Re: Month End Close

We are on 405 CD with many fewer plants not working the same schedule & an 
economy-minded management that does not want to buy any more computer 
infrastructure than neccessary, so we have the luxury of disconnecting 
everyone from the 400 for a few hours every nite for backup & various BPCS 
tasks that require that no one be on BPCS while they are running.  Combined 
with the notion that we run EOM after all facilities have shut down for a Fri 
nite, this is quite doable for us.

Several other BPCS customers have modified INV900 ... check the archives at
http://archive.midrange.com/bpcs-l/index.htm

for contacts & more details ... my reccollection is that they split up the 
functionality, not by warehouse as you propose, but by files update & write 
off to tape, so that the types of problems are split up.

Our factory wrap up for EOM is normally less than a 1/2 day process because 
we try to keep inventory accurate on a day to day basis, and sometimes 
succeed in having it accurate on an hour to hour basis, but some transactions 
are ordinarily keyed in the day after they take place ... except on EOM day, 
then perhaps the factory keeps working in a busy season, but transactions are 
delayed until accounting is done with EOM & they are supposed to be entered 
either dated in the new month (even if the work was done prior month) or 
accounting given the details so we can adjust.

People may do INV300, SFC300, ORD300 etc. during EOM & even during physical 
inventory processing, which takes 3 days at a factory & sometimes we rotate 
which factories getting this so whole company is not being inventoried at 
same time, but intermittently during fiscal operations, we have to tell 
everyone that they will have to stay off the BPCS 400 for estimated time 
periods because we cannot be having other people on BPCS when certain tasks 
are running.

Now if you have much more computer resource than we do, one alternative for 
you might be at some point on the eve of EOM, to copy your entire BPCS data 
from the live environment to a test environment, then people could run the 
inquiry programs & reports to their heart's content off the copy of the live 
data in the text environment while they are shut out from the live 
environment doing month end.

Alternatively you could split your company into environments based on time 
zones, but that has other challenges with respect to report consolidation.  
If you had a separate environment for each plant, then you could do what you 
are proposing, but this means none of the the data on any of the plants is 
integrated.  We use a separate facility for each of our factories & have them 
all in the same company.  I do not know what might be doable by splitting 
companies.

If you want to modify to do month-end on different schedules for different 
factories, INV900 is not the only program you would have to modify ... much 
much more would be involved.

>  From:    tmakofske@cott.com
>  
>  Good Afternoon Everyone.  We are in process of installing BPCS (6.1.01) 
> and 
>  have come across a bit of a month end road block. We have about a dozen 
>  company owned plants and about another dozen facilities which do copacking 
>  operations for us.  In our current system, we are able to close each plant 
>  independently, and then proceed with the new month transactions for that 
>  plant immediately.  After all the plants close their inventories for the 
>  month (usually a 3 day process), we post the inventory transactions for 
the 
>  month to the General Ledger.  I understand that in BPCS, all plant 
>  inventories must be closed at one time, and only after that, may the 
>  transactions for the new month be entered.  Considering our busy season 
has 
>  many of our plants working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, I think we may 
> have a problem.  
>  
>  Getting all of our facilities to close within a few hours would be close 
to 
>  impossible without even considering the 4 time zones they cross.  We have 
>  been told that it would be extremely complex to modify the INV900 series 
of 
>  month end programs to  update by warehouse and that the chances of success 
>  would be slim.  I am finding it hard to believe that a system like BPCS 
>  wouldn't have a solution to this problem.  I'm sure many other companies 
> have 
>  had to embrace this same issue, and I would greatly appreciate hearing the 
>  words of wisdom from those who have already been down this path.   
>  Thank-you...

MacWheel99@aol.com (Alister Wm Macintyre) (Al Mac)
AS/400 Data Manager & Programmer for BPCS 405 CD Rel-02 mixed mode (twinax 
interactive & batch) @ http://www.cen-elec.com Central Industries of 
Indiana--->Quality manufacturer of wire harnesses and electrical 
sub-assemblies - fax # 812-424-6838

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