I work with version 4.0.5 CD. The actual file names may have evolved since
2.1.
Here is an experiment.
Open up two simultaneous sessions.
on one side do accounting inquiry such as ACR300, ACP300, GLD310
on other side go into WRKACTJOB or some other WRK*JOB function and find
your session that is doing ACR300 etc. then drill down into how that
program is perceived by the Operating System, and that gives you a list of
all the files that ACR300 is accessing. Jot them down, or do a screen print.
If you have access to the command line, key in the following
WRKOBJ space then I*
You should now have access to a list of files associated with item
identification and inventory. This list of file names includes both the
short file name, and an explanation as to the nature of the files.
Go to any vanilla BPCS menu, such as SSA something
you will notice a letter after the SSA then 2 digits
the letter after the SSA is the letter used as prefix in naming all files
in that application
so for example, all files in General Ledger start with letter G
and the main menu for GL is SSAG00
As you go to the menus for A/R A/P PUR and so forth, you can correlate part
of the naming conventions.
Once you have identified particular file names of interest.
On command line key in DSPFFD then the name of the file you interested in
e.g. DSPFFD GGM (General Ledger Master file)
This will get you a list of the fields in that file, and descriptive info
about their contents, and info like if it is alpha or numerical with how
many decimal places.
If you find this useful, then F3 F9 F4 change default to *PRINT a copy
You could also ask your BPCS technical person to show you a copy of a
complied program that uses the files you interested in ... this includes a
list of all fields in the files, along with annotation as to field function.
Even though a file may have a particular field name, it might not be
populated with useful information. Ask your BPCS technical person about
IBM tools at your company that you may use to data mine the files. For
example some IBM tools use more resources than the company may have
invested in, and thus may be blocked from casual usage, to prevent users
from bringing the system to its knees.
See if you have a file called IIM Item Master.
It contains item #s in the field IPROD (for product)
It also contains description of the item, and list price (this is default
if there's no over-ride in the special discount pricing system such as file
ESP)
There are fields with opening balance for the month & aggregate changes ...
this is for the aggregate item all locations.
See if you have a file called CMF Cost Master
It contains control information on each combination of item and facility
a set of cost dimensions ...
e.g. cost set 2 is standard cost
e.g. cost bucket 1 is material
and for each combination of a unique item-facility-set-bucket
there is both a cost at this level, and cost at lower level ingredients
typically you add lower level cost to this level cost to get total cost for
item, then mulbiply by on-hand. inventory
There are also files with this inventory activity, on a more granular scale.
In my version, this includes warehouse locations, and facilities, but
facilities might not have been invented as of 2.1 ... you may need to have
different environments to hold your data that is in different factories.
An environment is a complete collection of the BPCS files and software
contained in different soltware libraries, or hardware partitions.
I do not currently have handy, but you may want to seek out.
There's a BPCS conversion document called "net change" that identifies all
the stuff that got changed from one version of BPCS to the next. This can
be useful when you talking with someone on a different version of
BPCS. Also the 2.1 version of BPCS is not Y2K compliant, so your company
had to have used some 3rd party upgrade to fix that. You may need to find
the documentation associated with that, when discussing BPCS with someone
on a truely Y2K compliant version.
Inventory quantities, part #'s, values
AR & AP open transactions
General Ledger accounts, transactions
midrange.com
