Re: Order Number Field Size -- BPCS-L

>  From:    tom.b@ireland.com (Tom Briscoe)
>  
>  We are on BPCS v4.03 and find we are shortly to run out of order 
>  numbers (6 digit field HORD on file ECH).    I presume this must be a 
>  fairly common issue and wonder how have other people overcome 
>  this ?      Ideally we would want the field to be 8 digits but 
>  realise this would be a big modification to undertake owing to the 
>  appearance of the order number on other files and on various screen 
>  displays and printouts. Any suggestions would be welcome.
>  
>  Thanks.
>  
>  Tom B.

Is the size of your business such that 999,999 customer orders, each of which 
with up to is it 999 order lines, are not enough to keep track of what you 
need to keep track of such that you need 99,999,999 open & active customer 
orders within the same BPCS environment?  How many customer order lines do 
you use on an average customer order?  (We have 40-50 open at any one time, 
because we very heavily have repetitive business with the same item repeated 
many times on the same order, except different quantities & due dates)  How 
long do you need to keep a customer order active after it has been shipped & 
billed?

Contrary to settings in SYS800, there is no provision in V4 to have old 
customer orders get purged, like there was on BPCS/36 (BIL900) and there is 
again in V6 (ORD900 I think), but we have to figure out our own system for 
causing old unwanted closed fulfilled orders to go away.  This is on my to-do 
list that keeps being pushed aside as users & managers are more interested in 
general improvements & enhancements to BPCS than a spectrum of clean up needs 
that we have found.

BPCS Lite from UPI is a tool to automate all of the clean up, which we may 
have to go to in a few years if the clean up keeps being put off indefinitely.

Beyond the removal from our data base of old customer orders that were 
completely shipped years ago, we also need to figure out where BPCS gets the 
next number, and make sure that when it refreshes to 000001 that BPCS is 
smart enough not to reissue a number that is currently in the system, like it 
does with some other types of orders.  We found out with shop orders that if 
we restart them at some sane # like 100, but if there is old history on last 
time we used low order #s, then SFC300 cannot tell the difference between 
history that is relevant to a current order & history on that order that 
predates the order release.  I do not know if customer order software might 
also have this kind of insanity.

In IBM terms it is a pretty big job to make some field size larger.  You have 
to recompile all the logicals & programs that access the file layout & you 
have to figure out how to merge in BMRS that might be needed on those 
programs, then you have to look at how all those programs use that larger 
field.  It is not just screens that need a longer number, it is work fields 
in each program that might have a copy of the field that you made larger in 
the data base.  The HORD field in ECH is replicated into many other files ... 
ECL connection, ES* shipping history, S* sales history files, R* invoice 
tracking ... all of them & their implications also to be updated.  You may be 
at the point where you need to seek out some other ERP to replace BPCS that 
is designed for a larger size company that you apparently are becoming.

MacWheel99@aol.com (Alister Wm Macintyre) (Al Mac)
AS/400 Data Manager & Programmer for BPCS 405 CD Rel-02 mixed mode (twinax 
interactive & batch) @ http://www.cen-elec.com Central Industries of 
Indiana--->Quality manufacturer of wire harnesses and electrical 
sub-assemblies - fax # 812-424-6838

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