An insider's view on planning worksheet and reservation entries

In episode 35 of his podcast, Martin welcomed Martin Blaha from the Czech Republic, who moved to the UK in 2016, where he still lives and works. While Martin worked in various consulting roles for various Business Central partners for 11 years, he embarked on an entrepreneurial journey last year. Hence, Martin now owns MB365 Consulting – a new generation Business Central partner. 

Being asked why he calls his new company a "new generation Business Central" partner and what distinguishes the "old" generation from the "new " one, Martin B. outlined that his way of working, compared to traditional partners, is characterized by flexibility, agility, and a focus on delivering quicker results at a lower cost, the lower cost resulting from working remote and thus having no corporate debts. He referred to his small but very efficient team, consisting of the best developers on the market. While many traditional partners still adhere to the so-called waterfall-project methodology, meaning that each project step runs over many months, he works in a hybrid agile environment as Microsoft recommends, allowing him to run a first iteration quickly and collect feedback very quickly.

Leading over to the, as Martin K. called them, "hard facts of Business Central", they started to talk about the topic of Martin B.'s latest blog post "Five things you didn't know about planning worksheets" and why he is so passionate about it. According to Martin B., his enthusiasm for production stems from his journey from working with manufacturing software to transitioning to Microsoft Dynamics NAV and Business Central. He emphasizes the value of understanding manufacturing processes and the desire to share knowledge to prevent common pitfalls in implementations. He has seen, as he puts it, "so many missed or failed implementations where people just did not know what they're doing". His passion for the planning worksheet is rooted in the fact that it brings significant value to the customer "by sorting out the daily work in logic sequence and manner". 

Talking about the "Frozen Period", a key concept of the planning worksheet, denoting a period where the schedule is fixed and shouldn't be altered, Martin B. stressed the importance of setting the start date in the future to analyze urgencies, such as unshipped sales orders or missed planning opportunities. Lead times and communication also play crucial roles. 

Another best practice recommended by Martin B. is to define the worksheet process plan and then run it in small steps to achieve specific goals and balance supply and demand for each area individually. Moreover, utilizing filtering options extensively allows for running planning worksheets for bespoke purposes. Categorizing items is another key aspect, helping streamline the planning process by organizing products based on their characteristics. However, these practices might require adjustments to fit each company's unique needs. Additionally, Martin B. places a lot of emphasis on the significance of personal relationships in successful ERP system implementations, stressing the value of on-site interaction over remote communication alone. While planning worksheets in Business Central play a crucial role in balancing supply and demand throughout the manufacturing process chain, reservation entries serve as the glue holding everything together by ensuring alignment between supply and demand, and orders being fulfilled in the correct sequence.

The conversation ended with discussing the importance of finding a balance between flexibility and strictness when using reservation entries in Business Central for manufacturing.