Re: Physical Inventory

>From Al Macintyre 405 CD mixed mode

Physical Inventory does not freeze ERP system access, just like cycle 
counting does not freeze inventory changing system access, the only thing 
that is frozen is what is physically moving through the factory at the time 
that the physical is in progress in their warehouses ,,, the rest of the 
company has business as usual ... engineering changes, customer order 
maintenance, MRP regens, accounting work.

Ideally, we can think in terms of what is happening in the portion of the 
company physical locations where the physical is taking place, as distinct 
from what is concurrently happening in the logical data that might not have 
been posted on-time real-time.

The factory tries to wind down WIP & move shop floor raw materials to bins 
properly labeled & easier to count instead of the normal arrangement of 
easier to access, and shipping tries to have a lapse of output in the same 
time period as the physical which will probably take a couple days & some 
people will be asked to work on a Saturday for perhaps half a day, which is 
not a normal production day.

In worst case scenario there is some customer part that just has to be 
completed & shipped out in a time period that overlaps the physical 
inventory, so we rope off portions of the place like police crime scene color 
coded tapes ...
this area has unfinished work on the customer requirement that we are 
treating as more important than the physical ... counting please stay out 
until this area is released to the physical
this area has been partially or completely counted in the physical, so if 
anyone just has to move materials in or out of it, you have to do the 
excessive extra paperwork so you do not screw up the physical

On day one of the physical, production & inventory personnel are scrambling 
to get all their paperwork for the month caught up, just like they normally 
do on the last day of the fiscal month when there is no physical, except we 
also close out all shop orders for the warehouses being inventoried in the 
physical.  On the last Friday of our Fiscal Month, everyone else faces that 
deadline, then accounting enforces everyone off the ERP system, except for 
the entry of Physical Inventory Tags but some EOM steps need to have 
restricted access to BPCS files, until EOM is finished.  When EOM gets thru 
with INV900, EOM takes a break waiting until the physical is completed & all 
the tags are ready for dumping into BPCS.

The important thing you need to understand here is that the PHYSICAL TAGS are 
going into a file that is independent of normal processing until such time as 
it is dumped into Opening Balances.  INV900 normally recomputes Opening 
Balances for the month, based on last month's various kinds of transactions.  
When the physical recomputes the opening balances for the warehouses 
inventoried, it also creates inventory history records spelling out the 
variances.

BPCS is not frozen for the physical ... it is frozen for EOM & the related 
physical update, both of which we normally do on a Friday nite & part of a 
weekend.

> From: Dana.M.Buker@dupontpharma.com (Dana M Buker)
>  
>  Good luck with your physical inventory, Rick.  So long as the orders are 
not 
> picked during the process, you should be OK. 

Right ... our process involves production not having the labor & inventory 
reporting caught up in time for shipping, which drives some on-hand negative, 
then next morning production cleans up shop orders on what was shipped last 
nite.  Sometimes I worry about what this does to our MRP regens which run 
every nite.

>  As an aside, I would recommend you go to cycle counting versus physicals.

We do both.

>  Regards,
>  
>  Dana

> Subj:  Physical Inventory
>  Date:    99-11-23 10:32:33 EST
>  From:    RickCarter@holley.com
>  
>  Bpcs Version 6.10  Mixmode AS400
>  
>  We are getting ready to take Physical Inventory using the BPCS Physical
>  programs and can't remember last year if we allowed Order entry to be
>  entering orders during our Physical downtime.  Does anyone see any issues
>  with this if order entry is actually entering orders while the system is
>  somewhat frozen for Physical.
>  
>  thanks
>  
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