Re: Bill of Material Compare

from Al Macintyre at Tim PC at work

-----Original Message-----
From: dleising@whittman-hart.com <dleising@whittman-hart.com>
To: "BPCS-L.midrange.com."@whittman-hart.com
<"BPCS-L.midrange.com."@whittman-hart.com>
Date: Monday, August 23, 1999 4:02 PM
Subject: Bill of Material Compare

>I am looking for a Custom BPCS Program that any BPCS Company has
>developed that would perform a Bill of Material Compare. In other words
>a program that would allow a user to specify two individual end product
>item numbers and the program would do a parent component Item
>Bill of Material compare and identify the parent component differences
>including quantity per parent item differences.
>
>You can reach me direct at:  dick.leising@whittman-hart.com.
>
This is an interesting & useful challenge, but I did see a possible solution
about a week ago that was not BPCS specific, but PDM in general across
platforms.  There's a White Paper written by Dick Bourke who does a column
on PDM Design Engineering issues in Midrange ERP Magazine
http://www.mfg-erp.com

Mr Bourke's White Paper is on using pattern recgnition tools to identify
parts that are really the same, but described a little different, via
normalization of how the parts are described.  I will be sending him a copy
of this posting, or you might contact him directly to ask about his White
Paper on using CSM to eliminate duplicate BOM, and a revew of some past
approaches to standardizing BOM & Routing information.

Dick Bourke
Bourke-Arnold Enterprises
443A Orange Grove Circle
Pasadena CA 91105
ph 626/799-1140
fx 626/799-1264

I might still have the White Paper on my hard disk so that it could be
forwarded to someone upon request, outside of this list = 105749 bytes
CSMWHI`1.PDF

Last year we converted from BPCS/36 with our corporate data in 4 data bases
(conceptually similar to BPCS 400 environments) but now we have everything
in one environment using facilities to accomplish the same goals without the
duplication of effort which were not available on BPCS/36.  We used File
Track from Outlook Computing to identify what was a common part, where 2 or
more facilities had identical data, except for facility definition, and when
data was similar but not identical & what exactly the differences were.  We
had a rule of thumb which facility data was considered most reliable by item
type class combinations for purposes of the automated merger of data, with
discrepancies printed for our engineers to fine tune the results.

Outlook Computing PO Box 375 Deerfield IL 60015-0375 (847) 236-1850 fax
(847) 236-1851 - I have their web page on my home PC, not convenient to look
up right now at work, but I have mentioned it in past postings to this list.

When we had the same parts in 4 data bases, there was an enormous need to
identify discrepacies across data bases, so I had written a large number of
RPG/36 programs that compared selected information between BOM.  Some of it
was quantity per parent differences.  We were not comparing 100% file
content, rather selected fields for selected people with engineering &
accounting & other focused interests.  I have not yet wiped our BPCS/36
modification library because I figure some day we might need some of those
modifications migrated to BPCS 405.

However, for purposes of identifying 2 parts that are really the same thing
at a sub-assembly level in BPCS/405, we use a standardized format of keying
into the part description, extra description, and routing operation fields
so that various query alphabetized listings of these fields can identify
parts that are probably common.

If you check BPCS_L archives I have talked about this sort of topic before.
____________________________________________
Al Macintyre = MacWheel99@aol.com
Central Industries of Indiana, Inc.
www.cen-elec.com


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