UPS World Ship -- BPCS-L

I am wondering if any other BPCS manufacturers got this deal from UPS, and if we can trade tips on using it effectively with BPCS.

We are 405 CD on V5R1 mixed mode with some applications heavily modified, some barely touched, running more than one facility. We have the source code, but not AS/Set.

UPS = United Parcel Service

For those of you not yet on UPS World Ship, it is tied into shipping. We generate the BPCS shipping paperwork, then turn to the UPS PC application, identify something about the shipment, the UPS screen gets populated with name & address of where we shipping this, and other info, that then goes to UPS to track our shipment.

We supplied the data from BPCS, and 400 person at UPS got the data into their package.

Before deployment, I had the UPS directory of fields they could use, but for many of them I was "duh, what is this?" or pulling hair out trying to figure out which BPCS file contained this or that datum. So I focussed at getting our people the bulk of the data, and we can worry about odd ball stuff later, which is now. I am glad I went that route because for every one field that now needs follow-up there were scores I was wondering about, particularly for the international shipments. Also much easier for end users to see what needs to be added to the flow, now that the data flow is operational.

Each customer ship to has an account # with UPS. At present I am contemplating using the EU VAT registration field for this purpose (bottom of ORD100 screen) ... we have no customers in Europe at present to my knowledge ... I think we had one in France at one time.

UPS needs weight of each package. We use IIM.IVULP for standard quantity per carton for about 10% of our customer items, where the customers seek standard stocking volumes We use IIM.IWGHT to track weight of the product, but have not needed this for the vast majority of our parts and items with both fields populated is practically non-existent so I am wondering if dividing ESL.SLNPKG (number of packages) into ESL.PGGW (weight of entire shipment) to get an average per package is good enough, or if there is some legal problem not being precise (typically we send a bunch of full packages, and one that is less than full). I have no idea how ESL gets its data or how accurate it is.

And then there is the notion of e-mail to bunches of people associated with a customer delivery address with specifics about some shipment. I toying with notion of adding a new file, and also wondering (this is not my area of expertise) if the UPS system can connect to our company e-mail ... we have a group in which people can do broadcast to all co-workers & I was thinking a group for each customer that needs this service, which might also include staffers who want to know about shipments sent to the customers they are our key contact for. We have a generic e-mail address for sales inquiries, and I was thinking that a generic e-mail address for copies of automated advance ship notices makes a lot of sense.

So anyway, I was wondering if others on this list already implemented all this and can share some tips what worked out well for you.

- Al Macintyre http://www.ryze.com/go/Al9Mac Find BPCS Documentation Suppliers http://radio.weblogs.com/0107846/stories/2002/11/08/bpcsDocSources.html