Re: User Documentation -- BPCS-L

I suggest that as a first step you identify what company provides tech support for your company, then check to see what documentation comes with that tech support.

As a second step, see if you can find out what documentation pervious employees at your company have already aquired ... for all you know there may be 20 different BPCS manuals sitting on a shelf in someone office gathering dust, that you will want to borrow to devour one at a time.

The basic documentation that comes with BPCS is pretty poor. There is a humongous volume, but it is poorly organized, not cross-indexed. You can spend years studying it and not find what you are looking for, and not know if it is there or not. I am a programmer. I can access the source code behind the help screens. I use PDM to navigate BPCSDOC stuff I have added lots more to BPCSDOC that did not come with it I make heavy use of external definitions of BPCS files. I have built up large documents on everything that has ever gone wrong and how we fix it I share what I access with my users I have created my own cross-index tools, but for all that I use our tech support documentation extremely heavily. Every user at our company who does heavy BPCS access has one or more manuals from our tech support place. Some have several that we got via a quantity discount.

There are many companies that provide BPCS tech support for manufacturers running on BPCS. Most of them have a wealth of documentation vastly superior to what comes basic with BPCS. Everything you looking for. Get at the answers very rapidly. Easy to learn from.

But each BPCS tech support place is different in how this is organized, and how to access it.

If you do not have a tech support place, then your company is in trouble, but you personnally can buy manuals from tech support places, even if no contract between them and your company.

Think in terms of $ 150 - 400 per manual
and you will need to buy 7-10 different ones to cover all your questions
Only one or two will be $ 200 or less
Most will be $ 300 or more

However, if you can prioritize what you need, it may be that 2-3 manuals will meet 80% of your needs, with calls to your tech support company to fill in the remaining gaps. It may be that you need to get different BPCS documentation from different places. Have you followed any links from http://radio.weblogs.com/0107846/stories/2002/11/08/bpcsDocSources.html it has been years since I updated this

Plus you may wish to consider attending "BPCS University".

In the mean time, remain a member of BPCS_L and go exploring the archives of the discussion group. You might try using GOOGLE or some other search engine in lieu of the one that comes with midrange dot com.

, you wrote:

All,

I am a new BPCS user but have a strong systems (SAP) background.

I need user documentation that:

*       Identifies the overall structure and module base of BPCS (system
summary level)
*       Explains module integration between the financial and
non-financial modules  (financial entry, general ledger, sub ledger
supported modules, MRP, purchasing and logistics, ABC, change
management, etc. (system summary level)
*       "Data Coordinator's" version of each module showing the in-depth
table builds and relationship between the base tables.
*       Manufacturer implementation guidelines on customer/vendor
coding, chart of accounts, transactional processing, etc.
*       Best resources for answering questions or reviewing solutions to
problems encountered in the past.

What are the best sources?


Susan Kapplinger
SLKapplinger@xxxxxxxxxxx
Phone  989-839-5997
Cell      989-284-4784

- Al Macintyre http://www.ryze.com/go/Al9Mac Find BPCS Documentation Suppliers http://radio.weblogs.com/0107846/stories/2002/11/08/bpcsDocSources.html BPCS/400 Computer Janitor at http://www.globalwiretechnologies.com/