Dynamics AX 2012 and Esri’s ArcGIS (Mapping)

We have been busy recently, working on developing a GIS solution for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012.

Esri’s ArcGIS is a geographical information system (GIS) solution for working with maps and geographical information. It is used for creating custom maps for viewing, editing, querying. For example, your local town or city will have a GIS solution that shows your housing plan, where the gas pipes are, where you water mains are, the roads, the traffic lights etc. The list is endless. A mining company may have a GIS solution to show where their Assets are, drawings of the mine site, their plant etc.

ArcGIS maps work as layers; you have your base layer which is a street map in my example below. Then you have feature layers, below I have an incidents feature layer showing where incidents have been reported, then a third feature layer plotting where the assets are.

I am not going to give away too much today. Convergence is just around the corner. My team will be at convergence at booth 2242 and also running a session. Below is some detail on what we are going to present.

SSAX009: Daxeam presents: Implement your equipment maintenance strategy with Microsoft Dynamics AX

Wednesday, March 5th from 12:30 pm - 1:30 pm    Room: A307

Speaker(s): Alan Flanders

Join us to see how implementing Daxeam for Microsoft Dynamics AX will improve the effectiveness of your maintenance department within an asset intensive organization. Learn how shifting from reactive maintenance to a reliability centered approach will reduce unplanned downtime and costs, minimize risks, manage inventory levels, and create more predictability within your maintenance department; and, explore how GIS integration can help implement a strategy to maintain assets spread out over large areas.

300 - Experienced

Audience: Business Decision Maker, End User, Power User, Prospect, Technical Decision Maker

Product: Microsoft Dynamics AX

Key Learning 1: Realize the benefits of GIS (mapping) integration

Key Learning 2: Learn more about maintenance strategies and approaches

Key Learning 3: Explore RCM - Reliability Centered Maintenance

Business Intelligence – “What if” forecast cost analysis

What if analysis in business intelligence allows you to simulate how a change in plan can affect your long term costs. What we have done in Daxeam is we have added the Proposed work order costs (maintenance forecast) to the cube. You have always been able to run multiple forecasts and see what it suggested. But you were never able to analyse the cost or dig deeper into how it affects your bottom line. Until now…

How to set it up and run it…

1. Create a meter budget – conditions could have changed that you are now running 100km per day rather than 50km per day. This means that your truck is due for a service a lot sooner.

2. Create a maintenance forecast plan that uses the meter budget created.

Make sure to tick the flag “Include forecast cost”.

3. Run your maintenance forecast for the new plan.

4. Process your cube

5. Analyse your data in Excel connecting to the cube.

Slice and dice your data with the following relationship.

A typical budget for next year might be your proposed work order transactions amount + previous year Ad Hoc work order actuals (Work order type is Ad hoc). You can get an instant report rather than having to manually create your own data in spreadsheets etc.

Run a number of what if type scenarios to see how your increased/decreased usage of your assets affects your maintenance costs.