Dynamics AX for viticulture?

Finance and Operations/AX User Forum
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Hi All Dynamics users,

My company is a new Dynamics AX user and currently looking at implementing Dynamics AX for ERP. Due to the complexity of our business, we are not sure if Dynamics AX can cover the business needs. The business wanting to be able to capture all costs in maintaining vineyards right through producing wines and finally production planning to bottles and shipment.

I’m wondering if there is a user out there who has similar industry like us that can help us.

I would like to understand how did you guys do it.

Do you know any wine company currently using AX?

Appreciate any helps.

Regards,

johnny

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Hi Johnny, I work for a Microsoft partner in central america, we have many agricultural clients in the region (sugar cane, pinneapple, melon, bananas, mangostan, african palm, rubber plantation, etc) we developed a vertical solution in order to handle agricultural necessities (application cedulas and materials, time from application to other activities, lot and blocks of fields in different periods, etc). It is completely integrated with AX master planning, production and cost modules, both in AX 2009 and 2012. It also has a paysheet integrated that uses handhelds for reporting.
One customer is an european company with operations in Costa Rica, Belize, Nicaragua among others, the others are in Guatemala and Panama.

Just in case it is of help for you. I don’t know any AX agricultural customer using just AX for its operations.

Best regards

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HI Hector,

Thanks for the reply. Its great to hear that there are others having similar industry like us. I wonder if you can help me with some clarification. I’m guessing its quite similar with other agricultural users.

how do you create a “product in progress”? From empty lands to producing grapes? how do you categorise or capture or allocate costs for maintaining the vineyards, from pruning to final harvest.

Then we have to change the grapes to wine. The costs involved in making the wine to finally botteled product.

how do you capture or solve it in AX ?

Thanks

Johnny

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As an example:
Agricultural activity 1 (soil preparation), Lot 100, cost $ 50
Agricultural activity 1 (soil preparation), Lot 101, cost $ 30
Agricultural activity 1 (soil preparation), Lot 102, cost $ 80

Agricultural Activity 2 (pruning), Lot 100, cost $ 30
Agricultural Activity 2 (pruning), Lot 101, cost $ 20
Agricultural Activity 2 (pruning), Lot 102, cost $ 50

Agricultural Activity 3 (harvest), Lot 100, cost $ 70
Agricultural Activity 3 (harvest), Lot 101, cost $ 45
Agricultural Activity 3 (harvest), Lot 102, cost $ 110

Agricultural activity 3 (harvest) reports grapes to inventory.
Grape Lot 100, cost $ 150 ($ 50 + $ 30 + $ 70)
Grape Lot 101, cost $ 95 ($ 30 + $ 20 + $ 45)
Grape Lot 102, cost $ 240 ($ 80 + $ 50 + $ 110)

Then the grapes are used in wine production, every grape batch has already included agricultural costs.

Our Vertical solution mentioned in my previous post, have the option of creating all agricultural activities you perform for example from soil preparation to harvest (as many activities as needed), each activity is automatically distributed for each parcel of land (lot or block) and that generates in turn a planned production order in master planning this module will help you manage the dates and amounts of these orders, when you firm up them generates production orders that allows you to report materials and time used and these costs are accumulated in an account related to each parcel of land, so at the end of all activities all the costs that relate to that particular piece of land are accumulated
The last activity reports harvested grapes, they become part of the inventory and thereafter we used the production module to generate production orders of wine where the grape is a raw material and they already has allocated agricultural costs of past activities. So the wine produced will have agricultural cost of grapes + other raw materials and packaging materials.

Regards, Héctor

PS: would love to visit NZ!!! [:D]

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Hi Héctor,

Thanks for the reply again. Just want to check with you about the vertical solutions. It sounds like its something that you developed ? not out of the box functions?

Our vendor partner suggested that we create a “PROJECT” for each vineyard in AX and track the costs involved in maintaining the vineyard are you familiar with this?

Sorry about questions, just want to make sure that I understood it all.

Thanks

J

PS: if you do come to NZ… especially Auckland … please let me know [:D]

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Yes Johnny you are correct, we developed that vertical (it is call AgriDAX(R) ) in order to cover all of the agricultural requirements. The “project” option is the most reasonable option to handle your situation with out of the box solutions. Do you have AX 2009 or 2012?
We saw the necessity of developing this vertical for some reasons that the use of Projects module will not provide or will not be so flexible:

  1. Big amount of work required in terms of activities costing. (AgriDAX(R) generates automatically the orders for those activities based on a standard sequence of agricultural activities you can define)
  2. AgriDAX(R) has the ability to modify the bill of materials you require for your applications and generate an approved document by the user agricultural engineers.
  3. There are certain chemicals that doesn’t allow to start a new activity before a particular amount of days (AgriDAX(R) consider a list of chemicals and reports that period)
  4. By the use of master planning in AgriDAX(R) you can have a horizon of planned activities to organize your work and forsee the necessity of materials in the future based on activities planned.
  5. If the vineyard is divided into smaller sections that you would like to have the control in terms of costs applied you can do it with AgriDAX(R) with one click, while with Pojects module you’ll need to generate sub-projects for each section.

If you think you can consider to see an on-line presentation of how AgriDAX(R) works with AX we will be glad to present it to you, just let me know.

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These are some of the benefits detected with the use of AgriDAX(R):

Agricultural Process Benefits

  • Better management of field activities

o Control of dates when activities must be done according to agronomic needs, resulting on yields improvement

o Control standard quantities of resources (agro-chemicals, materials, machinery and labor) needed to do agricultural activities on crop, resulting on better efficiency on resource use and decrease production costs.

  • Better planning and scheduling of field activities

o Easier management of activities/resources volume due to visibility on the system

o Improve productivity of agricultural management personnel.

o Take better decisions for environmental, climate and biological changes at the crop due to information availability

  • Agricultural Management improvement

o Centralized agricultural information resulting in better support on decision making

o Better availability, opportunity and accuracy of agricultural data

o Standardized agricultural processes control across whole corporation

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Hello Hector,

We are facing a new implementation of AX2012 on a customer in Agriculture Vertical.

It seems that you developed a new vertical in this area.

Could you send me some white paper, documentation regarding this AX vertical.

Best ,

Adrian Bageac

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Hello Adrian, I will send you the brochure, would you contact me at hector.cazot@insyss.com so I can forward you the file?

Regards