In addition to implementing this, you may need to consider the contents of
other files.
When a customer order is input to BPCS, it uses the price official AT THAT
TIME, based on whatever you using for the source of the price, such as the
PRICE FILE, the price in the item master, Promotions and Deals or
whatever. Updating the price in the item master will ONLY convey that
information to FUTURE input of new customer order lines. It will not
retroactively change the price on customer orders already entered, nor will
it have any effect on any of your business that does not use the item
master list price field for determining the relevant price.
I am a programmer, working in 405 CD.
A programmer could probably whip up the software you are asking for in a
matter of hours.
Any number of BPCS consulting firms charge two or three hundred dollars an
hour for this kind of service.
All you need is a contract between your company and them, and whatever it
takes for them to dial into your 400 ... in our case we are using the IBM
ECS line.
I figure that from start of negotiations with the consultant, to
implementation, should take less than a week, and cost your company less
than $1,000.00
If you not aware of consultants that I referring to, check my personal web
site collection of BPCS documentation sources, where I refer to some
outfits as full service BPCS support firms.
http://radio.weblogs.com/0107846/stories/2002/11/08/bpcsDocSources.html
It can be done with a convoluted SQL statement on STRSQL command line of
SQL but I am deathly afraid of el typo wrong input all kinds of damage.
(this is DANGEROUS - don't tell anyone I told you It is like playing
Russian Roulette with your corporate future ... a game we play daily)
If you know how to work Query/400, it is possible to output a work file,
and it is possible to give that work file the name of a BPCS file, in which
the output totally wipes out the BPCS file that used to be there and
replaces it with whatever came from the Query/400.
(this is DANGEROUS - don't tell anyone I told you ... this is a quick and
dirty way to totally destroy your corporate data bases.)
Query also offers various options to replace, add to, this is at the RECORD
level ... you replacing all the fields contents, not multiplying one
particular field and replacing that.
I imagine that for someone who is a non-programmer but extremely sharp with
Query/400 might be able to read a BPCS file in its entirety, change the
contents of one or more fields based on Query/400 logic, then output the
BPCS file again in its entirety. I would not reccommend anyone try this
without serious experimentation with files it Ok to muck up until you learn
how.
(this is DANGEROUS - don't tell anyone I told you about this - this is not
a game we have been playing)
A "quick" and dirty clerical way to do this, on command line is
(this is DANGEROUS - don't tell anyone I suggested that you do this. It is
a form of Russian Roulette with our corporate data bases that we play
almost hourly.)
STRDFU take option 5, specify file IIM, with *LIBL library list and *FIRST
in other option ... you get a screen where you key in the item # you want
to change, then can access any of the fields and mess up any of them to
your heart's content.
(Forget about being able to use BPCS again if you change any fields you do
not understand.)
The biggest risk here is that as someone navigates through the fields, they
accidentally field exit through some field and not sharp enough in DFU to
know how to recover it, let alone notice what they did.
A safer variant of this, with minimal programmer support, is to have
someone use DDS (my preference to stay consistent with BPCS 405 CD) or SQL
to create a logical that only accesses the items relevant to the change ...
end items that now have a price, get a copy of the DFU manual so you can
see how to scroll through the items without keying in each one individually.
You can also go into other options of DFU (other than option 5) and create
a custom deal that only accesses selected fields.
There are also various shareware freeware low price add ons for the 400 to
let you do stuff outside of BPCS or whatever system you want to play
Russian Roulette with.
Whenever possible, I avoid all the Russian Roulette options.
The way I would do it would be to write an RPG program that reads the item
master records that happen to be end items, either RPG sequentially loop or
through SQL cursor, then for each relevant item, do the math, update the
thing, and print an audit trail reference of old price new price, to be
preserved in a form that could be communicated to people who need to know
about the price change ... If I had the master BPCS manual (I don't) which
explains the purpose of every field, then I might populate some unused
field with the OLD price, so that people could use selected Query reference
lists ... we normally do this kind of thing BY CUSTOMER, so we would have
the added complication of identifying only those items relevant to a
particular customer, but then we are more into using the PRICE FILE for
this sort of thing, because reason for blanket price increases decreases
can be due to changes in the price of certain commodities that we pass on
to our customers, and blanket updates are rare. We correlate our costs to
see which individual parts need price increases, then we haggle with our
customers.
I would use DDS to create a prompt screen in which the user at time of
running the program would key in the 5% or whatever it is you want to up or
down everything.
Then I make a simple CL program to run the RPG program according to what
the DDS screen calls for, which is what I put on a BPCS menu which has
limited relevant users access, and some reminder warning as to when it is
appropriate to be running this.
Al Macintyre
BPCS/400 Computer Janitor at
http://www.globalwiretechnologies.com/
See Al at
http://www.ryze.com/go/Al9Mac
Find BPCS Documentation Suppliers
http://radio.weblogs.com/0107846/stories/2002/11/08/bpcsDocSources.html
Can anyone please tell me how I can update the List Price field in the IIM
for all records. I would like to do an increase of 5% across the board. Is
there a way to take the ILIST field value, multiply it by 1.05, then put it
back into the table? I am not sure whether this can be done through an RPG
or CL program, query, SQL statement, or if the data needs to be downloaded
off the AS400, modified, and then uploaded again. I am not a programmer, so
the simplest method would be the best. Any feedback would be greatly
appreciated.
Thanks,
Larry Orrel
Gencor Industries
Larry Orrel
Director of Information Systems
Gencor Industries
Phone: (407)290-6000
Fax: (407)298-1806
mailto:lorrel@gencor.com
midrange.com
