Item Master "Ownership"

We are on 405 CD
This has been a moving target for us due to turn-over of personnel, and what
is considered important by different people.

There are people who understand the policy & do not change things without
proper authorization.

There are people who see no harm in changing anything they can get access to.

We have experienced people we can trust to be maintaining these fields, and
to know when they mess something up such as by keystroke error, so that
recovery is possible.

We have other people who can field exit by accident through other fields and
not realize that they have done that.

I have suggested that we consider clones of the maintenance programs such
that the only fields with allowed access would be the cluster relevant to a
particular department's responsibilities such as the cost fields, the
planning fields, the lead time fields, the fields we use to track factory
floor machines molds applicators.

I have suggested a modification to the security logic in that when the
program says "Oh Yes so & so is authorized to be running THIS program" that
it add to some history showing a list of the people who actually are running
what update programs.

This would be similar to the count of inventory transactions by person by
type for a month so we can see standard patterns vs. exceptions.

Various departments have released charts of default standard values to be
used when entering new items relevant to their responsibilities, but this is
sometimes based on certain understandings that could be mistaken, then the
data used by someone else inappropriately, so periodic review of the rules
being used & where the data came from is wise.

We have an "engineering department" which does the actual maintenance of 99%
of the stuff in item master, BOM, routings, cost files.
I personnally do periodic repairs of corrupted data & blanket inserts of
requested defaults, when we start using some field for first time.
Our purchasing department maintains costs on raw materials & parts that are
made in one facility for usage in another.
We have a number of people who are supposed to maintain specific types of
items or specific fields, but mistakes happen.

We have some queries that list discrepancies in our data to help us fix them.
But we are drowning in such specialized queries.
I did start work on a compendium program to try to list ALL discrepancies
regardless of file, with the intent of it being a check list of fixes needed,
but the volume so big that I have been using it to prioritize what to fix.

People & departments get authorized to change things & then management loses
track of who all involved & how you can track that, so that people who are
held accountable for the accuracy of various files have no say in who else is
changing their stuff.  I created some reports off of the security files to
chart who all is authorized to run various things & we find for example that
fully 1/2 of our employees can change just about anything.

At one point we had a problem with some unknown person changing General
Ledger stuff, so I made that a file that logs who is into it with what
program & I monitored it for a while but the only access was totally
authorized.

MacWheel99@aol.com (Alister Wm Macintyre) (Al Mac)
BPCS 405 CD Manager / Programmer @ Global Wire Technologies Incorporated
http://www.globalwiretechnologies.com = new name same quality wire
engineering company: fax # 812-424-6838

From:   dcerrai@flo.boehringer-ingelheim.com

Dear Colleague
we have used BPCS since 1994, and this has requested the creation of a
specific company-wide function "ITEM MASTER", as you already did.
This is particularly necessary if your company works in a "regulated"
environment (such as the Pharmaceautical).
It is impossible to divide responsibilities on Items, BOMs,...

Probably, using the new E-Signature & E-Security modules you could manage
otherwise.

Best Regards
David Cerrai
(Boehringer Ingelheim Italy, IS Business Support Manager for Supply and
Support Chains)

-----Original Message-----
From: Zzbpcs@aol.com [mailto:Zzbpcs@aol.com]

Good Day
Although we are on Release 4.05 CD, the question is a generic MRP II
question:
Which department(s) has ownership over the Item Master File ?
With BPCS, many different departments have a vested interest in the accuracy
of
specific fields. How does YOUR organization handle who does the actual
Maintenance of the Item Master, Bills of Material, Routings, ......
We circulate a " Form " to various departments so that they manually write
down the values of "their" fields. Eventually, the form gets to the desk of
one person who actually keys the data into BPCS.
"Sometimes" this takes longer than we wish !!

Thanks,
Jim Barry
Belchertown Mass