Case Study 6: Steel Manufacturing Inventory Reporting Performance Optimization
A. The Company Industry:
Steel production and distribution with extensive inventory comprising raw materials, work-inprogress, and finished steel products across multiple warehouses.
B. What needed to be done:
The steel company experienced severe performance degradation when running the Inventory Value report in Dynamics 365 F&O, with report generation taking multiple hours for their portfolio of thousands of items across multiple sites. The existing process prevented timely month-end close activities and financial reporting, as inventory valuation is critical for cost of goods sold calculations and balance sheet accuracy. The organization needed optimized reporting performance without sacrificing data accuracy or historical transaction visibility.
C. How Dynatuners accomplished the deliverable:
Dynatuners conducted comprehensive SQL performance analysis identifying bottlenecks in the inventory value calculation logic, including missing indexes, inefficient table joins, and suboptimal query execution plans. The team implemented database indexing strategies on critical inventory transaction tables focusing on item number, site, warehouse, and date dimensions. Custom X++ code extensions were developed to optimize the report’s data retrieval logic by implementing parallel processing for different item groups and warehouses, reducing sequential processing overhead. SQL query tuning included rewriting complex subqueries, implementing query hints where appropriate, and ensuring statistics were updated for the query optimizer. The team configured report parameter defaults to encourage users to run targeted reports by site or item group rather than enterprise-wide execution during business hours. Batch processing optimization enabled scheduled overnight report generation with results delivered to management via email. The cumulative improvements reduced report execution time from over 4 hours to under 20 minutes, enabling timely financial close and providing real-time inventory valuation insights for operational decision-making.
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