Re: Order entry -- BPCS-L

Rick - we are BPCS 405 CD Mix Mode 400 so some of what we know might not be 
relevant to your needs, or my thinking might be considered to be totally off 
the wall, but we are also a Make To Order Manufacturer & we also do Engineer 
to Order.

ORD500 can be a bit cumbersome to get the job done & there are a number of 
gotchas with respect to risk of human error going undetected.  It is also 
easy for humans to misconstrue some features & not use the system to its full 
capabilities.  My management has not authorized me having AS/Set - we modify 
some BPCS & there are several ORD5 programs that I have told my people are 
just too hostile for anyone without AS/Set to make any headway in changing 
anything to improve productivity for users of these programs.

What I have seen of the modules from SSA to help out the ORD function are not 
really appropriate to Make to Order, for example the concept of doing quoting 
that is based on the kinds of things we have made in past for other customers 
is just too inadequate at 405 CD level, but you might look at the 
Configurable modules available at V6 to see if any of that has relevance to 
you.  Also your precise corporate needs might be such that the reasons why we 
said no thanks on some modules might not apply to you, such as EDI & 
Recurring Business.

There are an abundance of 3rd party outfits that have add-ons to BPCS, many 
of them are related to Customer Orders, and many of those outfits have people 
participating in this list.

We are using the Customer Order History deal from Crowe Chizek (talk to Randy 
Merle for details). 
http://www.crowechizek.com/

I had asked my management if we could consider some of the ORD enhancements 
offered by ISE (ask Bruce Barker) but there seemed to be no one at Central 
interested other than me.
http://www.ise-indy.com/consult/BPCS/index.html. 

Look at the SIGs of people posting stuff here - I checked some out & while 
many BPCS consultants URLs talk about what they can do for us in general, 
very few have specificity with respect to examples of their enhancements.  I 
also checked URLs I found from other sources & while I do not remember if any 
of these had anything with respect to ORD enhancements, they do have 
specificity with respect to their offered BPCS enhancements.

http://www.unbeatenpathintl.com/services.html
http://www.nexgeninfo.com/
http://www.johnson-schley.com

I assume you know that LANSA Smart/Web for BPCS permits someone with any 
standard browser to get at ORD500 or your V6 equivalent to input customer 
orders.
http://www.midrangesystems.com/breaknewsdisp.asp?ID=3084

But while this might be very helpful to a traditional manufacturer of 
standard stuff, it has less value, except in repeat business of the same 
part, to those of us in which we get a high volume of first time potential 
customers whose initial need is rapid turn-around of a quote based on their 
engineering prints.

This might be a totally off the wall impractical idea by me, but you know 
that with EDI it is possible to have customer orders flow into BPCS from the 
EDI format files, assuming we get the right kind of EDI software ... there is 
lots of cheaper stuff out there that does not interface good to BPCS & 
managers often do not understand the technical trade-offs so they buy 
something that is a piece of garbage in BPCS terms then want to pay someone 
to interface it, when for less total money they could have gotten a package 
that already talks to BPCS.

We get lots of customer requirement input via e-mail & fax & other formats in 
which the customers are using a standard format of their requirements for 
recurring orders & I was thinking that if we had EDI of the quality I just 
mentioned, we could scan in e-mail & fax to a format to create the file 
format of EDI then fake out EDI to receive this as if the customer 
requirements had come via EDI, then use Robot Scheduler for BPCS from Help 
Systems to operate the whole process of taking the customer orders, whether 
from real EDI or e-mail or fax, into our customer orders, so as to save the 
human chore of transcribing the data, then checking to see what human errors 
might have crept in.

http://www.helpsystems.com

I think EDI might be more meaningful at the far end of ORD where there 
sometimes is a need for ASN Advance Ship Notices, but we have recently 
learned how to use Client Access to get any spool file or other related info 
from 400 to a variety of PC formats, so the people seem to be quite happy 
with a Query/400 summary report of what just got shipped today for a 
particular customer, transmitted to that customer via e-mail.

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

> Subj:  Order entry
>  From:    RickCarter@holley.com

>  BPCS version 6.1.01 Mixmode   AS400
>  
>  We have a need for a more defined Order entry ability.  Is there any other
>  modules available within BPCS that caters to a 'Make to Order' type Order
>  entry process verses the standard Order Entry mode.   I don't know any
>  other details at this time about my needs other than finding out if there's
>  is other order entry modules available.   thanks




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