Re: Does this tick you off?

Does a native or client server app exist for the i that fulfills the user
requirements?
jim

Yes

However, it is often easier for managers and end users to view vendor presentations than figure out how to utilize what the company has already invested in, or take proper education & training in the effective utilization of the investment.

BPCS comes with scheduling software. In fact that is the very core of most any ERP.
It can be accessed via a web face, green screen, commands, script, you name it, although in many cases the company has to invest in some add-on like LANSA to impiement one interface or another.

For scheduling to work right, there has to be a high degree of accuracy with engineering such as lead times and manufacturing time, inventory, activity reporting, etc. Sometimes when the results are messed up, people don't want to fix the problems that cause the bad data, or acknowledge what needs to be done to get good results.

The stated reasons for need to access some alternative package, or application, may be unrelated to the real reasons, and the alternative package's offerings can take on a life of their own, as other people get interested in aspects of the sales pitch, unrelated to the threads that led to them coming in.

Most of my managers want to see their output in Excel nowadays, not on a green screen, not on browser, not a greenbar report, not a PC printer report, but get the data into Excel. There are great interfaces to do that, but they not approve $ spending, so I spend a lot of time converting BPCS reports into Excel-input friendly format.

Give the user what they ask for, that's part of our job.

Yes it annoys me when I expend a lot of effort to get something they ask for, then they make decisions a few weeks later that invalidate my work, but that goes with our territory.

There's also a bit of internal backlash going on, where we are paying excess freight to expedite raw materials in, and one of the alleged causes of this is a planner who is using Excel, instead of BPCS, to figure out the schedule for placing orders.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Don Cavaiani" <dcavaiani@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Midrange Systems Technical Discussion" <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: <bpcs-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, August 11, 2008 10:21 AM
Subject: Does this tick you off?


> We have some users who have gone looking for some outside Windows software
> which does scheduling for a Manufacturing plant.
>
> I know what will happen if they go this route - I will spend much "boring"
> time building BPCS interfaces to and from this package, and our company
> may just end up wasting a lot of cash - as we request modifications to fit
> our specific needs.
>
> Ticks me off - they bring in these vendors and are wowed by "drag and
> drop" interfaces! Hard to get across to them how little that interface
> really has to do with the business logic, formulas and databases which
> must be referenced behind the scenes to build effective integrated
> systems!
>
> That company is Tuppas Software. If anyone knows anything about them,
> please email me offline.
>
> Thanks,
> Don C.
>
> Don F. Cavaiani
> IT Manager
> Amerequip Corp.
> 920-894-7063
>
> "It's amazing what you can accomplish if you don't care who gets the
> credit." Harry S. Truman