AL MES

AL MES brings real-time shop-floor production execution into Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. Operators Start, Pause and Finish the operations of a production order directly on the floor - from a touch or mobile client, or inside Business Central - and AL MES turns that activity into standard output and capacity postings automatically. Its core strength: when one operator runs several operations at the same time, their labor time is split fairly across those operations, so machine time and operator time are always measured and costed separately.

Key capabilities

• Shop-floor capture via Web API - Start / Pause / Finish of routing operations, driven by a touch or mobile operator client; operators, machine and work centers, and scrap reason codes are exposed through dedicated API pages.
• Timed routing entries - every action is recorded with start and stop timestamps and produced or scrapped quantities; an operation can have several segments (pauses plus a finish), and the engine reconstructs the real active time.
• Automatic Output Journal - output quantity, run time and scrap are calculated and posted as standard Capacity Ledger Entries, with no custom posting code.
• Two-axis capacity - separate machine capacity lines and operator capacity lines, so equipment load and labor are measured and costed independently.
• Co-working time distribution - when an operator runs several overlapping operations, AL MES detects the co-work groups and splits the labor time proportionally to the quantity each operation produced; posting is deferred until every operation in the group is finished, so the allocation is never partial.
• Configurable and schedulable - journal templates and batches, back-office defaults, and options such as Require Machine Center, Require Operator Machine Center and Round Output To Integer; run on demand or from a Job Queue.

Why it matters

• Real-time, accurate feedback from the floor - no paper job tickets, no end-of-day re-keying.
• True labor costing - operator time is allocated fairly even when one person tends several machines or operations at once.
• Machine versus operator visibility - independent capacity lines support load analysis and a clean split between equipment and labor cost.
• Standard accounting - everything posts through the standard output and capacity engine, ready for standard reporting and audit.

Built for

Small and mid-market manufacturers - and especially job-shops and machining or tooling companies - that need shop-floor execution feedback inside Business Central without deploying a separate MES system, where a single operator often runs several machines at once and fair per-operation labor allocation really matters.

What makes AL MES different

• It solves the hard part - operator-time allocation across co-worked operations, computed deterministically and deferred until the group is complete; generic time tracking cannot do this.
• Two-axis capacity out of the box - machine and operator capacity as distinct lines, not one bundled number.
• API-first by design - a Web API meant to be driven from a touch or mobile shop-floor client, not a desktop form retrofitted to the floor.
• Standard capacity engine - postings land in the standard Capacity Ledger; there is no parallel posting framework to learn or to audit.

How it works

Operators pick an operation and press Start, pause and resume as needed, then Finish and report produced and scrapped quantities. In the back office you review the entries and run Calc. and Open Output Journal: AL MES prepares machine and operator capacity lines - including the distributed operator time for co-worked phases - ready to post with standard Business Central.

Requirements

• Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central online (SaaS), version 28.0 or higher.
• Languages - English (en-US) and Italian (it-IT); more on request.
• Dependencies (installed automatically) - AL License and Trial Management and AL Message Passing, both from AppLibra.
• Shop-floor client - a touch or mobile operator client configured to reach the Business Central Web API.