For Microsoft Dynamics AX Veterans, Just Learn What's Different About Discrete Manufacturing in AX 2012

Editor's Note: The following article is drawn from Scott's new book about discrete manufacturing using Dynamics AX 2012.  A similar article reflected Scott's book about food products manufacturing using AX 2012.

Many Microsoft Dynamics AX solution architects are trying to ramp up their expertise with Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012.  Two questions they frequently ask are "What's different about AX 2012 from what I already know?" and "How can I learn it as quickly as possible?"  I have tried to answer these questions based on the past year and half of research for my new books about Dynamics AX 2012. 

One of books' goals is to help knowledgeable AX professionals quantify, plan, and streamline their incremental learning about the new capabilities of AX 2012 by building on what they already know.  In my newest book, I particularly wanted to provide a rough measure of the nature and magnitude of changes related to supply chain management functionality for discrete manufacturing firms, as well as a detailed list of these changes so you can selectively review the extended explanations. 

A helpful starting point for building up your knowledge is to take a rough measure of the magnitude of the previous versus new functionality within AX 2012, which indicates the proportionate amount of change.  One rough measure can be based on a page count analysis of my new book, since each chapter provides a complete walkthrough of using AX 2012 for supply chain management in a discrete manufacturing firm.  The heat map displayed in Figure 1 summarizes the book topics, and a bar chart portrayal of previous functionality (shown in light grey) and the incrementally new functionality within AX 2012 (...