Re: BPCS reports

Thanks for the very helpful info !

Regards,
Dennis Basiner
Information Systems Manager
Cains Foods L.P.
Tel. 978.772.0300
Email dbasiner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx


-----Original Message-----
From: bpcs-l-bounces+dbasiner=cainsfoods.com@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:bpcs-l-bounces+dbasiner=cainsfoods.com@xxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Al
Mac
Sent: Thursday, May 18, 2006 2:55 PM
To: SSA's BPCS ERP System
Subject: Re: [BPCS-L] BPCS reports


1. Suggest you check MIDRANGE-L archives.  There is a wealth of information
on people transferring data from AS/400 reports to EXCEL, that is
independent of BPCS ... it can be done with ANY reports.  If you cannot
find it there, perhaps I can dig it up ... there was an article about how
to put SQL/400 inside of Microsoft Excel Macros so that at the time of
opening an Excel, it grabs the latest data out of BPCS or whatever your
AS/400 application source is.

2. Suggest you take a look at the CUSTOM options of Ops Nav setup.  If it
is installed with all the DEFAULT options, all you get is Operations
Management type stuff ... spool files, jobs, performance etc.  But through
Custom install, there is a wealth of additional programmer tools and direct
access to DB/2, which adds to security headaches depending on your version
of BPCS.  This way you can go direct between 400 and other computing
world.  I was just at an IBM seminar about this, not yet digested my notes
or pursued the urls handed out at it.  Remind me in a month or so, and
perhaps I will have a better answer for you.

There's a way to do this with Client Access, which I have not encouraged
exploring at our site, because we are on a version of BPCS with obsolete
security settings.  We need to do the BPCS security upgrade.  i studied it
and figured the best solution was to buy the security upgrade package, but
management has not approved the purchase.  Thus I try not to encourage
co-workers to go into the areas that give them the capability of trashing
BPCS.

3. I operate in an environment where management wants us to get the biggest
bang for the buck ... what can we get out of the NATIVE tools.  What I have
been doing is making what I call EXCEL FRIENDLY REPORTS ... modifying the
output on the 400 to just have the data the EXCEL person wants, and
eliminating control breaks so that the control break data is repeated all
the way down the columns.  I then use Ops Nav Windows short cut on PC desk
top (a technique I learned from Rob on MIDRANGE-L) to get the modified
report from spool to PC desk top folder, then from there to e-mail to the
EXCEL person who uses Visual Basic to combine multiple EXCEL columns for
his final objectives.

I guess I send reports from BPCS to my end users by this means on the
average of 2 reports a week, with occasional spikes in volume.  A few years
ago our auditors would tell us in advance what reports they needed to
see.  We would e-mail them those reports in advance of their visit.  There
are a bunch of reports I run in association with end fiscal, where certain
people get their end fiscal info in this form.

The commodities challenge that I recently asked about ... looks like we
will be sending our customers a monthly spreadsheet listing the items we
shipped them last month (BPCS sales quantity totals for last month), how
much copper is in there (derived from BPCS BOM and a new file for Guage
conversion), multiply the increase in copper price from base quote.

Currently my report is page break by customer, which is not EXCEL friendly,
and I also have another version that is EXCEL friendly.  It is not yet
finalized what we will be doing, but I expect this will go into EXCEL and
have some other massaging going on before it gets split by Visual Basic
into separate attachment for each customer.

>Does anyone know of an inexpensive way to convert a BPCS report to an EXCEL
>spreadsheet ? Don't get enough requests to invest in expensive software but
>every time someone requests it, it's a challenge. Any recommendations would
>be greatly appreciated.
>
>Regards,
>Dennis Basiner
>Information Systems Manager
>Cains Foods L.P.


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