Re: Pick List Process -- BPCS-L

We are also 405 CD on AS/400.

I am posting this from home PC where I do not have access to 400 & when I am
on the 400 I do not have internet access, so all of this is from memory ...
there may be a mental equivalent of a typo occasionally.

Our shipments are via ORD590 in which the shippers select the ORD500 lines to
be shipped, adjust the quantity they are shipping.  We have a shipping manual
that walks them through how to fill out the screens in each of several
scenarios:
e.g. On-Hand inventory in the computer is less than what you have & are
sending out.

We are not using AS/Set, so some SSA programs are a nightmare to decipher,
such as many of the ORD5* but we do have the source code in BPCS405CDS & SSA
has good descriptions of what the called programs do.  You know GO CMDREF has
access to IBM dump cross-reference which I sent *ALL to an *OUTFILE so with
Query/400 I run in the other direction ... list me all the programs that
update this file or call that program or output to this report.

That way I found 3 programs that output what we send with shipments & give
trucker & we modified all to our tastes.  They are driven off of ORD590.

My memory says ORD595 ORD596 ORD597 were the 3 programs.

We also modified the appearance of the invoices from BIL522 & the post ship
billing.

Nothing needs to be handwritten.  We also went into the literals & changed
some SSA labels on fields we were not using to indicate such things as
weights & trucker identification.  Arrangements need to be made to merge our
modified literals with future SSA upgrades, such as PTFs, so we do not lose
this effort.

We started with the fields that showed up on ORD590 screens & were easily
accessible via ORD500 that we were not populating, in files already
referenced by BIL500 & the whole information process, then used the literals
modification option off of SYS menu or the IBM work with message files SSAZ*
to reassign labels.  This way we did not have to modify any of the SSA
programs that reference these fields, just adjust our print programs that are
driven off of ORD590.  We had some help from conversion consultants with
figuring out how to work this.

Query/400 shows the native DDS labels, so I have a cut & paste reference list
for my Query/400 & PC Tools users, showing the native naming & our renaming.
One of our steps is to repopulate a shipment history summary file for e-mail
to selected customers.

We use Query/400 heavily.
There is one report, for people in shipping department, showing what is due
to be shipped out this week, that they reference before doing any picking.
Actually, for our shippers, they do final count inspection & packing of what
is ready to go before they pick it on BPCS screens.
There is another report, after shipping completed at all facilities, but
before BIL500, driven off contents of BBL file that we use to distribute
within the company for everyone to see today's ship sheet, and also as a
final check on all the data being there that needs to be there for correct
accounting.
There is a variant of this for each individual facility to check their share
of the input.
During the day, as individual shipments add records to BBL, we have a
Query/400 inquiry that top managers can view to see the $ value of what has
been shipped out the door so far today.

As programmer, there are some user challenges I do not fully understand.
I know that they are not entirely pleased with how freight can be handled.

Sometimes we have requirements on order to get the raw materials in house
before the customer approves the samples, then someone drops the ball on
getting the final price into the orders, and it is not immediately obvious to
accounting that this is missing, especially on compound invoices where some
shipments are priced & some are not.
So I added an EC_FREE Query which lists current unpriced requirements for
relevant personnel review.

MacWheel99@aol.com (Alister Wm Macintyre) (Al Mac)