Enhancing Efficiency with Chemical Manufacturing ERP Software
Managing hazardous materials and meeting stringent safety standards are two critical challenges for chemical manufacturers.
Selecting the right Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system can help you navigate the complexities of these two processes by integrating advanced resource planning, real-time inventory tracking, and safety management tools.
Later in this blog, we will highlight Microsoft Dynamics 365 and how the ERP systems housed in that suite of solutions can help you address these challenges. Before we do that, however, let’s talk about the value of using a cloud-based ERP system for your chemical manufacturing company.
ERP’s Role in Chemical Manufacturing
Chemical manufacturing is a vast industry with complex challenges. From stringent safety and regulatory compliance to managing constantly changing supply chains and hazardous materials, there is a lot you and your organization need to do to ensure operations run smoothly.
Investing in a strong ERP system addresses many of these challenges by giving you access to tools, features, and applications that you can use to complete processes more efficiently through automation and centralization.
Key Features of Chemical Manufacturing ERP Solutions
When you purchase and implement an ERP system for your chemical manufacturing business, you gain access to tools that can help you in several key areas:
Hazmat and Safety Regulations
Managing hazardous materials and keeping your workers and customers safe are top priorities. ERP chemical software systems help solidify safety management by providing risk mitigation measures, automating incident management processes, and delivering training guidelines.
Quality Control
While getting products out to customers is a primary goal, in chemical manufacturing you also need to ensure that the product meets customer specifications. ERP systems can help you track production batches, conduct quality testing, and identify defects to ensure the chemicals you are sending out are made properly and safely.
Inventory and Resource Management
Many ERP systems come equipped with tools that can track and manage hazardous materials in storage and transit, which can be complex and error-prone if a user does it manually or with an outdated tool. You can also monitor the material qualities and expiration dates of products in your system.
Incident Management and Emergency Response
In the event of a spill, exposure, contamination, or emergency, ERP systems often support quick responses. Systems can log incidents in real time, automate emergency workflows, and give you insights into the cause of an incident and the next steps on how to address it.
Sustainability and Environmental Consciousness
ERP systems also contain tools that help with waste management so you can minimize waste, track energy consumption, and ensure your business adheres to any sustainability standards and certification requirements.
The Benefits of Implementing ERP in Chemical Manufacturing
The primary way in which having an ERP system for your chemical manufacturing company is that it streamlines and automates processes across your organization. This empowers your team members to work smarter and focus on work that adds the most value to your organization as opposed to mundane or time-consuming tasks.
As a result, that increase in efficiency extends to your ability to serve your customers, increasing satisfaction and boosting sales.
ERP systems centralize your data and allow you to visualize it so you can make more informed decisions about all aspects of your business. Many cloud-based ERP systems go through automatic updates both from a security standpoint and in functionality. This allows your software solution and your business to stay compliant and updated, while your data is protected, and your team has access to new features and functionalities.
Essentially, ERP systems make the workday easier for your team. That will allow them to focus on tasks that make customers happy, leading to a cycle of success.
Selecting the Right ERP Software: The Case for Dynamics 365
When you use Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP solutions, you are opening yourself and your team up to a vast suite of solutions that can help you with your chemical manufacturing business needs. In this section, we will cover two systems and their capabilities:
- Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management
- Dynamics 365 Business Central – powered by YAVEON ProBatch
Let’s break down the difference between these two systems and explain some of the key features that can help you as a chemical manufacturer.
Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management
Finance and Supply Chain Management is an enterprise-level ERP system that runs on the Microsoft Cloud. Enterprise businesses typically have over 500 employees and likely over $1 billion in revenue. As a chemical manufacturer, Finance and Supply Chain Management will have a module for almost every process you need built directly into the solution.
The drawback is that for smaller businesses, Finance and Supply Chain Management might be too expensive and take too long to implement.
Dynamics 365 Business Central – powered by YAVEON ProBatch
Business Central is a great ERP option for chemical manufacturers who are smaller and want something less costly than Finance and Supply Chain Management. The difference between the two is that Business Central does not have as many chemical (process) manufacturing capabilities out of the box. Out of the box, it is a very strong discrete manufacturing solution. This challenge is addressed easily, however, by leveraging the Microsoft AppSource marketplace, which contains thousands of extensions that add additional functionality to Business Central. One of the major extensions is YAVEON ProBatch, which turns Business Central into a robust process manufacturing solution.
The Benefits of Dynamics 365 for Chemical Manufacturers
Both systems come equipped with a tremendous number of tools that can help you streamline processes across your operations and stay compliant with industry standards. Here are some examples of specific scenarios where Dynamics 365 can help you:
Hazmat Management and Safety Data Sheets
Dynamics 365 comes with tools that help you manage storage constraints and ensure safety. It will analyze materials and components of chemicals and then automatically produce safety data sheets. This ensures that you and your team members are informed, and it keeps your business compliance with regulations like OSHA or GHS.
In Finance and Supply Chain Management, this feature is built in. With Business Central and YAVEON ProBatch, the system pulls from CHEMDOX, a software solution that provides a database of chemical components and information about them.
Quality Control
In Dynamics 365, you can use built-in quality testing tools, non-conformance tracking, quarantine controls, and automated alerts. These features automate quality checks at every production stage, ensuring a consistent product and quick identification and notification of defects or issues. The system also automatically generates a Certificate of Analysis that you can include with orders, showing your customers that their product has been inspected and meets their specifications.
Real-Time Inventory Tracking and Traceability
There are tools you can use to gain real-time visibility into raw materials, semi-finished products, and finished goods. This includes:
- First Expiry, First Out (FEFO): This method of inventory management ensures you use items that are close to their expiration date, reducing waste.
- Lot, serial, and pack-level tracking: These features ensure full traceability of all products throughout your supply chain, helping your business stay compliant and react quickly to recalls.
- Built-in barcode scanning: You can enter product information directly into your system by simply scanning a barcode. This ensures accuracy in data entry, reduces errors, and enhances visibility into your inventory.
- Cycle counting: Dynamics 365 has tools that can help you with cycle counting processes, enabling efficient inventory audits to maintain accuracy.
- Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tracking: RFID tracking helps manufacturers track objects equipped with RFID tags that store data like product IDs or inventory details. This gives you access to real-time location tracking and faster data collection.
Operational Efficiency
Dynamics 365 ERP solutions also come with many features that can help your business run smoother outside of the production floor. This includes:
- Cost management: You can track costs by batch, product, or formula to gain insight into your costs for accurate pricing and profitability analysis. You can also use the system for budgeting and financial reporting.
- Data-Driven Insights: By using additional Microsoft tools such as Power BI, you can use your data to view actionable insights into market trends, product efficiency, and customer demand to improve decision-making.
- Supply Chain Optimization: Features like supplier collaboration portals, demand forecasting, and advanced warehouse management help you streamline the procurement process and enhance collaboration with suppliers.
- Production Scheduling: Take advantage of advanced planning and scheduling tools to improve production efficiency by balancing capacity and demand. This lets you minimize downtime and prioritize high-value orders.
- Process Optimization: Processes that are time-consuming and prone to human error can be automated with Dynamics 365. This includes but is not limited to batch size picking, purchase planning, and production adjustments.
While this is just a snapshot of the tools embedded in Dynamics 365 ERP, it’s a solid foundational overview of how it can help chemical manufacturers improve all facets of their business.
Additional Benefits: Integrations with Other Microsoft Tools
Another important thing to know about Dynamics 365 is that being a Microsoft product, it integrates seamlessly with other tools in the
Microsoft ecosystem, some of which you might already be using. Here are four Dynamics 365 integrations that will further enhance your abilities:
Microsoft Copilot
Microsoft ERP users can harness the AI-powered capabilities of Microsoft Copilot to boost automation and work smarter. By using natural language prompts, you can leverage its integration with your Dynamics 365 ERP system. Some examples of how this can help you include:
- Improving Factory Safety: When an incident happens, you can use Copilot to get step-by-step guidance on corrective actions. It can also summarize incidents, plan inspections, answer safety questions, and provide inspection planning and reporting.
- Improve factory operations: Using AI in Dynamics 365 helps you connect your data from one solution to another so it is accessible as well as providing production insights, root cause analysis, asset maintenance, and targeted training.
Using AI to help streamline your workday is easier when it’s built into your system. With Dynamics 365 ERP, you can have access to Copilot whenever you need it.
Microsoft 365
If your organization is already using Microsoft 365 tools like Teams, Outlook, Excel, and Word, integrating them with Dynamics 365 ERP solutions makes perfect sense. Microsoft ERP is available in the productivity tools your users already use every day, which makes user adoption much easier.
Teams becomes a hub for project collaboration as users can access Dynamics 365 data within it. They can also share, discuss, and update ERP records directly in Teams, eliminating the need to switch applications.
It also syncs with Microsoft Outlook, allowing you to track emails, schedule meetings, and create tasks linked to Dynamics 365 entities.
The integration also allows you to export financial data directly from Dynamics 365 to Excel for advanced analysis. Similarly, the system automates the creation of important documents like safety data sheets, invoices, and purchase orders by sending them to Word, where they can be edited as needed.
Power Platform
Using a Dynamics 365 ERP system can also give you access to tools in the Power Platform. It offers chemical manufacturers tools that can address industry-specific challenges and gain valuable insights into their data to drive informed decision-making.
Let’s take a quick look at four ways the Power Platform can help you.
Power BI – Data Analysis and Insights
With Power BI, you can use your ERP data to drive data-driven decision-making in several ways. It allows you to easily create data visualizations that are easy to understand and ready to be added to a presentation or report. This lets you track and analyze vital statistics like financial information, product metrics, and operational efficiency.
You can also create custom dashboards that can be used by various users in your environment to track hazardous material storage, safety incidents, regulatory audits, and more.
Power Apps: Custom Applications for Unique Processes
With Power Apps, you can fill gaps in functionality by creating custom applications team members can use for a variety of processes on any device. This could include apps to monitor chemical batches, manage safety inspections, and track waste disposal.
These apps will connect with your ERP system to pull or update data seamlessly, reducing manual input errors.
Power Automate: Streamline Workflows
You can use this tool to automate workflows and processes throughout your organization. For chemical manufacturers, this could include automating regulatory reporting, streamlining purchase order approvals, setting up inventory replenishment notifications, setting triggers for immediate action in case of safety incidents, and more.
Creating a Well-Rounded Chemical Manufacturing ERP Solution
When you implement a Dynamics 365 ERP system, you open their team up to a ton of great features and functionalities that will help streamline workdays and increase innovation across your company through built-in features and integrations with other productivity tools.
Stoneridge Software is Your Chemical Manufacturing Partner: Contact Us for More Information
Stoneridge experts are heavily skilled and implementing and optimizing Dynamics 365 solutions and work closely as a partner with YAVEON ProBatch for Business Central deployments. Our goal is to help you take your chemical manufacturing business to a higher level of efficiency through thoughtful guidance and strong solutions.
Reach out to our team today to get started.
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