Overview of Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management 2019 release wave 2

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Important

This content is archived and is not being updated. For the latest documentation, see Microsoft Dynamics 365 product documentation. For the latest release plans, see Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform release plans.

Important

Some of the functionality described in this release plan has not been released. Delivery timelines may change and projected functionality may not be released (see Microsoft policy). Learn more: What's new and planned

Trade, product information, and inventory management

The continuous feedback obtained by operating the service allows us to identify specific subprocesses within the inventory management area that can be subject to tangible performance improvements. This is an ongoing effort with broad impact on several areas of the service, allowing for faster feedback, less waiting time, and the ability to unblock resources that otherwise would be waiting for a process to finish.

We continue to invest in both our product information management and inventory management capabilities. New classes of products and production processes will drive an evolution of the product definition and supporting elements. The inventory-valuation capabilities will be expanded to support scenarios where multiple valuation methods and multiple currencies are required—for example, in cases of different managerial reporting and statutory reporting requirements. We will also invest in making inventory on-hand information more readily available in distributed scenarios—for example, in the retail industry.

This release will bring usability enhancements in sales and procurement that increase users' productivity and satisfaction. Super users will be able to propose filtered views and to purpose-build forms where unnecessary fields or actions can be removed, allowing for a quick understanding of the purpose of the form and fast interaction with it. The benefits are two-fold. The knowledge of super users can be disseminated to the organization, and all skill levels of users can benefit from targeted views crafted to fit the task at hand.

The focus for the sales, procurement, and sourcing areas will be on improving franchising capabilities, Evaluated Receipt Settlement (ERS) capabilities, hazardous material handling, business support within areas of supplier collaboration (looking into extended self-service, data sharing, and data maintenance capabilities), and improving business support within integration scenarios covering purchase requisition, request for quotation, and purchase ordering relative to data flow and accounting distribution constraints.

Going forward, across the sales and procurement areas, the primary focus will be on improvements in our ability to track and account for goods in transit scenarios. Enhancing support of business scenarios within kit to stock as well as kit to order and extending our support for sales price and promotion management by adding extended price-management flexibility leads to improved efficiency and lower cost of maintenance.

Warehouse management

The Warehouse Management System (WMS) is a recent successful addition to the application suite that serves several industries, each with specific requirements on how to operate a warehouse. The solution has been gradually enhanced since the introduction in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, and a large suite of enhancements has recently been licensed from an ISV.

With the 2019 release wave 2, we will continue enhancing the released catch weight feature by adding capabilities of the second catch weight purpose-built solutions, with the aim of allowing existing customers to upgrade to the April release or its following monthly releases. The solution will both fit the needs of distributors as well as manufacturers. The lack of this integration has been hampering the uptake of the WMS solution for certain customers—this reservation will be removed. The suite of 30-plus distinct features will be integrated as a preview after the April ’19 release as part of the subsequent monthly releases. For example, a feature like “enable label printing during wave” adds flexibility in configuration and operation.

All feature exposures will be achieved through flighting to allow for a controlled roll-out. Investments include enabling warehouse automation using Microsoft HoloLens and enabling spatial data analytics using video feeds.

Manufacturing and planning

It is a core priority to leverage the continuous feedback obtained from operating the service to drive tangible performance improvements as well as optimize core manufacturing business processes. Public preview for the Planning Optimization is planned to launch in October 2019.

We are continuously enhancing and evolving current manufacturing functionality to support the connected, intelligent operations of modern manufacturers. We will integrate with the intelligent Microsoft Azure IoT service to help manufacturing customers close the digital feedback loop. This will consolidate close-to-real-time information from the shop floor with business data to generate business events and actionable insights. With the acquisition, we will introduce enterprise asset management capabilities that will enable customers to track the total cost of ownership of operations assets, as well as to manage the ongoing maintenance of those assets.