Re: help -- BPCS-L

In the real world a company may be an organization incorporated to do some business, that has different owners than some other company. This does not have to have anything to do with the computing reality. Correlation is soley in the minds of humans.

in computing, we can use software designed for different companies to keep track of different divisions within the same company, or we can lump the records of several real world companies with different owners managers etc. into one shared data base, in which there are codes to show which data is for which real world company, then use the same software, the same software license, the same hardware, the same computer personnel, to run the reports on these entirely unrelated enterprises on the same data base. I have been involved in that, not in my current job. I believe this is entirely legal, in private enterprise.

In a previous job, there was a retail chain owned by one family, several doctors offices owned by a group of doctors, a publishing house, several hospitals, and all the data for all of them on the same computer data base, using the same software to produce the same reports, and we ended up that way because of intermingled boards of directors wanting to use the same IT resource (me and some home brew software).

In BPCS
Companies and Facilities and Environments are different realities, concepts.

We want to have separation of inventory, costs, orders, etc. for our work in factories in different cities, while consolidating our records on our business, where it is the same data, such as customer name and address ... same customer some parts made in Illinois, some in Indiana, we not want to have to maintain two sets of records for billing to one customer. Likewise one vendor supplies some raw materials. We want economy of scale of record keeping, order quantities, tracking the money.

With our version of BPCS, this is not doable with companies, because with companies the data is totally separated into the data for this company or that company, in which company is defined by BPCS company, not by real world entrepeneurs.

Think data base in which one value is company and everything is separated by company. Forget real world concept of a company being an entity on stock market, a customer, or vendor with a unique name. A BPCS company is a way to differentiate the BPCS data.

So we use facilities. With facilities we can run MRP over the whole enterprise, or over one particular city facility, we can transfer inventory very easily from one factory facility to another.

This BPCS language is very specific. You may think of companies and facilities differently, but if you get confused on BPCS terminology, then your answers on a discussion group like this may also be confused.

In BPCS you have have a different language for different users. So for example a US firm has a facility in Mexico, and another in Quebec Canada. The native Spanish speakers see screens and reports text in Spanish. The native English speakers see the same stuff in English. French speakers in Quebec see the same stuff in French. Different people speaking different tongues can be in the same building looking at the same data, but one person sees it in one language different from the language for the person sitting at very next cubicle. Same data, same values, it just goes through a filter process that we can try to explain in other threads. It is not perfect, but nothing perfect in computing world.

A pharmasceutical company on this discussion list has one AS/400 serving the needs of its factories in 10 South American nations with the AS/400 physically in USA. The AS/400 is partitioned in which the host partition is in English for the convenience of IBM tech support. The partition that serves their Brazilian operations is in Portuguese, which is the language spoken there.

Most of those factories are on BPCS. Each country has its own data base (some small nations share one partition however). One computer for many nations operations.

One IBM Partition can have several BPCS Environments.
One BPCS Environment can have several BPCS Companies..
One BPCS Company can have several BPCS Facilities..
One BPCS Facility can have several BPCS warehouses.

An item has many "codes" the item # itself, which you cannot change if there is any inventory, costs, orders etc. on it ... you have to get rid of everything connected to the item # before you can make it go away and be reincarnated as a different item # type of item class of item purchased vs. manufactured what "code" are you asking about? IIM file = Item Master Global and CIC file = Item Master cost planning by facility they have LOTS of fields that set the rules of behavior for the item change the rules, and the item will behave differently like a child except a child is unpredictable and BPCS is predictable if you learn the rules

Have you read any of the BPCS documentation such as BPCSDOC as to what the purposes are for some of these fields? When you are on-line with BPCS running any of the inquiry or update programs, put cursor on a field and press F1 (help) for an explanation of the function of that field.

Some of those item "codes" can be different in different facilities, while some are unchanging, such as item type ... is it end customer item, raw materials etc. a given item # is only one type regardless of facility within the same environment, but you can use the same item # to means something entirely different in a different environment because that is a different data base.

We have items that are made in one facility (manufactured) but used as raw materials (like purchased) in another facility, so we have to "code" these items carefully so everything works perfectly in both the facility that makes it, and the facility that uses it like a purchased part.

An environment is a copy of the software (optional) and files ... call that one database. Typically if you have one factory making widgets in one country with a national language of French and another factory in another country making a totally different type of product mix with a different national language, then it makes sense to keep their stuff separate in different BPCS environments.

This data base is INTEGRATED. You change something in one file and it has effects across the entire data base. You change the rules in one item and it has effects every place that item is used.

If you want to do changes that do not affect everything else that you do, then you need to separate the realities to be changed and not changed into separate data bases in separate Environments and /or Partitions.

A BPCS company also keeps stuff separated within the same BPCS environment, totally separated.

But you talking about the same items, in which the company probably does not want to maintain two or more sets of items, customers, vendors, BOM, orders whatever in total isolation from one another.

Thus facilities make sense. 85% same data identical all that is kept separate copies is where something is different one facility to another such as inventory

Facilities are where you have a factory in this city, that city, this industrial park, across the river, with a lot of sharing of parts, and some work unique to each factory.

When you run MRP and you need some component, BPCS does not say you have plenty when it is at another facility a few hundred miles away, it tells you to order more for that facility.

Warehouses help organize stuff in the same building. We have one warehouse for end items that are ready to be shipped, and another warehouse for raw materials not currently in production. We have a warehouse for items awaiting QC inspection determination where there is some unresolved question, and we do that separation because we do not want MRP to think that material is usable until it actually passes QC inspection.

When we do an inventory transaction, it gets into the general ledger. Where it goes in the general ledger depends on the item class, transaction type, etc. in combination. If you change the item class, then subsequent actions will end up some place else in general ledger.

BPCS is integrated, like any ERP.
Change just about anything, and there are consequences.
Very complicated.

Suggest you go to ERP University, such as APICS.

Have I totally confused you, or improved clarity in some areas?

you wrote:

Hi,
Ok. If u have not understood properly, I will put it in a different way.

BPCS version is 6.0.04. In place of companies, you may consider as
Facilities.

Q.1) If we make change in Item Code, where all will it affect the Business
Process in SCM & How ?
for e.g. making such change will affect these these databases, these these
BPCS products, these these  process options in these these modules, these
these reports etc.

Is that Clear ?