Re: BPCS

[Al Mac <macwheel99@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Welcome to a great ERP, that we may bitch about a lot here, but in reality 
keeps many thousands of manufacturers functioning quite efficiently.
Variations on your question have come up several times before on BPCS_L.
Review archives at http://archive.midrange.com/bpcs-l. which go back 
several years, but within the last few months there have been people 
sharing access to a great variety of BPCS Documentation.

I created some links on my personal web site to try to help answer this 
sort of question without a lot of repetition here, as we get a steady flow 
of new recruits with similar questions.
Find BPCS Documentation Suppliers 
http://radio.weblogs.com/0107846/stories/2002/11/08/bpcsDocSources.html

I have been frenetically busy the last few months, so I have a pile of 
promises to various people about planned additions to this area, and other 
non-BPCS areas on my web site.  But in the mean time I believe I have in 
fact provided links to a massive volume of alternative ways for you to get 
at BPCS documentation.  I try to keep this as impartial as I can, which 
means in all honesty I will need to mention that a BPCS vendor has offered 
for me to get financial compensation if I talk anyone into buying a product 
they developed that enhances BPCS - a way to track changes to BPCS data 
bases, particularly unauthorized changes, like human errors.  We're still 
talking about what exactly the deal will be, which is why I being a bit 
circumspect so far.

Assuming BPCS was installed in a reasonably competent manner at your 
company, there is a wealth of documentation already on-line, albeit 
extremely poorly indexed.  I talk about that in section III of my web site 
= documentation useful for computer technical people.

Assuming you have a modicum of hard currency, you can buy some pretty good 
BPCS manuals, if your company does not already have any.  I think we have 
in the neighborhood of a dozen different BPCS manuals, several copies of 
some of them, most of them from one particular BPCS vendor, but in actual 
fact from several different vendors.  I go into the office of the 
Purchasing Manager, Production Manager, Chief Financial Officer, other 
managers, and each one has several copies of BPCS Manuals that are relevant 
to their area (not duplicates of any one manual in one office, but manuals 
on how the costing works, how to work capacity planning, explaining the 
fields of item master and other files, how to write Query/400 to extract 
good info from BPCS data base, in which if you visit several offices you 
will see repeating copies of some of the manuals).  Some of them are rather 
dog eared.  But even with this great library, there are always more that I 
want to have access to.

We are supposed to be subscribing to several BPCS publications, but when a 
few months go by and I not remember seeing one (I suspect people pick up my 
copies before they get to me), I visit  web sites of the publishers and 
download the articles that interest me.

In a couple weeks at our local AS/400 user group (in Evansville IN), we 
will be getting a presentation from a BPCS vendor (one of the outfits in 
section IV of my web site).  I am not sure where the meeting will be 
yet.  We recently had to move our meeting place because we outgrew last 
year's site.   It not unusual to have 40 people at one meeting.

There was also a recent post about a BPCS meeting to be held in 
Indianapolis this month.

There's BPCS conventions and seminars around the USA every few months.
I wish I could go to the one at Purdue University, some year.
I have been to several in Chicago, and one in Indianapolis.

-
Al Macintyre

> Hi,
>
> I am new to BPCS. Can anyone please suggest any site to be visited or any 
> documentation based BPCS.
>
> Any kind of help is appreciated.
>
>
> Thank You
> Josphine
>
>
> Before posting, please take a moment to review the archives
> at http://archive.midrange.com/bpcs-l.