Re: Single Database - Multi Country, Multi Site

Today on BPCS 405 CD mixed mode we are running 3 manufacturing make-to-order 
and engineer-to-order job-shop sites totalling 4 facilities on a single data 
base environment and single AS/400 with 50 hands-on users & this has been our 
reality since 1998.  All sites are in USA, although from HQ, one is 600 miles 
in one direction & other is 60 miles in other direction.  We are not using 
multi-currency.

1989 to 1998 we ran BPCS/36 using same mixed mode CPU but separate data base 
for each facility, starting at about 25 users & somewhere in the middle of 
those 10 years we increased from 2 to 3 sites & moved our HQ.

I joined the firm in 1984 at which time Central was using MAPICS I with a 
S/36 where I worked & a S/34 at the other site, in which neither had the full 
range of modules, and pieces of data base were floating back & forth over 
switched communications lines.

You may ask me about this on or off the list.  I believe that for our 
corporate culture, & organization of division of responsibilities, & 
similarity of product mix accross facilities, that single data base 
environment meant that the clerical staff staff requirements took a dramatic 
leap downward thanks to the consolidation of data bases.

When you consider that we were paying over one thousand dollars a month per 
SDLC leased line between each site from ma bell for over 10 years, it is real 
critical to compare that to the payroll dollars for the increased staff 
needed for duplication of work at each end without such connections.

One thing that was extremely aggravating to my financial management when we 
were still on two boxes & considering a 3rd or even 4th site, was that the 
software vendors would not give our corporation a significant discount for 
additional licenses.  We were basically told ... if you buy 10-12 copies of 
our software, we MIGHT give you a 5% discount on the extra copies, but for 
2-3 copies, pay full price for each one.

This sort of topic you may also wish to post on MIDRANGE-L or other forum, 
since a lot of the trade-offs are related to what are all the cost elements 
of one high speed high performance AS/400 with decent phone lines as opposed 
to several cheaper AS/400, with whatever impact this has on user pricing, and 
do all the remote sites need what kind of peripheral support.

We use Perle so that we can have both twinax & Windows boxes at all sites.

We recently converted from extremely expensive ma bell leased lines that each 
one could only handle voice or fax or data of particular kind, to much more 
economical & equally secure VPN that can handle all of our telephonic 
traffic.  I think it is too soon to know the impact of this outside the cost 
of the phone lines.

VPN does not go down as often as the leased lines did, but when it goes down 
it takes down all remote sites, and also our external Windows NT network, 
except for users at HQ.  Previously the leased line to the site 600 miles 
away went down once every 5 years & the leased line to the site 60 miles away 
went down once every 5 days.  Now with VPN the 600 miles away site is having 
to deal with regular outages and the folks there are totally inexperienced in 
how to cope with that.

>  From:    jclark@cott.com
>  
>  We intend to implement eBPCS 6.1 full client/server on a single database 
> and single AS400 to support at least 10-12 manufacturing sites between 
Canada 
> and the US.   I am interested in talking to anyone who has experience with 
>  running a single database for mulitple plants and the lessons learned in 
>  doing so.

Al Macintyre  ©¿©
MIS Manager Green Screen Programmer & Computer Janitor of BPCS 405 CD Rel-02 
running on AS/400 V4R3 http://www.cen-elec.com Central Industries of 
Indiana--->Quality manufacturer of wire harnesses and electrical 
sub-assemblies
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