Microsoft's SCM Innovations for the Discrete Manufacturing Industry and Dynamics AX

Editor's Note:  This first of a 2-part article provides a historical perspective about Microsoft's SCM innovations, and reflects Dr. Hamilton's prior research and 10+ books about Dynamics AX across the past 13 years. The books provide comprehensive explanations about supply chain management (SCM) functionality within AX, and they include the 2016 edition of SCM for Discrete Manufacturing. The second part provides a future perspective about projected SCM innovations from Microsoft.

The manufacturing industry represents one of Microsoft's key markets, and Dynamics AX has emerged as their flagship ERP product.  Microsoft has steadily introduced significant innovations to Dynamics AX since acquiring the product in 2002, especially for supply chain management (SCM) in the discrete manufacturing industry.  Each release of Dynamics AX has expanded the footprint of SCM capabilities, thereby solving many requirements with out-of-the-box functionality and reducing the need for customizations or add-ons. In addition, the pace of these changes has increased in recent history, and is likely to accelerate even more with the technology foundation underlying the new Dynamics AX and the Azure-centric delivery model. 

To really appreciate the progress Microsoft has made in meeting the demands of the discrete manufacturing industry, it is worth exploring past accomplishments related to Dynamics AX. The historical analysis in this article also provides a starting point for the next article in this series, which