RE: UPS World Ship -- BPCS-L

Hi,

We used the "keyed import" function of WorldShip to bring down BPCS
information. Rather than maintain 2 address books (BPS & Worldship) we
brought all the shipping data down from the order.

At pick print time we identified the carrier from the ship-via field in the
order header, and wrote the shipping record to a bolt-on file. The interface
to World-Ship is fairly robust, and relatively easy to map.

When the shipping folks processed the order, they keyed in the picker number
and Worldship retrieved the AS/400 data through the odbc. When they finished
with the shipment, Worldship wrote a confirmation record back up to the 400.
We gave the sales folks an inquiry that showed them the tracking number. I
suppose one could put a cross reference to write a report & then e-mail
through the AS/400. (we use keyes-mail).

There are some efficiency considerations in the way you set up the library
fro your interface file. When opening, Keyed import examines every table in
the collection. If the collection is your BPCS user files library, it can
take a while to open. We added a specific library and got good response
time.

Feel free to contact offline for more details.

Wally

Wally M. Carr
Business Systems Analyst
The Bergquist Company
952.820.6516
wallyc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


-----Original Message-----
message: 1
date: Wed, 26 Jan 2005 13:13:31 -0600
from: Alister Wm Macintyre <macwheel99@xxxxxxxxxxx>
subject: [BPCS-L] UPS World Ship

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