Make manufacturing warehouse and distribution processes more productive

The complexity of project-based manufacturing and product versioning easily trickles down to warehouse and distribution workers, causing errors and confusion. STAEDEAN aims to eliminate these issues with new integrations and features for STAEDEAN Data Collection Studio for Microsoft Dynamics AX, our mobile transaction recording solution for the warehouse and supply chain. A version of Data Collection Studio optimized to be deployed with STAEDEAN Advanced Discrete Manufacturing is available as of today.

The new capabilities and integrations in STAEDEAN Data Collection Studio are designed to help project-based manufacturers benefit more from Data Collection Studio. The new release extends STAEDEAN Advanced Project Management and STAEDEAN Product Engineering, both critical components of STAEDEAN Advanced Discrete Manufacturing, to the people and processes at work in your warehouse and distribution operations.

Project detail in warehouse and distribution transaction screens. In project-based manufacturing, you always want to ensure that your inventory, warehouse management, and distribution align with the projects your operation performs. That includes project-level visibility and tracking in the type of warehouse and supply-chain transactions Data Collection Studio facilitates on PDAs and other mobile and vehicle-mounted devices.

In today’s release of Data Collection Studio designed for integration with Advanced Project Management, the solution presents warehouse and distribution workers with project detail that pertains to the inventory they process and the transactions they perform. The combination of this new feature and the close integration of Data Collection Studio, Advanced Discrete Manufacturing, and Dynamics AX means your employees gain the ability to perform such actions as receive, pick, pull, put-away, and ship in the context of a project without taking any additional steps. The appropriate information appears on employees’ Data Collection Studio screens through the purchase orders and other documentation in the ERP system.

In future enhancements, you may well see more project-based information and fields in the inquiry, project accounting, and inventory screens in Data Collection Studio. We are also talking with some partners and customers about the possibility of a project-specific dashboard to complement the current dashboards.

Data Collection Studio enabled for product versioning. Often, when project-based manufacturing operates with multiple, simultaneous versions of a product design, it can be challenging for warehouse workers, for example, to pick the right part that goes with a certain product version. A new integration between Data Collection Studio and the engineering change management capabilities in STAEDEAN Product Engineering, another component of Advanced Discrete Manufacturing, removes all uncertainty in this area. The Data Collection Studio screens now show the appropriate product version that parts and materials belong to. This integration helps to ensure accuracy in warehouse tasks and contributes to best product quality.

Any changes made to a product version by design engineers reflect immediately in the ERP system and in Data Collection Studio. Warehouse workers will not have to guess or manually validate which parts to pick, receive, or put away for any product version, but can rely on the automatic effectiveness of their scanning and the display screens in Data Collection Studio to see the right information.

If you are interested in a demo with a hands-on test drive of these new capabilities of Data Collection Studio, or want to bring the solution into your ERP environment, please get in touch.