Re: MRP540---why??

[MacWheel99@xxxxxxx]

The date of 99/99/99 is NOT a valid Y2K date ... BPCS selection criteria for 
date ranges often start with default 00/00/00 to 99/99/99 but users need to 
know to key in a valid range if they want valid results.  It looked like to 
me you were selecting from June 21 of this year to the end of last year & it 
should have told you that the start date needs to be below the end date, but 
some software does not check for that nuance & just selects nothing because 
when dates are in wrong sequence by definition nothing falls into that range.

Marc mentioned checking SYS800 to check your date format ... we also use 
MMDDYY ... you might also check your Y2K-compliant windowing ... our cut-off 
is currently 1940-2039 for both BPCS & AS/400 in other words our year 99 is 
really 1999 - what's yours?  There is a WRKSYSVAL to get at the IBM setting.

In past threads here we have also addressed issue of lead times into the past 
... MRP cannot plan requirements which are past due at time of entry, or in 
which the BOM effectivity date is that of when the part was entered to the 
system but MRP planning would go into the past.  Also if you have an MRP plan 
for a specific date & you release an order for that date, then the original 
requirement changes, MRP will not plan for the change because you have firmed 
up the dependencies on the old date.  Confusing - Yes, very.

>  From:    Qin_Huang@schindler.com (Qin Huang)

>  Dear all,
>  
>  
>  Check from KFP I could find a record fprod='642511SML244306' 
>  with planned and release date,
>  however when I enter 642511SML244306 in MRP540 
>  and press 'enter',
>  it replys me that no plan in the arrange date, which the date range is
>  '00/06/21' to '99/99/99', how could it be possible?
>  
>  thanks and best regards,
>  hqin

On the topic of item #s that are ASKING FOR TROUBLE

Our end customer item numbers are in fact the part#s of our customers, for 
ease of tracking when customers call in with questions & for ease of using 
our BPCS reports on selected item # ranges to share directly with customers.  
Occasionally a customer has the same part # as another part #, is using one 
of our official part #s for the stock stuff we make as their part #, and some 
customers have part #s that are in excess of the number of characters that 
BPCS allows for an item #, but fortunately these scenarios are exceptions to 
our general rules. 

This means, however, that our part numbers tend to have a mixture of numeric, 
alpha, and special characters, that are very easy for people to misconstrue, 
and this is not just item #s, we also get it with customer PO#s.  We have 
some customers in which their item # is a variable number of digits & we key 
in items to alpha field left justified which means lists of their items are 
not in numeric registration or in numeric sequence.  People need to know in 
advance what a policy is letting us in for & make sure all new people 
understand these nuances, such as collating sequence with upper lower alpha 
characters & numeric is not same ASCII (PC) & EBCDIC (AS/400).

Al Macintyre  ©¿©
http://www.cen-elec.com MIS Manager Programmer & Computer Janitor
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