional exercise to help you achieve your personal health goals.

This concept of performance evaluation based on collected data is the bedrock of process mining and process comparison. Our Copilot functionality adds a layer of assistance, enabling you to make informed decisions about your warehouse operations.

In this context, Copilot can help you optimize warehouse processes. It can identify bottlenecks in certain processes or compare different methods to achieve the same goal, empowering you to choose the most optimal method for your specific case.

In this blog, we’ll explore the essence of this feature, its intended audience, and how and why you should leverage it for your warehousing operations.

Process Mining Insights:

At first glance, using Process Advisor for material movement analysis is easy. The setup process is straightforward:

1. Go to Warehouse Management > Setup > Process Mining > Warehouse material movement configuration. In the taskbar, select Deploy New Process.
2. The configuration Wizard will open. Press Next, then enter the name of the process in the field Process Name, choose company, choose number of months to load (12 months = data from latest 12 months) and choose the appropriate Activity.  Press Next.
3. Process is deployed.

The configuration wizard looks like this:

The easy part is now complete. We have set up a process, named it, and loaded 12 months of data to prepare for our analysis. The difficult part is making sense of our data and using it to make decisions to improve our warehouse output.

Therefore, we will provide you with some real-life examples on how to use the data analysis functionality to understand your processes, and a scenario where we evaluate two different methods and use the Process Advisor to figure out which method would be preferred for our business operations.

Analysis of data

There are multiple ways to analyze your process data to understand and compare your processes.

1. Start with opening Power Automate and go to the tab Process Mining. The report is accessible on the main page.
2. Report: When the report is loaded, it can look like this:

3. Select Map

Select the Map tab to display the process map:

This is a screenshot of the process map from our example. On the Map, there are separate locations on which actions(tasks) have taken place, as well as the time spent on this location and between locations. You can change the time unit to, let’s say mean duration, to see how long each activity in a particular location takes per average.  

4. Use the Co-Pilot to get started.

We provide you with suggestions for frequent prompts, but you can of course choose to enter whatever you want. In this case, we will use the suggested “provide the top insights” prompt.  

5. Copilot Generates

The Copilot generates a response based on the data in your process map. In the example, we can see that the Copilot has found the “BULK” as the longest running activity, and provided us with a list of the activities with the greatest number of repetitions:

6. Copilot Follow Up

We can also ask the Co-pilot follow-up questions. In this case, we will follow-up with the suggested “How to identify my bottleneck?” and “Find my Bottleneck” prompts. The Co-pilot generates a message explaining what the bottleneck is and its mean duration. In this instance, since we have selected the metric Mean duration, we will generate an answer reflecting this metric.

The message we receive tells us that the Variant with the highest duration is “Variant 2” with a mean duration of 2 minutes and 47 seconds.
It also tells us that the activity with the highest mean duration is “BULK” with a mean duration of 15 minutes.

From this, we can draw the conclusion that “Variant 2” is the variant that takes the longest time to complete, and that the most amount of time is spent in the “BULK” location.

By using the process advisor for warehouse movement material analysis, we can streamline warehouse operations and ensure we don’t spend more time than we need on a particular task or operation.
Another example where the Process Advisor can be utilized to enhance operational fluidity in your warehouse is by comparing different methods of achieving a similar goal, to understand which method is more effective to reach your desired goal. We will try to explain how to conduct such a comparison to with a test-case.

In our test-case, we will compare two different methods of picking goods in the Warehouse to figure out which picking method takes less time, so we can increase the Warehouse output.

Test Case : “Single order picking” vs “Cluster picking”

In this test-case, the user wants to know which method of picking is faster, “Single order picking” vs “Cluster picking”. To compare the two, the user goes through the following steps. First, the user creates a Hypothesis for the purpose of this test-case. In this case, the user wants to determine which picking method is faster.

Secondly, the user decides the scope of the test. For both methods, the user will have 5 sales orders with one to five different items per order, in different quantities. Both methods will use identical sales orders for test purposes.
In the Work Details screen, we can see the work details for the work that has been created.
The Variants are the different Variants of work, so in this instance, for work ID USMF-002327 with Order number 002375 (displayed in the picture) the worker will “Pick” 1 piece of item LB0001 in 5 different variations (in this case colors), then “Put” these 5 items away in packing area (location “PACK”).

With the “Single order picking” method, the worker picks one order at a time and puts it in the packing location. To clarify, the warehouse worker will go to each location where the item is located, pick and scan that item, repeat the process for each item in that order, take the order to pack location and then repeat with next order. 

Worker goes to 5 different locations to pick items, then proceeds to “PACK” location to put items away for packing. Then, the worker repeats the process for the other orders.

After we have constructed our hypothesis and determined the scope, we can go ahead and prepare for the analysis.

First, we will have to deploy our process comparison. We head into Warehouse Management > Setup > Process Mining > Warehouse material process configuration, and in the taskbar, we select Deploy New Process. We select a fitting description as the Process Name, select company and number of months to load. In this test case, we will only be loading one month of data since we don’t need more for this test’s purposes.

Usually, you would want as much correct data(not corrupted/faulty data since this will affect the analysis) and necessary (scope needs to determine how much and what is necessary) data as possible to get a high-quality analysis.  
When our process has been deployed, we can move on to the analysis and evaluate this process.

We load our process map into Power Automate, and in the beginning, it will look something like this:

We can press the Play Animation button to get a representation of the process.

In the Statistics tab, we can see basic information of the process.

In the Variants tab, we can view the different work-Variants. By selecting one, we can get an in-depth view of, in this case, “Variant 3”. We can see that in this variant, 6 cases occurred, the total duration was 8 minutes and 15 seconds, and the total active time was 8 minutes and 14 seconds.
In this case, the attribute selected is Zone. If we look closely at the Variants, we can see that “Variant 2” has 2 cases and the others have 1.

This means that two pieces of “work” that was scheduled were so similar that they could be grouped. This is because, from a warehouse management perspective, the operation is identical. This is because the worker goes to one location, picks item(s) 1, goes to another location and picks item(s) 2, then put them away in “PACK”. Thus, it is two “Pick” operations and one “Put”, and therefore they will be grouped in this view.    

We can also change the Variants’ view by changing the Attribute selected. In this case, we will change the attribute from Zone to Order number. This will change our view, so that we see different Variants based on work type. It will in this case show us 5 variants, which at first can seem confusing. A new variant is displayed with these settings, since this now displays Variants by order number instead of zone, which means that we get one variant for each Sales order we created, since all of them were different from each other. 

In this instance, we can see the order numbers in the legend on the right side. This view tells us that we have 5 different order numbers, and the boxes below Variants Overview represents the number of work operations performed per Order Number. The Case Count per order number, in the case of “Variant 2” there has been a total of 6 operations performed (pick, pick, pick, pick, pick, put, as mentioned previously) and in the case of Variant 4 and 5, there has been a total of 3 case count (Pick, Pick, Put).

For this scenario, it can be helpful to see how much work we are performing per event. If we want a view where we can see how much work we do per event, we can switch Attribute to Work Quantity. This will in this instance allow us to see the quantity of work that needs to be performed for each event. In the example of “Variant 2” the interface tells us that 6 events have taken place, in 5 of the events quantity has been 1, and in one of the events quantities was 5. To put this into a warehouse perspective, this means that we have performed 5 of the events 1 time each, which for Variant 2 is “Pick item 1, Pick item 2, Pick item 3, Pick item 4, Pick item 5” and one event where we “Put” away these items 5 times.
That single operation is performed 5 times and counts as one event because it is the same event occurring multiple times, whilst the other event, even though they are all “Pick” events, will count as individual events due to picking different products, which are all in different locations. When we “Put” away in “PACK” location, we don’t put the items in different locations, thus it counts as one event.

If we select Attribute by Work type, this becomes clear:

We might want to see the location where the events took place. To do that, we can set Attribute to Location, and the view will show us the locations of the events below the header Variants overview.

In this image, we can see the variants based on location. To put this into context, “Variant 6” tells us 6 events have taken place, all in different parts of the warehouse. For “Variant 10”, we can see that one event took place in “LEGOLOC301” and one in “PACK”.

Now, after we have made ourselves comfortable within the report, we can start analyzing our process. To do that, press the Process Compare button below Variants.

A view similar to this one will appear:

In the process map displayed on the screen, we have set the Mining attribute to Location, and the Metric to Total duration. This will allow us to see the total amount of time spent in each location.

By changing the Metric to Total count, we can see the number of times an event took place in each location, as the picture below displays:

The total amount of time spent in one location and number of cases per location might be valuable, but a more telling metric could be how much time we spent on average per location.

By switching metric to mean duration, we can see the average time spent per location. This gives us yet another hint on which part of the process takes the most amount of time to manage. But, if we want to see how it looks from a proportional perspective, by toggling the percentage sign next to the Metric drop-down menu, we will achieve exactly that.

As we can see from the image above, LEGOLOC 201 is the location in which we spend the largest percentage of our time.
If we want to further examine what is going on in that location, we can do so by pressing the bar. This will change the view slightly, and a card with detailed information will appear on the right of the screen.  

In the highlighted red box, we can see detailed performance data to further assess the performance in this location.

 Now, we have enough information to draw some conclusions on our own. We have identified zone LEGOLOC 201 as our “time-thief”, and we know that more than 1/3 of the time was spent on picking items in this zone.
To make the analysis process easier, Microsoft’s Copilot has been built into this feature.
By pressing the Copilot sign in the top-right corner, you will open the dialogue box where you can create a prompt and ask the Copilot about your process. The Copilot will suggest some common prompts, but you can of course create your own. In this case, we will ask the Copilot to summarize our process.   

As displayed in the picture, the Copilot will give us a summary of the process. Because we have selected to compare our first part of the test vs our default value (the red locations), it also summarizes the default value’s process.

We do get some information on how many events took place etc., but we did not get the total case time, which was the value we wanted to find to confirm or deny our hypothesis. By asking the Copilot what the average case duration and the total case duration was, we received the answer that mean case duration was 4 minutes and 18 seconds, and total duration was 21 minutes and 31 seconds.

So, our answer in this case is that the Single order picking took 21 minutes and 31 seconds to complete.

Now, we will compare the result to the cluster picking method, to see how they compare.

For context, cluster picking differs from single order picking in the sense that in cluster picking, workers pick multiple orders simultaneously and not one at a time. In this case, it means the worker will pick all 5 sales orders, then put them all away in the packing station at the same time, rather than picking an order, putting them away in the packing station, and repeating for next orders.

In this image, we can see the main difference between these picking methods. For cluster picking, we can see that the warehouse worker is tasked with picking 8 pieces of red Lego blocks (left image), and in the second screenshot (right) we can see how many and from which specific positions items should be picked.

When all items have been picked, the Work status will be updated so all Cluster positions are “In process”.

Next task is to put all items in the packing station. When we have done that, all Cluster position Work statuses will be changed to Closed.

As we can see in the image below, work status has been changed to Closed across the board.

Now, let’s jump back to the analysis. Start by creating a new process in the same way we did for single order picking and open the process map in Power Automate. In our test case, this is what we are shown on our screen.

As we have already covered how choosing different metrics affects the process map and the information on display, we will not do that for this part of the test, since we know we need to compare location as the Mining attribute, and total duration as the Metric.

We will again use the help of the Copilot to evaluate the process map. Once again, we ask for a summary of the process.

Test Case Results

The summary from the Copilot tells us that this process started November 6^th and ended after 8 minutes and 45 seconds.

This means we have successfully confirmed our hypothesis by using process mining and the process advisor.
Now we know for a fact that for one picker with 5 sales orders constructed in this manner, cluster picking is a much more efficient picking method compared to single order picking, since identical amount of work took significantly less time to complete. Therefore, we can draw the conclusion that for all work with similar characteristics, we should prefer using cluster picking over single order picking, at least if we want to increase warehouse output.

Keep in mind, harnessing the power of Process Advisor requires an analytical mindset and a structured approach. The sheer volume of headers, variants, locations, and numbers can be overwhelming. To navigate this complexity, emulate the structured methodology illustrated in this example. By having a clear understanding of your comparison and measurement objectives, and a strategy to achieve them, you’ll significantly enhance the outcomes derived from Process Advisor.

Essential skills for effective process mining:

Use a fact-based approach with warehouse data as the base.

• Use a strategic and tactical approach throughout the analysis.
• Unlike this example, a great way of using process mining is by using continuous analysis, where you monitor something over time, rather than one-time analysis, which it can also be used for, as in this example.
• Use quick data for immediate insights, and big data for continuous and conclusive analysis.
• Master filtering to gain valuable insights and sort out what you believe is important.

Wealth of achievements made possible through process mining:

• Identify areas in which processes can be improved.
• Validate conformance of processes.
• Do process simulation and predictive analysis.
• Discover the most optimal paths for automatization.

Conclusion:

The power of Process Advisor extends far beyond what we’ve explored in this blog. It’s a versatile tool that can be adapted to a myriad of scenarios, and this guide merely scratches the surface of its potential. We’ve used it here to streamline warehouse operations, but the possibilities are truly limitless.

We encourage you to dive in and experiment with Process Advisor. Use the scenario we’ve outlined as a starting point, but don’t stop there. Input your own warehouse data and see firsthand how Process Advisor can illuminate opportunities for efficiency and growth. The journey towards optimizing your warehouse output begins with the Process Advisor.

Learn More

Related documentation:

Overview of process mining in Power Automate – Power Automate | Microsoft Learn

The post Process Advisor for Supply Chain and Warehousing. appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

 
Microsoft is delighted to announce that the new Dynamics 365 Community is now live, marking a significant milestone in our journey of empowering users, fostering collaboration, and driving innovation. 

With its fresh new look, streamlined experience, and a suite of powerful features, the new Dynamics 365 Community sets a new standard for user engagement and knowledge sharing. We have listened to your feedback, studied your needs, and made significant enhancements to ensure a seamless and immersive experience. Our aim is to create a platform that not only meets your present requirements but also inspires you to explore new possibilities and accelerate your success. 

Here are the highlights of some of the new and future features of our new community: 

1.  Enhanced User Experience: Navigate through the community effortlessly and find the answers you need quickly. With intuitive search functionality, personalized recommendations, and a modern interface, your journey within the community has never been smoother. 
2.  Achievements Elements: Get ready for a fun and rewarding experience! Engage in community activities, earn badges, and unlock new levels as you contribute and grow. We believe that recognizing your valuable contributions is vital to building a thriving community.
3.  AI-Powered Assistance: Our AI-assisted moderation ensures a safe and inclusive environment for all community members. By leveraging intelligent algorithms, we can maintain the quality and relevance of discussions while fostering a sense of belonging and respect.  

This is just the beginning of an incredible journey! We are committed to continuous improvement and will be rolling out regular updates and new features to address your evolving needs. Your feedback and suggestions are invaluable to us, and we encourage you to share your thoughts to help shape the future of the Dynamics 365 Community. 

As we embark on this exciting chapter together, we are excited to see the positive impact that this community will have on your professional growth, collaboration, and innovation. The Dynamics 365 Community is more than just a platform; it’s a catalyst for driving positive change in the world of business applications. 

Microsoft would like to express our sincere gratitude to our incredible community members, MVPs, and User Group leaders who have played an instrumental role in shaping the Dynamics 365 Community. Your passion, expertise, and dedication continue to inspire us as we strive to create an inclusive and thriving ecosystem. 

Thank you for being a part of this remarkable community. We invite you to explore the new Dynamics 365 Community at http://community.dynamics.com/ and embark on a journey of learning, collaboration, and success. Together, let’s unleash the full potential of Dynamics 365 and shape the future of business applications. 
 
Take a look for yourself! Experience it today: New Microsoft Dynamics 365 Community 

The post Introducing the New Dynamics 365 Community – A Catalyst for Collaboration and Innovation  appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Achieving supply chain excellence today requires orchestrating complex global operations with agility, adapting to rapid and continuous change, and navigating economic headwinds and ongoing disruptions. Yet only 22 percent of companies have a proactive supply chain network, meaning disruptions or shifts in supply or demand can quickly escalate into significant issues.¹ To truly deliver a proactive, resilient supply chain, Chief Supply Chain Officers (CSCOs) need a clear digital transformation strategy that builds on top of existing investments in data to uncover new insights. At the same time, CSCOs must enable the adoption of new productivity tools, such as generative AI, to help organizations rethink the status quo.  

At Microsoft, we recently introduced Microsoft Dynamics 365 Copilot to bring next-generation AI to every line of business. It can help CSCOs solidify the strategic importance of supply chain functions and its value as strategic business partners. That’s why on May 8 through 10 in Orlando, Florida, at the Gartner Supply Chain Symposium Xpo™ 2023, we’re presenting a deep dive into the practical ways organizations can unlock supply chain productivity with a copilot approach to AI.  

Microsoft Supply Chain Center

Sign up for a free trial of Microsoft Supply Chain Center.

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Attendees can also join us at our booth (#443), where we will highlight how supply chain leaders can utilize Microsoft Dynamics 365 to: 

• Embrace AI-enabled risk mitigation to deliver better business outcomes while improving customer and employee experiences. 
• Generate intelligent insights and rapidly act on recommendations with Microsoft Supply Chain Center. 
• Gain agility and deliver world-class fulfillment experiences like accurate available-to-promise (ATP) and direct store delivery (DSD) for direct-to-consumer (DTC) orders. 

Generate intelligent insights

At the Gartner Supply Chain Symposium, attendees will see how the Microsoft Supply Chain Center empowers supply chain professionals to use AI copilots to generate actionable insights to increase productivity, shorten lead times, and improve overall supply chain performance.  

The Microsoft Supply Chain Platform harmonizes data across legacy and new enterprise resource planning (ERP) and supply chain systems to provide real-time data visibility; facilitate actionable insights; predict supply shortages, potential stockouts, or shipment delays; and improve collaboration across teams and suppliers. The end-to-end visibility possible using Copilot in the Microsoft Supply Chain Center allows leaders to proactively manage supply chain events. 

Customers like iFit have leveraged the intelligent insights from Supply Chain Center to reimagine their distribution network, staging products in locations based on customer demand instead of relying on history. In doing so, iFit increased its efficiency from 30 percent to 75 percent in its forward stocking. Before Supply Chain Center, iFit took two weeks to fulfill customer demand far more than the desired two days. 

Embrace AI-enabled risk mitigation

For most supply chains, particularly those crossing international borders and using multiple transportation modes, disruptions that risk diminishing the customer experience occur regularly. Such disruptions place immense pressure on operation teams to assess the situation, coordinate with various stakeholders, and maintain production momentum. Even simple delays, such as bad weather requiring load rerouting, can cause disruptions with ripple effects of up to two weeks and effecting multiple tiers. Production planners may lack integrated systems, resulting in limited visibility of inbound shipment issues until they experience a delay. At that point, planners contact suppliers and may discover factors, such as weather, causing a two-week production delay. 

The planner now has no choice but to push delivery of sales orders out two weeks, giving the sales team and customers little time to pivot and find solutions. The planner may also spend half a day or more manually evaluating purchase orders to understand the impact on operations. Not to mention any time required to adjust production schedules to accommodate the supplier’s updated delivery windows. 

Using Dynamics 365 Copilot to integrate supply chain data and provide critical insights, the planner in the scenario above would receive a real-time alert about weather issues at the supplier’s location. The system would also generate an email listing all purchase orders affected by the production delay, reducing the planner’s workload from hours to minutes. 

Copilot can also send the planner a list of suggestions that could minimize the impact of the disruptions. Now the planner has time to evaluate alternatives to meet delivery requirements and reschedule production jobs. The result is proactive management of the event, increased agility within the supply chain, shorter recovery times, and, most importantly, mitigating the customer impact in a way that preserves customer relationships and bolsters customer satisfaction. 

The above is one practical application of Copilot, but there is considerably more to share. In our recent blog, Applying next-generation AI to the Microsoft Supply Chain Platform, you can take a deeper dive into how Dynamics 365 Copilot is transforming laborious processes, improving efficiency and responsiveness, and enabling enterprise supply chains to optimize operational agility, reduce cost, and improve customer experiences.

Gain agility and deliver world-class fulfillment experiences

Northern Tool + Equipment, a manufacturing and omnichannel retailer with more than 130 stores across the United States, serves a customer base that heavily relies on their tools for their livelihood. Accurate delivery times and product reliability are of the utmost importance. However, Northern Tool + Equipment faced significant challenges due to a fragmented supply chain technology infrastructure, resulting in four to seven days lead times for their extensive product catalog of 100,000 items. This, combined with the complexities of shipping large items like generators and air compressors, made optimizing shipping routes for cost and sustainability difficult. 

To overcome these challenges, Northern Tool + Equipment implemented Microsoft Supply Chain Center, an end-to-end supply chain solution that connects disparate systems and harmonizes data across the supply chain. This solution provides a comprehensive understanding of supply and demand, generating insights using AI to uncover patterns and projections based on historical and real-time inventory and order volumes. 

Direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands like Northern Tool + Equipment face unique challenges in delivering world-class fulfillment experiences to their customers. With an emphasis on speed, accuracy, and reliability, these brands require agile supply chain solutions that can adapt to continuous change and increasing technology clock speed. Microsoft Supply Chain Center enables DTC brands like Northern Tool + Equipment to gain agility and deliver outstanding customer experiences by offering real-time, highly accurate, available-to-promise (ATP) dates for direct store delivery (DSD) and more. 

Learn more about Northern Tool + Equipment’s success in our recent case study.  

See you at Gartner Supply Chain Symposium Xpo™ 2023 

As global supply chains continue reimagining what is possible by applying emerging technologies like AI and Copilot, Microsoft remains dedicated to enabling CSCOs with the solutions and timely insights they need to excel. We hope you can join us at the Gartner Supply Chain Symposium Xpo™ 2023, where you can attend our session using the registration link and engage with our supply chain professionals at our booth. In the meantime, we invite you to check out our guided tour of Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management or reach out to learn more today.  

Practical ways to copilot with AI and unlock productivity 

Location: Northern Hemisphere C, Booth 443 

Date and time: May 9, 2023, 11:30 AM EST  

Register: Gartner Supply Chain Symposium Xpo™ 2023 

End notes

¹Zippia, 2022. 18 Stunning supply chain statistics [2023]: facts, figures, and trends.

The post Microsoft Dynamics 365 Copilot at Gartner Supply Chain Symposium Xpo™ 2023 appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

For more than two decades, customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) software have been defined by manual entry and high-touch data processes. Since then, businesses have made strides in automating many manual transactions through various means but have largely reached a plateau. Our 2023 survey on business trends found that 9 out of 10 workers hope to use AI to reduce these kinds of repetitive tasks from their jobs.¹

Supply chains have been a prime area for the application of AI, due to the vast amounts of critical business data and processes involved. Supply chains have evolved over the years, with emerging technologies and innovations that enable businesses to optimize their operations, reduce costs, and improve customer satisfaction. Yet, while statistical models have been used in processes such as inventory management, forecasting, production planning, and scheduling, there hasn’t been a significant shift in the industry beyond improving algorithms. Learning hasn’t been applied to make supply chain processes intelligent and self-regulating. The next generation of AI will transform the industry by making it more agile, efficient, and responsive to changes.

In March, Microsoft announced Microsoft Dynamics 365 Copilot, introducing the world’s first AI copilot for ERP and CRM applications. With the next generation of AI capabilities in Dynamics 365 Copilot, those high-touch, laborious processes can be transformed with interactive AI-powered assistance.

With Copilot, you can further unlock the potential of ERP by bringing together data and AI to reduce time spent on unfulfilling tasks and accelerate the speed of execution and business outcomes.

We are excited about bringing next-generation AI to virtually every business function, and especially so about the opportunities AI has within the Microsoft Supply Chain Platform. In this post, we look at AI in supply chain management (SCM), both its development and current state, and we share our view of next-generation AI in SCM.

Learn more: Introducing Microsoft Dynamics 365 Copilot, bringing next-generation AI to every line of business

Microsoft Supply Chain Center

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Industry 4.0 is AI

The Fourth Industrial Revolution opens doors that further transform how we work and what we focus on during the workday. We have come a long way from the industrial plant floor automation of the 1960s to the intelligent era of supply chain digital twins of the 2020s. We now have significant technological advances that can transform traditional supply chains into next-generation cognitive supply chains. These cognitive supply chains can proactively predict and self-correct disruptions, trigger replanning, and provide intelligent recommendations. Thus, enabling humans and AI to work together to quickly respond, in real time, to changing environments.

In the age of AI, tools like artificial neural networks and machine learning provide the means to automate personal workflows and processes. Still, low-code applications, natural language processing, and generative AI will not replace human innovation. It will, on the other hand, increase and expand our expertise and ability. This is why at Microsoft, we believe that AI is going to define new ways for humans to amplify their impact, their capability, and their unique potential.

The brief history of AI in supply chain management processes

The first application of AI in SCM is a so-called expert system known as the inventory management assistant (IMA). IMA was designed in 1986 to improve the replenishment of spare parts and reduce safety stock for the US Air Force.² From there, the 1990s saw a broad resurgence of interest in the decades-old concept of AI. As a result, AI became commercially available in SCM applications on a limited basis during this time.

In the 2000s, computing power continued to increase as hardware costs declined rapidly, making the investment in AI affordable. However, AI’s widespread adoption in SCM really took off in the 2010s with the rise of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and the associated acceleration in digital transformation. Together, these factors led to an explosion in the amount of data generated by supply chain processes, marking the beginning of big data in the supply chain.

Outside the supply chain, machine learning algorithms matured and refined into efficient and almost standard-like features, such as the Netflix recommendation engine. At the same time, SCM use cases were taking shape and beginning to deliver value. The first applications of machine learning came in the areas of demand forecasting using regression models to achieve high forecast accuracy, short-term demand sensing using pattern recognitions, anomaly detections in assets, and inventory optimization, to name a few.

Today, AI is used in a wide range of applications, including image and speech recognition, natural language processing, and autonomous vehicles. More recent breakthroughs, such as Dall-E2 and ChatGPT from OpenAI, are rapidly opening new doors, as evidenced by our recent launch of Dynamics 365 Copilot. However, most companies are still focused on analytics and promotion use cases, such as forecasting demand or planning production.

As such, organizations have yet to fully explore the potential of AI, which involves self-learning supply chains, more sophisticated supply chain algorithms, and recognizing patterns in big data that are beyond human perception. AI can automate many of the recurring decisions in SCM and interact with supply chain systems in human context, but this requires a platform to connect legacy and modern solutions to unify the vast, growing amounts of supply chain data.³

Microsoft Supply Chain Platform and next-generation AI

As supply chain complexity grows, companies are using next-generation AI to gain a competitive edge and remain profitable. AI is proving to be a game-changer for businesses, whether they’ve already embarked on a digital transformation journey or are considering doing so. Let’s explore some of the cutting-edge AI use cases in supply chain management that can deliver immediate value without undertaking costly transformation initiatives.

AI-powered risk mitigation

By unifying data sources and business applications and combining them with next-generation AI, companies can better predict and act on disruptions across channels, suppliers, and geographies. For example, the AI-powered Microsoft Supply Chain Center news module proactively flags external issues such as weather, financial, and geopolitical news that may impact key supply chain processes. Plus, predictive insights surface affected orders across materials, inventory, carriers, distribution networks, and more.

With Dynamics 365 Copilot capabilities, users can quickly turn these insights into action with contextual email outreach. With a custom and contextual reply, supply chain users can save time and collaborate with impacted suppliers to quickly identify new ETAs and reroute a purchase order (PO) based on a weather disruption or fulfill a high-priority customer order via an alternate distribution center due to geopolitical tension.

Sign up for a free trial of Microsoft Supply Chain Center today.

Optimize order fulfillment processes

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management (IOM) enables organizations to intelligently orchestrate fulfillment and automate it with a rule-based system using real-time omnichannel inventory data, AI, and machine learning. IOM can improve order fulfillment models by using AI to automate the identification and selection of optimized fulfillment decisions. Including the ability to enhance AI models when recommendations are not ideal, using the train, feedback, and improve methodology.

Elevate forecast accuracy with AI-driven collaborative demand planning 

Demand forecasting is an area that has already seen pervasive use of AI. Organizations already use machine learning-powered forecasting algorithms to improve their forecast accuracy. However, trust in the system-generated forecast is still not as high as was hoped. Recent supply chain disruptions have only exacerbated the role of the importance of manual oversight during creation and careful review. As a result, demand planners and other stakeholders continue to spend a significant portion of their time manually analyzing trends and anomalies, and fine-tuning demand plans. The next-generation of foundation models have the potential to disrupt these very use cases. Ability to get answers through AI forecast explainability and natural language querying will help demand planners breeze through their demand plan analysis, reducing the time needed for fine-tuning and adjusting demand plan from days to minutes. Furthermore, AI can help in demand review meetings by using natural language for data-driven decision making, surfacing risks and opportunities, summarizing assumptions behind a plan, providing real-time what-if analysis, and generating transcripts and summaries of the meeting along with action items. The next generation of AI in demand planning promises to make the entire process more efficient, accurate, and collaborative.

Mitigate order delivery risks with data Q&A

Procurement teams often conduct monthly supplier reviews for top vendors by volume and vendors struggling to meet delivery requirements, but which have been painful to stop trading with for some reason. A significant amount of time for two to three team members is usually dedicated to gathering and analyzing monthly performance data in preparation for these reviews. Conversational AI can unlock productivity.

With conversational AI, we can imagine a future scenario where any analyst is prompting Dynamics 365 Copilot to: “Show me all orders which were not delivered on-time and in-full (OTIF) in the last 30 days. Estimate how much of our order backlog is impacted by these late deliveries. Suggest three questions that will help the supplier dig into the root cause of the issue. Write a short recommendation requesting the supplier participate in our monthly supplier review until OTIF is above 97 percent.” This example is only the tip of the iceberg for scenarios where generative AI can be used to democratize access and retrieval of a company’s data through conversation-styled interaction with AI chatbots.

Additionally, AI could significantly accelerate the onboarding of new suppliers by bypassing or speeding up internal legal review. We can envision purchasing managers, supply chain directors, and more benefitting from AI contract review by assisting in tasks like reviewing master supplier agreements.

Autonomous self-regulated supply chains

One of the biggest challenges in managing a complex supply chain is that it is “high touch” with disparate data sources, different cross-functional units, and processes ranging from strategy to execution. Companies struggle to harmonize these disparate data and processes, leaving planners to make intuition-based decisions rather than data-driven ones. AI can address the complexities of mapping a multi-tier network model from several disconnected systems across the value chain, including external business partners. Further, with advances in AI such as reinforcement learning, the networks can be adaptive, and self-regulated with different sub-network agents operating toward a common goal of increasing resilience, profitability, and customer service. Such an adaptive network considers the historical trends, and supply chain internal and external events, along with signals. The system evaluates multiple scenarios and performs business impact analysis to determine the best course of action using techniques such as simulation, optimization, and machine learning. For example, the system may recommend a make-and-buy option, versus solely buying, and provide a balanced scorecard of supply chain metrics and costs, along with a ranking for the recommendation. This type of supply chain offers automation to eliminate manual processes, and intervenes based on exceptions, generating alerts, and providing suggested actions. It also has the ability to self-learn from user actions and automatically execute corrective measures.

Intelligent process automation

As next-generation AI innovation emerges, it will increasingly deliver on the promise of automating many of the recurring decision touchpoints in supply chain management, freeing up valuable human resources to focus on higher-level productive tasks that require creativity, judgment, and complex problem-solving skills. AI bots can carry out tasks like reading email for new procurement requests, logging into multiple systems for data entry, solving supply chain alerts, and triggering workflows. Another example is increasing planners’ productivity by using generative AI to create the artifacts (plans, performance, assumptions, risks, and mitigations) required to run key business processes such as sales and operations planning (S&OP).

Intelligent inventory visibility and optimization

Another example of AI in supply chain management is inventory intelligence where AI can balance inventory more accurately to reduce stockouts, and improve customer satisfaction and loyalty. Consider a scenario where the global inventory position analysis shows a projected inventory depletion in the upcoming quarter, with levels falling below safety stock requirements. With AI, the supply chain analyst can gain insights into the root cause—low supply relative to demand for a particular region and time. The scheduled maintenance of a factory in that quarter would lead to no additional production, exacerbating the situation. As a result, the demand must be met from existing inventory. With the help of AI-powered insights, the analyst can now delve deeper into the impacted products and locations and take corrective measures, using AI-powered recommendations to rebalance inventory from other locations or employing a cost-effective contract manufacturer.

Intelligent inventory visibility is also revolutionizing the way businesses search and view their stocks and products, empowering users with unparalleled accessibility and efficiency. The power of AI enables users to swiftly ascertain stock levels and product availability by merely typing their inquiries in natural language, similar to chatting with a friend. Whether it’s a query about products nearing expiration or the availability of limited-edition items across various regions, the AI assistant promptly delivers the desired results. Gone are the days of navigating through cumbersome menus, remembering product IDs or location details; simply use natural language to acquire essential information within seconds. In addition, AI can streamline today’s labor-intensive data-mining and table-joining. AI technology can now streamline the entire process, and even summarize inventory status in dashboard and text reports. Consequently, businesses can liberate their analysts from mundane tasks such as data cleansing and report writing, allowing them to focus on more strategic initiatives that drive success.

Shorten warehouse inventory cycle times

Another area of supply chain management to which AI can be applied is to shorten cycle times in warehouse fulfillment. Today, as demand for different items ebbs and flows, it’s difficult to predict which items should consume forward picking locations in the warehouse. Warehouses typically deal with the situation in two ways: they can pay for more space than they need at the current volume (unlikely) or have workers re-slot bins to bring items from a bulk area to a pick location. The latter is an ongoing, labor-intensive, and time-consuming process that is reactive by default.

In the future, AI could be applied to analyze incoming orders (or look further upstream in the supply chain) to forecast demand better. Based on this analysis, combined with data like physical product dimensions and the storage capacity of bin locations, recommendations for re-slotting can be offered to warehouse managers––allowing plans to be proactively set in motion to ensure that on-hand inventory is available at the time of picking.

Revolutionizing the supply chain industry

The above are just a few examples of how we imagine this next wave of AI innovation can improve supply chain processes and the overall employee experience. And it’s certainly just the starting point. AI has the potential to revolutionize supply chains, offering new possibilities for improved efficiency, cost savings, and customer satisfaction. To fully harness the benefits of AI, businesses must invest in the right technology and infrastructure to unify their supply chain processes and data—while considering critical aspects like security, accessibility, and company values. Microsoft is uniquely positioned to deliver AI in supply chain, by integrating built-in capabilities across our solutions and delivering a secure, composable, extendable, and interoperable platform. With low-code/no-code automation, collaborative actions, process orchestration, and rich supply chain functional capabilities in a single experience, customers can compose a tailored ecosystem and confidently apply AI to deliver new value.

Next steps for AI in supply chain management

Dynamics 365 Copilot in Microsoft Supply Chain Center is already unlocking a new world of opportunity and redefining what’s possible when teams harness the power of AI. By embracing AI, organizations can gain a competitive advantage and stay ahead of the curve in an ever-changing business landscape. And as we explored through the possible supply chain scenarios covered in the last section, we are just getting started. Sign up for a free trial to get started.

End notes

¹ Four Ways Leaders Can Empower People for How Work Gets Done

² International Journal of Logistic Research and Applications, 2009. Artificial intelligence in supply chain management: theory and applications.

³ Boston Consulting Group , 2022. Why AI-Managed Supply Chains Have Fallen Short and How to Fix Them.

The post Applying next-generation AI to the Microsoft Supply Chain Platform appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

In recent years, disruptions like COVID-19, geopolitical conflict, and natural disasters have challenged organizations to improve their supply chain resilience. A Microsoft-sponsored Harvard Business Review Analytic Services survey from October 2022 indicates that 94 percent of respondents view supply chain operations as a higher priority than they did three years ago. Moreover, 97 percent agree that a resilient supply chain positively affects a company’s bottom line.¹ However, many organizations struggle to achieve this resilience due to technological challenges and a shortage of qualified talent. AI and related emerging technologies are helping businesses overcome these challenges by empowering teams with solutions that amplify and extend current capabilities. With this in mind, we’re excited to attend Hannover Messe from April 17 to 21. Join us at Hannover Messe, where we’ll showcase the latest updates as part of release wave 1 through three cutting-edge demos highlighting the power of the Microsoft Supply Chain Platform in unlocking supply chain resilience.

Planning to attend? Join Microsoft, Accenture, and Avanade at Supply Chain Reimagined to learn how your team can use the power of copilot assistance with AI to proactively mitigate disruptions and improve productivity.

Supply Chain Reimagined at Hannover Messe

Wednesday, April 19, 10:00 AM–12:00 PM CEST at Microsoft Stand, Hall 17, G06

Register for the session

AI-powered risk mitigation

Seventy-one percent of companies experienced supply chain disruptions in recent years, causing many to rethink their supply chain technology.¹ At Hannover Messe, attendees will see how the Microsoft Supply Chain Platform enables manufacturing organizations to use AI copilots to reduce risk across complex supply chains. For example, supplier networks can benefit from a global monitoring solution that automatically detects and reports events that might potentially disrupt your suppliers. By pairing around-the-clock, end-to-end visibility with AI-based recommendations and generative AI communications, collaboration is more kinetic, automated, and seamless––providing organizations with the advantage they need to more effectively mitigate risk and make better, faster decisions.

The open platform of Microsoft Supply Chain Center integrates with existing supply chain systems, allowing organizations to meet their unique needs without replacing current systems. At the event, we will share how manufacturers can use Copilot in Microsoft Supply Chain Center to proactively flag external issues such as weather, financials, and geography that may impact key supply chain processes. Predictive insights then surface affected orders across materials, inventory, carriers, distribution networks, and more. Supply chain planners can then automatically draft an email generated by Dynamics 365 Copilot to alert impacted partners and mitigate potential disruptions before they happen.

As you saw in the overview, customers like Kraft Heinz could see the value in seamless supplier collaboration––especially before disruptions happen. With a massive global footprint and complex operations, supply chain leaders need agility and visibility across countless scenarios.

Optimize fulfillment with warehouse automation

Automation can drive improvements for manufacturers beyond factory walls. At Microsoft, we’re collaborating with Toyota Material Handling Europe (TMHE) to bring warehouse automation to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management. Autonomous guided vehicles like those from TMHE can perform repetitive tasks quickly and accurately. In combination with their integrated warehouse execution software (WES) T-ONE, Toyota’s simplicity and flexibility in design flows and better integration of system components are leading to increased efficiency and productivity. Businesses like those managing aftermarket parts for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) can meet customer demands faster and with fewer errors by automating processes such as picking. Moreover, robotics technology can help manage inventory levels, resulting in better stock control and reduced carrying costs.

Microsoft empowers manufacturers to build agile distribution processes by rapidly deploying warehouses with preconfigured equipment. The Warehouse Management mobile app (WMA) for Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management can be installed on almost any mobile device (Windows and Android), with support for iOS devices now available as part of the latest product update. This allows manufacturers to scale operations quickly without investing in new equipment.

With improved flexibility, manufacturers are positioned to support demand spikes, optimize picking through wave or batch processing, maximize order line shipments, and increase inventory turns––all while reducing labor costs. At Hannover Messe, you can get up close and personal with Toyota’s newest automated guided vehicles and also see a real-life example of a warehouse-in-a-box for quickly onboarding new facilities in remote locations.

Rapid enterprise standardization

When BPW Aftermarket Group (BPW AMG) needed to upgrade seven outdated enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, it chose Dynamics 365 as its cutting-edge cloud solution. With an impressive 90 percent standard fit, Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management covered sales order management, procurement, and logistics. Despite an ambitious timeline, BPW AMG successfully launched the new system in under 11 months, a feat many thought impossible. Today, the system provides enterprise standardization, enhanced transparency, and virtually error-free automated workflows, replacing obsolete and error-prone manual processes.

Learn more about how BPW Aftermarket Group drives enterprise standardization with Dynamics 365.

Keep customer promises with improved asset availability

Companies that invest in digital transformation can reduce asset downtime by up to 50 percent.² At Hannover Messe, attendees will learn how innovative manufacturers like Northvolt are maximizing asset uptime to meet ever-changing customer demands on time while enhancing employee experience through AI, mixed reality, and low-code tools. By collaborating with Microsoft, Northvolt is jointly developing innovative solutions using Microsoft Dynamics 365, HoloLens 2, and Power Apps, all integrated with next-generation AI capabilities, to establish a seamlessly connected factory for the future.

For example, imagine a scenario where a field service technician arrives at a customer’s site to repair a complex piece of machinery or a sophisticated Northvolt battery pack. The technician may have limited knowledge about the equipment and its underlying systems, making diagnosing and resolving issues efficiently difficult. However, the technician can apply AI capabilities to quickly identify potential problem areas by analyzing images uploaded with the recently released Asset Management mobile app for Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management. With this information, technicians can focus on resolving the root cause of the problem rather than just fixing the symptoms, leading to faster repairs and improved first time fix rates.

Come try it for yourself! Join us at the booth to don a HoloLens and put yourself in the shoes of a maintenance technician using mixed reality and AI. You can also sign up online for a free trial.

Next steps

Through these three demos, attendees will gain insights into the transformative capabilities of the Microsoft Supply Chain Platform, enabling them to build resilient, efficient, and future-ready supply chains for their organizations.

Learn more about Microsoft at Hannover Messe 2023. Additionally, we invite you to join us alongside Accenture and Avanade as we look inside the latest trends and best practices shaping the supply chains of today and tomorrow. You’ll hear from experts and peers how to transform your supply chains to be agile, connected, and sustainable. Details and registration link are below.

Register: Supply Chain Reimagined – Take control of your supply chain
Date: Wednesday, April 19, 10:00 AM–12:00 PM CEST
Location: Microsoft Stand, Hall 17, G06

Attend to:

• Experience Dynamics 365 Copilot and learn to unlock productivity improvements
• Hear essential insights from industry leaders
• Join the Q&A chat in-person

End notes

¹Harvard Business Review Analytic Services, 2022. A Resilient Supply Chain Built for Competitive Advantage.

²McKinsey & Company. Capturing the true value of Industry 4.0.

The post Microsoft Supply Chain Platform at Hannover Messe 2023 appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Resiliency for retailers might best be understood by thinking about the delight consumers feel when they order that specific, thoughtful gift online for the holidays or when they come across the perfect gift while shopping at a store. To be successful with consumers in these moments, retailers must have the right products in stock at the right time and deliver them quickly and cost-effectively. This is what resiliency for retailers looks like, but how do you build resiliency into your supply chain?

Microsoft Supply Chain Center

Reduce supply and demand mismatches by running simulations using AI and real-time, advanced analytics.

Try the preview

McKinsey & Company found that 75 percent of consumer packaged goods (CPG) supply chain leaders prioritize supply chain digitalization, suggesting that resiliency through digitalization is one strategy that retailers are exploring.¹ At Microsoft, we believe the path to retail resiliency lies in three interconnected capabilities: connectivity, agility, and sustainability, which we showcase solutions around at this year’s National Retail Federation (NRF) exposition in New York City.

Connectivity

True end-to-end visibility requires a platform capable of connecting and harmonizing data from new and existing sources. According to research commissioned by Microsoft from Harvard Business Review Analytic Services, 97 percent of executives agree that having a resilient supply chain positively impacts a company’s bottom line.² The same study found that most organizations’ digital infrastructure is composed of a mix of modern and legacy apps, with only 11 percent using a single integrated platform of modern, best-in-class applications.³ This makes any solutions’ connectivity a critical factor in building resilience and agility.

One merchant that is enjoying the benefits of connectivity and visibility is iFIT. iFIT is a leading health and fitness platform that markets several home exercise equipment brands. Recently, iFIT adopted the Microsoft Supply Chain Platform to bring together its systems and data. With this integrated, centralized view, iFIT can reduce the manual effort and guesswork involved in strategically placing inventory in its more than 40 forward-stocking locations. Utilizing built-in AI capabilities, iFIT increased efficiency from 30 to 75 percent on their forward stock inventory resulting in faster delivery times––reduced from a two-week window to two days––and increased customer delight.

Extensible systems increase connectivity, too, such as the ability to leverage highly functional micro-services like the Inventory Visibility Add-in for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management. Users can enable the Inventory Visibility service free of charge to gain a real-time, global view of on-hand inventory and tracking across all data sources and channels. Additionally, the Inventory Visibility service allows users to avoid overselling by making real-time soft reservations and using the allocation feature to ring-fence valuable on-hand stock for essential customers or channels.

Learn more with the Inventory Visibility Add-in overview.

Another dimension of connectivity is collaboration. Dynamics 365 and Supply Chain Center include Microsoft Teams built-in, unleashing the power of collaborative applications for users, making all your business processes and applications multiplayer. With collaborative applications, team members can connect in real time, surface and act on insights from unified data, and swarm around supply chain issues to mitigate disruptions before they impact customers.

Connected systems and data create the visibility supply chains need to sense risks and illuminate opportunities––the necessary precursors to agility, which we look at next.

Agility

To enable agility, supply chain software needs to increase visibility across data sources, predict and mitigate disruptions, streamline collaboration, and fulfill orders––sustainably and securely. In short, companies need to understand the entire supply chain network. By connecting disparate systems and harmonizing data across the supply chain, companies gain a more comprehensive understanding of supply and demand. With Supply Chain Center, retailers can connect and harmonize data and generate supply and demand insights using AI to uncover patterns and projections based on historical and real-time inventory and order volumes.

One company using Supply Chain Center to build a more agile supply chain is Northern Tool + Equipment, a manufacturing and omnichannel retailer with 130 stores across the United States. Northern Tool + Equipment’s fragmented supply chain technology infrastructure had pushed lead times for the 100,000 items in its product catalog to four to seven days. In addition, many of the company’s products are very large, like generators and air compressors. The sheer size of these items brings further complexity to the challenge of optimizing shipping routes for cost and sustainability. Similarly, Northern Tool + Equipment struggled to provide firm delivery dates for online and in-store product orders. For a business that serves people who do tough jobs and rely on their tools for their livelihood, being competitive means offering delivery in one to three days and providing accurate delivery times.

Northern Tool + Equipment partnered with Microsoft to overcome these challenges with an end-to-end supply chain solution. The selection of Supply Chain Center meant that Northern Tool + Equipment could immediately begin to rationalize and connect every node of its supply chain with a solution designed to create a more resilient and sustainable supply chain through an open, flexible, collaborative, and secured platform. The result? Northern Tool + Equipment can provide customers with a committed delivery date and shipping costs while also ensuring one-day to two-day delivery within a specific proximity of its stores.

A significant factor in Northern Tool + Equipment’s lead time improvement is its use of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management capabilities, which allows organizations to connect and orchestrate order fulfillment across different platforms and apps. But Supply Chain Center has an assortment of capabilities to serve other retailers on the agility journey.

One such capability is the Supply Chain Center news module, which gathers information about world events and presents articles relevant to your business and supply chain. How can this feature be a functional building block of agility?

Let’s consider an example of a retailer selling portable air conditioners. Using the news module, the retailer could receive a news alert that a specific geography is forecasted to have the hottest summer on record. This would likely increase the expected seasonal demand for the product in the affected region. The retailer could capitalize on this intelligence by increasing their forecast during the planning process so that they can be prepared to quickly shift inventory to ensure coverage. 

In addition, Supply Chain Center connects with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, which gives retailers access to advanced warehouse management functionality, such as warehouse automation by integrating with partners like inVia Robotics. It also gives retailers the ability to set up pop-up warehouses in a matter of days in six easy steps. Continuing the example above, our portable air conditioner retailer might utilize the supply chain planning functionality and learn that they have insufficient warehouse capacity to meet the seasonal demand increases. In this case, they could use Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management to open a new warehouse in a matter of days by utilizing wizards and templates and quickly deploying the mobile app. Similarly, the retailer could then improve warehouse productivity with InVia Robotics by leveraging robots to do the heavy lifting and traveling across the warehouse, freeing up workers to do the more complex task of sorting and packing. The value of these systems is getting the attention of organizations and analyst firms. Gartner® predicts that by 2026, 75 percent of large enterprises will have adopted some form of intralogistics smart robots in their warehouse operations.⁴

Sustainability, circular economies

In a recent survey, 46 percent of individuals who purchased products online said the most important thing they want brands to do is be socially responsible.⁵ This fact helps explain why 53 percent of organizations plan to increase their focus on sustainable sourcing in 2023.⁶ While there are several dimensions of social responsibility, sustainability is the most relevant to retail supply chain leadership. For retail supply chains, this can be challenging.

For retailers to lead not just the industry but to exceed consumers’ expectations for social responsibility, another challenge beckons—the utilization of circular economies. Even leaders in the EU, who successfully decreased material use by 9 percent and increased products derived from recycled waste by 50 percent,⁷ understand that while their progress is impressive, growth of circular economies is still limited compared to their actual material footprint. Still, the incentive for retailers, beyond the value of doing the right thing, is significant. One survey by Statista expects worldwide revenue of circular economy transactions to more than double from 2022 to 2026, growing from $338 billion to $712 billion.⁸

One way that Microsoft is helping brands meet the challenge is with built-in sustainability features for suppliers. One example is the FedEx integration with Intelligent Order Management––which is included in Supply Chain Center. The FedEx integration allows users to offer boxless returns to their customers by leveraging environmentally friendly QR codes to return items at more than 60,000 retail FedEx locations. Plus, retailers can utilize the self-service return functionality of the FedEx integration to easily manage all returns with complete visibility of every step in an item’s return to the warehouse.

Learn how FedEx and Dynamics 365 reimagine commerce experiences.

What’s next?

As we have seen here, the path to retail resilience in today’s competitive environment revolves around connectivity, agility, and sustainability. Brands should address disruptions and challenges with solutions that can exceed customer expectations, drive profitability, and improve sustainability.

Ready to see how Supply Chain Center can help your business on the path to retail resiliency? Watch our Supply Chain Management guided tour and sign up for a free 180-day trial of Microsoft Supply Chain Center (preview).

For a look back at NRF 2022, check out our previous blog: Dynamics 365 helps build the retail supply chain of the future. And take a look at the following posts to learn more about NRF 2023:

• Transform retail customer experiences with the Microsoft Customer Experience Platform
• Resilient Retail
• How Microsoft Teams empowers your retail workers to do more with less

Sources

¹McKinsey & Company, 2022. How consumer-packaged-goods companies can drive resilient growth.

²Harvard Business Review Analytic Services, 2022. A Supply Chain Built for Competitive Advantage.

³Harvard Business Review Analytic Services, 2022. A Supply Chain Built for Competitive Advantage.

⁴ Gartner, 2022. Gartner Predicts the Future of Supply Chain Technology. GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved

⁵GWI, 2022. GWI USA.

⁶KPMG, 2022. The supply chain trends shaking up 2023.

⁷The World Bank, 2022. World Bank Releases Its First Report on the Circular Economy in the EU, Says Decoupling Growth From Resource Use in Europe Achievable Within Decade.

⁸Statista, 2022. Estimated revenue generated from circular economy transactions in 2022 and 2026 worldwide.

The post The Microsoft Supply Chain Platform enables resiliency for retailers appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Organizations worldwide seek reliability in their supply chains to meet the demand of their customers. If there is anything that companies have learned from the years past, it’s to plan for the unexpected. Using history to make decisions for the future no longer works. Customer demand is constantly changing, whether it’s influenced by the economic climate or making environmentally conscious purchase decisions.

At the Microsoft Supply Chain Reimagined digital event, you heard how conversations about supply chains have been elevated to the board room as they are pivotal to gain a competitive advantage for any organization today. We heard from supply chain practitioners, both within Microsoft and from our customers, on the need to address the fragmented ecosystems of supply chain technologies. This is critical for enabling end-to-end visibility of supply chains in near real time. Without this visibility, customers are struggling to unify data to proactively predict and mitigate disruptions.

Microsoft Supply Chain Center

Now available in preview

Earlier this week, we announced the Microsoft Supply Chain Platform to help address these challenges. An open, extensible, and adaptive platform enables companies to unify experiences across different planning and execution systems. At the core of the Supply Chain Platform is the Microsoft Supply Chain Center, which introduces a ready-made command center for users to manage disparate supply chain data. Microsoft Supply Chain Center is now available in preview.

Watch the video:

Connect your ecosystem

Most organizations rely on legacy systems and one-off “best-in-breed” applications to manage their supply chain rather than a single, integrated platform, which puts them at a competitive disadvantage.

Recent research from Harvard Business Review Analytic Services commissioned by Microsoft shows that 65 percent of executives cite lack of access to real-time supply chain data as a technological obstacle to their supply chain operations and only 11 percent have a modern, integrated digital solution for their supply chain.*

We are helping companies address this challenge with the Supply Chain Center. Its data manager harmonizes data across existing and new enterprise resource planning (ERP) and supply chain systems in the company. For example, it can unify and harmonize data from Microsoft Dynamics 365, SAP, Oracle, Overhaul, C.H. Robinson, FedEx, FourKites, and many more. An open, flexible platform helps maximize their existing investments without needing to replace them. Now companies can have better data visibility in near real time across their entire supply chain to better assess risks.

Microsoft customers, like Kraft Heinz, joined the discussion during the Supply Chain Reimagined event to share how the Supply Chain Platform will empower them to gain reliability and scalability by identifying trends faster than ever before. Kraft Heinz can not only assess risks faster but also collaborate efficiently across its teams and suppliers to mitigate those risks proactively.

With Supply Chain Center, we want to make it easy for companies to adopt new supply chain solutions in an incremental manner to digitally transform different functional areas of their supply chain while ensuring that those new solutions adopted in the future are interoperable with their existing landscape to achieve faster time to value. It’s all about doing more with less.

Enhance supply chain visibility

Once companies overcome the challenge of data visibility, the Supply Chain Platform enables them to generate actionable insights from this unified data to predict stockouts or shipment delays and prevent overstocking. Companies can track orders all the way until they reach their end consumer and proactively mitigate any constraints along the way to meet customer commitments. This type of end-to-end visibility is only possible with a unified platform approach.

Customers like Daimler Truck North America manage hundreds of thousands of parts across their global supply chain. Using the AI-powered supply and demand insights capabilities of the Supply Chain Center, which harnesses data flowing from the rest of the platform, they predict any parts shortages in their supply chain ahead of time so that they can proactively mitigate them and deliver on their promises to their customers, dealerships, and partners.

Another customer, iFIT, leverages Supply Chain Center to generate intelligent insights that will enable it to place products closer to where its customer demand is rather than just relying on history. It was able to improve efficiency from 30 percent to 75 percent in its forward stocking inventory, which means it can fulfill customer demand in two days versus two weeks, resulting in more satisfied customers.

The research with Harvard Business Review Analytic Services also finds that nearly one third of the companies struggle with poor collaboration between internal supply chain teams and external partners.*

The best part about leveraging the Microsoft ecosystem is that the supply chain team can rapidly act on these recommendations by collaborating internally or with external suppliers with built-in Microsoft Teams capabilities right from within the Supply Chain Center without having to toggle between multiple systems.

Gain agility to meet market demands

The Supply Chain Platform helps companies adapt to changing business needs with ease. Companies like GN Group, which offers brands like Jabra and Resound, are using Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, a market-leading solution of the Supply Chain Platform, to future-proof its business and gain the flexibility to adapt to changing needs. Other customers like ChemTreat, Inc. are able to improve proactive planning with Dynamics 365 to mitigate part shortages. With Dynamics 365, organizations can shorten delivery lead times by running material resource planning (MRP) frequently throughout the day in a matter of minutes, optimize inventory with a real-time view of inventory across channels, and fulfill order promises by reserving inventory for high priority orders.

Companies can gain flexible capacity by rapidly deploying pop-up warehouses with robotic automation to meet seasonal demand more effectively, and the warehouse employees can gain additional agility using the mobile warehouse app to execute the warehouse processes.

Companies like Barnas Hus, a leading children and baby product retail chain in Norway, worked with KPMG to implement the warehouse management capabilities of Dynamics 365 to power its new state-of-the-art warehouse that utilizes robotics to accurately pick, sustainably pack, and ship products to its stores, giving it the inventory visibility that it always needed.

Another customer, Peet’s Coffee, uses the advanced warehouse management capabilities of Dynamics 365 to serve multiple channels: direct-to-consumer, retail coffee bars, customer warehouses, e-commerce customers, and direct store delivery (DSD) warehouses. Dynamics 365 provides Peets Coffee the flexibility it needs to support a diverse range of channels.

Improve efficiency and productivity

For many manufacturers, the current state of their operations is disconnected and rigid. With the Supply Chain Platform, companies can take advantage of intelligent automation to reduce costs, maximize operating margins, and improve employee experiences. With Dynamics 365, companies can build connected and intelligent manufacturing processes with an intuitive, touch-friendly production floor execution interface. New process advisor capabilities in Microsoft Power Automate provide customers with deep insights to identify bottlenecks in processes to drive optimization and efficiencies with low-code automation.

The Supply Chain Platform has enabled customers like Jansen to extend Dynamics 365 with Power Apps and Power Automate to create bespoke processes on the production floor that get the right information to the right operator with the least amount of manual intervention. The power of unifying all data in Dynamics 365 has enabled production planners at Jansen to provide more efficient production sequences, minimizing materials and equipment changeovers so that they can meet customer orders on time by reducing time and enhancing operator productivity.

Organizations can further enhance the visibility on their production floor with native integration to any manufacturing execution system (MES) without replacing it. They can optimize the use of equipment and resources with AI-driven, capability-matching production scheduling.

Another customer, Alterra Mountain Company, has increased asset utilization and gained complete visibility into asset costs and conditions across its ski resorts in North America. It performs proactive maintenance to decrease unplanned asset downtime and downstream disruptions and optimize maintenance spend and spare parts inventory.

The research with Harvard Business Review Analytic Services also showed that more than 30 percent of the companies struggled with finding the right talent with supply chain skills and expertise.*

The Supply Chain Platform keeps frontline workers safer while accelerating upskilling, reducing errors, and increasing yield with step-by-step holographic work instructions. Use mixed reality and built-in Teams capabilities to collaborate in real-time with experts, improving productivity and reducing environmental impact from unnecessary travel.

Enhance security and sustainability

Organizations are encountering increased volumes and more sophisticated threats to their environments than ever before. Unmanaged Internet of Things (IoT), industrial control system (ICS), and operational technology (OT) devices are a force driving new advances in the industry but have also tripled the size of the attack surface area. Securing these devices is a mission-critical objective for any organization. The Microsoft Supply Chain Platform helps organizations create a secure supply chain by detecting and preventing any cyber threat by improving cyber security, physical management, and endpoint security across their entire supply chain network with multiple levels of security and continuous updates and patches.

The Supply Chain Platform also helps accelerate sustainability initiatives all the way from sustainable design, to sourcing, to manufacturing, and fulfillment. With Supply Chain Center order management capabilities, retailers can streamline returns sustainably with out-of-the-box connectors to FedEx. They can implement boxless returns with supporting carriers for less packaging waste and fewer consolidated trips instead of individual customer returns.

The rules-based fulfillment orchestration engine in Supply Chain Center enables organizations to fulfill orders sustainably while meeting their customer’s order promise. For instance, rules-based setup allows companies to balance miles travelled from fulfillment center to customers to minimize their emissions with service-level agreements (SLAs) to ensure on-time delivery.

Companies can establish ethical and sustainable sourcing practices with Dynamics 365. Sustainability scoreboards help them make data-driven decisions about supply chain changes to improve their metrics and further their sustainability goals.

Another way to operate sustainably is to drive circularity. Essentially—instead of throwing away goods at the end of their life, finding ways to reuse or recycle them to reduce carbon emissions. This could also be a new revenue stream for companies.

Our own Microsoft Circular Centers have a unique process to optimize warehouse routing and management systems to process decommissioned servers from Microsoft datacenters. By leveraging the low-code Microsoft Power Platform solutions, Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management was extended to build a reverse logistics solution that helped reuse, resale, and recycle the decommissioned data center assets. This is helping to put Microsoft on the path to achieving its sustainability goals by 2030.

To further support organizations to achieve their sustainability goals, last month at Microsoft Ignite we introduced new capabilities in Sustainability Manager, a Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability solution that enables organizations to store and reduce indirect value chain emissions (also known as “Scope 3” emissions—the supply chain of your suppliers), which account for a disproportionate share of most organizations’ carbon footprints. The solution includes prebuilt calculation methodologies for more than half of the 15 categories of Scope 3.

Partner to empower customers in supply chain transformation

With the Supply Chain Platform, partners can bring their industry and domain expertise to create integrated solutions leveraging Microsoft Supply Chain Center, Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, Microsoft Azure, Teams, and Microsoft Power Platform. We will continue to support our customers with a rich partner ecosystem, including advisors and implementers like Accenture, Avanade, EY, KPMG, PwC, and TCS. In addition, to help customers find the best solution for their supply chain needs, we’ll continue working with solution providers such as Blue Yonder, Cosmo Tech, Experlogix, Flintfox, inVia Robotics, K3, o9 Solutions, SAS, Sonata Software, To-Increase software, and many more.

Ready to take action?

Take a free trial of Microsoft Supply Chain Center, which is now in preview.

Watch the Supply Chain Reimagined Event.

Learn more about the Microsoft Supply Chain Platform.

*Harvard Business Review Analytic Services research, “A supply chain built for a competitive advantage” commissioned by Microsoft.

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