Explore SmartFlow APS with the Built-In Demo Datasets
The fastest way to see what SmartFlow APS actually does is to generate a demo dataset and run a finite schedule against it — every dataset is deliberately overloaded somewhere, so you’re not just looking at an empty board with nothing to fix.
What’s available
Six one-click industry datasets, each with its own items, routings, work centers, and a starting set of orders sized to create a real capacity conflict: a Cupcake Bakery (the flagship, used throughout this Learn Center’s examples), a CNC Machine Shop, Metal Fabrication, PCB Assembly, Custom Millwork, and an Engineering-to-Order scenario. Pick whichever one is closest to how your own shop is organized — the mechanics you’ll see (an overloaded work center, a finite run that resolves it) are the same across all six.
1. Open BDP APS Setup
Use Tell Me (the search icon, or Alt+Q) and search for SmartFlow APS Setup — that’s the caption the page carries in Business Central, even though the underlying object is named BDP APS Setup. The demo actions live in the Demo Data group on that page’s ribbon.
2. Choose Generate Demo Data
This opens a step-by-step wizard that walks through the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central manufacturing objects it’s about to create — items, BOMs, routings, work centers, shop calendars, production orders — explaining what each one is as it goes, and letting you choose whether to install it.
3. Follow the wizard through to your chosen industry scenario
Pick your scenario in the Sample Scenario field on the wizard’s welcome page, then click through with Next. Each subsequent step covers one Business Central object type — units of measure, work centers, machine centers, calendar entries, items, production BOMs, routings, and the production orders themselves — explains what it is and why the scheduler needs it, and carries its own checkbox. Leave them all ticked (the default) for a complete shop; untick any section you’d rather not seed.
This company must be on the Premium experience before you start. Business Central hides the manufacturing pages — Work Centers, Routings, Production Orders — under Essential, so the wizard has nothing to show you. Set it under Company Information → User Experience → Experience = Premium.
The generator works in its own space: it creates dedicated work centers (WC-MIX, WC-OVEN, WC-DECO in the bakery scenario) rather than touching any work center you already have.
4. Check the Capacity view for the overload
Open the Scheduler and look at the Capacity view — you should see at least one work center running red, over 100% utilization, on a specific day. That’s the deliberate overload. Every object the generator creates is tracked, so nothing it seeds is indistinguishable from your real data by accident.
5. Run a finite schedule against it
Follow Your First Finite Schedule against the demo data — generate, review, and Accept a finite schedule, and watch that red cell resolve. If the scenario includes changeover-relevant items (the cupcake bakery ships with a flavor changeover matrix already configured), try Sequence Optimization too.
6. Clean up when you’re done
Run Cleanup Demo Data from the same Setup page. This removes only the records the generator created and tracked — anything that already existed in your company, even a record sharing a demo number, is left untouched, and every deletion still goes through Business Central’s own delete safeguards.
Concepts behind this feature
If you’re evaluating SmartFlow against how Business Central schedules on its own, Business Central Is Infinite-Loading is worth reading before you generate a dataset — it explains exactly what mechanism produces the overload you’re about to see resolved.