I lack the experience of others on this list to know best techniques, I
just know what I would do based on what I know how to do, which may be far
from best approach from performance perspective.
We do have BPCS ... HPH HPO are the main files for us, but this may be BPCS
version specific. I am also more active on BPCS-L than I am on MIDRANGE-L.
Don't all your suppliers want to know when a PO is created against their
vendor number?
We print our POs, so we have a hard copy for our records, then fax to ALL
suppliers. Printed on the PO is request for reply within 1 business day
confirming the PO.
Most confirmations come with changes to date they can deliver, price, other
stuff.
A related issue is when a PO gets updated ... does the supplier need want
to see the revised version? I believe that if all we are doing is updating
PO to agree with their corrections, they probably not need to see another
copy, but when the change is to add more item lines, change in what we want
to receive, then they do need revised copy.
Any time a PO gets updated or created, there is a flag that goes on in the
PO saying that it needs to be printed, then when the option is taken to
print POs, all that have thaf flag get printed. This can be a bit
disconcerting when you got more than one person creating, updating
POs. The person, who does the print option first, gets all the POs so far
that "belong" to both persons who were creating them.
You don't need a trigger to add something to a job stream. Assuming you
run PUR520C to print all POs added or changed since last time you run
PUR520C, you can have PUR520C call an extra CL to generate whatever you
want that is special for that one vendor #. If you do not want that vendor
# to get the regular POs printed that go to all the vendors by default,
then have your called CL turn off the print PO flag.
Another delivery method is FTP, which can go from any kind of computer to
any kind of computer (your vendor does not need to have a 400/iSeries) ...
be sure to support multiple members at the receiving end, or whatever the
non-400 equivalent is, so they can extract what you sent, and clear what
they used, not have to process the data right after they get it.
You don't need to read entire data base to see if that vendor # has a
record with the print flag on. You can have a logical over the physical
file that is only interested in the records for that vendor that have the
PO print flag on.
I guess one issue is work habits of your people. We have got people who
sign onto ORD500 etc. at start of their work day, and they still on same
program 2/3 of day later. If you got people doing that with PUR500, then
having your intercept program kick in at end of any PUR500 session might
not be good enough. There's also the issue of flakey connections, where a
PC goes down in middle of running some program ... you mgit never get to
the end point.
We have modified our PUR520C only to the extent of "tailoring" the printed
PO to the way our people want it to appear. (PC printer friendly, with
various our company contact info top and bottom).
We have modified our PUR300 (PO inquiry) onlyt to the extent of making the
vendor phone # in plain sight.
We have seriously modified & added to reports about what's going on with POs.
I should think that depending on how often each day you want to run the
print job, modify that job stream to get your alternative notification
method for the particular vendor #.
We appear to have vendors for which BPCS is too complex for them.
We have "blanket PO's" ... we need certain quantities X weeks out.
They get the PO, agree to supply.
Later, we add to same PO# with more X weeks out of same items.
Vendor acts like we sent them two completely different POs, they double
ship the quantities that were on same PO first time and second time.
One of our mfg. outsourcing suppliers would like to know whenever we
create/modify a P.O. (BPCS HPH/HPO) against their vendor number.
Although I've never done this, I was wondering if a trigger could be
assigned to these files, then at least an email, or email with say a pdf
or excel file attachment, would be automatically sent to their company.
Thanks in advance!
Don F. Cavaiani
IT Manager
Amerequip Corp.
920-894-7063
"Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul
can be a true master. For this reason mastery demands all of a person."
Albert Einstein
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