Re: Shop Packet Print Problem -- BPCS-L

Al Macintyre at Tim PC

-----Original Message-----
From: Coen,Gordon <gordon.coen@abbott.com>
To: BPCS-L@midrange.com <BPCS-L@midrange.com>
Date: Monday, August 30, 1999 10:28 AM
Subject: Shop Packet Print Problem


>Hi folks,
>
>Hopefully one of you can help me.
>
>One of the users here is having problems with the F14 Release / Print in
>option SFC505. They can select orders OK but when they take F14 they get
the
>message 'Shop Packet Print is in Progress'. We are using 6.0.04 MM in an
>AS400 environment. I would be very grateful for any ideas.
>
>Thanks,
>Gordon.

Other replies should point you to the Reorg Menu, where in 405 land we
specify the WORK STATION SESSION ADDRESS and the BPCS job that got hung up,
and it can be altered to some convenient restart point.  This is not by user
unless site modified it <Devin Bowen> & obviously you want the user at a
menu screen when we are adjusting this.  Many more BPCS jobs use this Work
Station Logic system than there are fixes on the Reorg Menu ... you can
identify the names of all the behind-scenes work areas via DOC Menu to LOGIC
documentation, then call SSA help line on guidance with resolving some other
mixture of hung stuff - we have a perpetual document of how-to-fix stuff
that SSA told us how, so that the next time it happens, we have a plan.

We have also on occasion changed the name of the work station thru config,
although that adds to the collection of pesky work station areas needing a
clean up, using one of those programs discussed in other threads.

Many of our Shop Release Failures are due to a break down in User Training.

1. Lots of people come to the multi-user multi-queue shared network
environment with only desk top know-how ... they think that as soon as they
get their screen back from something to jobq or to printer their
responsibilities are done & that the job is done.  This leads to people
launching something to JOBQ then before it finishes executing, they start
the same job again - different items orders etc. but same BPCS job-name so
they are ON LINE & the earlier JOBQ version is accessing the identical work
areas & something bombs --- there are many variations on this, but the
bottom line is some users not understanding QUEUE theory of shared network
program execution.  The error message "not finished prior step" could be
perfectly valid if the user does not know how to check on the progress of
JOBQ steps.

2. Most of our users have multi-session work stations & most of them are
able to keep track which is which, but some do not realize that their job
steps are in an area named after their work station, so they do stuff
out-of-sequence, or do one step on one session & another step on another
session, leaving a pile of incomplete work from prior days, some ot it they
had to key in a second time because they "lost" the data.  The error message
"in the middle of the previous execution of this job" could be perfectly
valid & the user is a bit confused about multiple sessions.

There is a common PC mentality that if you get locked up, just power off the
sucker & re-boot - don't even sweat what the error message was - deal with
any problems it might have trying to re-boot.  On the AS/400 it is really
important to decipher the message.  We have people who get a message "User-X
is updating the record that your program needs." and they act like the
program is in a perpetual 'hung" condition, which of course it will be if
User-X is in the middle of a session they forgot about.  Instead of getting
a power user to explain the message, they power off the tube thinking that
will reset the error so they can re-try ... I have had people do this in the
middle of SFC620, SFC500, ORD500, and various other places that are a joy to
fix the damage.

Then there is the "bumble onwards" strategy ... if the user can somehow get
the job to a conclusion, then all is right with the world & move on to the
next job.  We have users who manage to crash shop order release, with one of
the above scenarios & think they are done, then at the same work station
release some more orders ... the first pass did not do everything it was
supposed to do ... the second pass picks up data from the first pass & takes
it to a conclusion without doing everything it was supposed to do ... this
gives them shop paperwork whose order number do not match in system.

Bottom Line --- You might want to check the work flow --- if one of the
users is having repeating problems with something in which the other users
are not having that problem, it could be in the step by step understanding
of the user of what is supposed to be done, rather than a system problem.
____________________________________________
Al Macintyre
BPCS 405 CD on AS/436 mm OS4 V4R3
Central Industries of Indiana, Inc.
Make-to-Order Job-Shop
www.cen-elec.com



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