Re: Need Help With ECM - Inbound Orders

Hi all,

Al, your experience making EDI and BPCS CD work together is like comparing
chalk and cheese when speaking of version 6.x BPCS and ECM and EDI, as the 2
releases of BPCS are so different in this area. Therefore, I don't agree
that outside help from a 3rd party is necessarily required to get this up
and running. We have many customers who have implemented ECM with BPCS in
version 6 successfully and without problems you experienced on the other
release. However, it sounds like Nazir is doing some customization, and
likely there is some step that is missing in the job stream or in what you
are populating into the files themselves.

Could you explain a bit more about what problem is actually being
experienced and what has been done so far to try to determine the source of
the problem, and how long you have been working to get this up and running,
so that we have some background before making suggestions?

Thanks

Genyphyr Novak
SSA
-----Original Message-----
From: MacWheel99@aol.com <MacWheel99@aol.com>
To: BPCS-L@midrange.com <BPCS-L@midrange.com>
Date: Wednesday, July 12, 2000 9:12 PM
Subject: Re: Need Help With ECM - Inbound Orders - 850


>From Al Macintyre

This is a programmer's nightmare - I suggest that your company bite the mega
buck bullet & pass the buck to some outside consultant.

>  From:    Assetguru@aol.com (Nazir Hussain)
>
>  We are using BPCS V6.04 with April cume (Mixed Mode.

We are on BPCS 405 CD (green screen mixed mode)

> One of are trading partner is sending us JIT's(862)everyday.

We were on EDI I with BPCS/36 but abandoned EDI in the move to BPCS/400.
I looked at the challenge several times of how to get EDI data to BPCS with
or without various products on the market place, essentially simulating what
ORD500 does to enter an order & I was also interested in importing orders we
get from customers via fax.

There were several major stumbling blocks - we want to create additions to
ECH ECL ECS that simulate what is created by customer orders on-line & I
thought this needed to be handled when no user was actually updating the
files, such as in the evening when we do backups, but the reality is that
this data arrives any old time & users want it into the files right away.
We'd also need to update the record that keeps track of last customer order
#
that is created, and run a reorg to refresh the files that track volume of
current open orders etc.  So it would be a matter of kicking everyone off of
BPCS for however long this takes.

Most of our orders are changes to releases, so we needed a cross-index file
that links the actual order being used to the individual EDI input, then
replace the data that can be replaced in BPCS ... customers want to change
quantity on order for some date when some has already been shipped ... we
can
change date but ought not reduce quantity below what has been shipped.  Even
though it might seem illogical to reduce a customer order to below what has
been shipped, the reality is that EDI from some customers is not up to date
with what happened since the customer regenerated their EDI output.

Another complication is with customers that generate EDI then before the EDI
makes it through their computer system to our computer system, their buyer
calls up our customer service department with some changes to those orders,
which our customer service dept personnel want to key in right away.

There needs to be corporate policies how to handle this & how to track the
complications & they need to be rigorously enforced.  Our inability to
rigorously enforce electronic commerce policies is one of the reasons we
abandoned EDI.

>  I have written a programs that converts JIT's  into orders - ECM605 file
set.
>  When I run the collection and dispatch manager in ECM the data migrates
from
> EDI data dock to ECM data dock without errors and everything appears to
looks
> good, but I can't get it to create orders in BPCS. I have called SSA help
> line and an SSA consultants on this, nobody has been able it figure this
out
> yet...any help will be greatly appreaciated... Thanks in advance..
>
>  Regards
>  Nazir Hussain

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

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