Custom Enhancements for PRMS Clients

Order Entry

Enhanced Contract Inquiry

In order to overcome the difficulties associated with contract management in conventional PRMS, CNX was contracted to rewrite the contract maintenance front-end.

Open Orders Report

This report has evolved into a customer service “Daily Bible” for one client. All aspects of open customer orders, sorted by sales rep, are listed. Printed data includes customer name, product, quantity ordered/allocated/produced, pricing information, ship dates, etc. Questionable prices (relative to list price or contract price) are flagged. In locations with ATOMIC implemented, the shop floor status of corresponding work orders is also displayed.

Custom OB0020 replacement

A complete overhaul (rewrite) of OB0020 was made for one plastics client. All pertinent order entry activity was incorporated into a single screen, with unused OB fields omitted.

Production Reporting

Conveyor scanner production reporting interface

In order to automate production reporting to SF0320 in a plastic injection-molding facility, bar code scanners were installed along a conveyor belt to scan production directly into PRMS. Improperly labeled boxes are rejected into a special chute for review.

Inventory

Aged lot report

As a tool for managing aged inventory, this report was created to list older inventory with explicit information relating to when and where it was produced, and for which customer it was intended.

Improved Inventory Transactions Inquiry

Researching inventory transactions in the conventional IN0072 inquiry can be cumbersome, especially on products with heavy activity. This improved inquiry allows for all pertinent details (quantity, location, lot, date, user) to be displayed on a single line, no folding required.

Product Purge

Designed for a site low on primary warehouse capacity, this report produces an itemized list of pallets that are candidates for being moved to a secondary warehouse for storage (based on when they’re next needed at the primary site).

IN0008 Ticket Enhancements

To better facilitate the use of skid tickets in PRMS, new functions were added to the conventional inventory inquiry program to allow for lookup of ticket numbers.

Shipping

License Plates for Outbound Pallets

Certain customers of a particular client recently began requiring specialized “license plate” barcode tags. The license plates had to include the customer’s purchase order number for the shipment, as well as lot and quantity information for the pallet. These license plates now print automatically whenever an order is being fulfilled for the customer.

Auto Manifest (OB Order Generator)

This PRMS site had an agreement to ship products to the customer as quickly as it came off the machines. Matching up produced items with OB orders was proving to be cumbersome, so a program was created to automatically create an OB order based on what was loaded on a truck. Using PRMS batch order entry, this program creates an order to match what as moved (scanned) into a specific dock location.

Shipping Register

Provides a list of all shipments made during a particular date range, including tracking number information.

Service Level Measurements (On Time/In Full)

As a mechanism to gauge service to customers, this report provides a tool for “grading” a facility based on the number of orders that are shipped on time at full order quantity. Tolerances can be adjusted for specific customers and “excuses” can be entered to explain why particular orders shipped late and/or below an acceptable percentage of the order quantity.

Invoicing

Interactive Invoice Release

As orders are ship-confirmed, the orders queue up in this interactive program for invoice generation. The user selects the orders he/she wants to invoice and is thrown directly into invoice release for each order.

Laser invoice & credit memo

Using templates designed in Microsoft Word, invoices are generated directly on an HP laser printer. This eliminated the need for pre-printed forms running through a dot-matrix printer.

EDI

EDI 852 Analyzer

Designed for supplier-managed inventory sites, this program takes incoming 852 data from a customer and automatically populates/adjusts MPS (MP0040) to meet projected customer demand.

Utilities, etc

MRP Prep Program

In order to run MRP, certain files must be freed up for use by the MRP program (otherwise the MRP run fails). This prep program runs just prior to the MRP execution, automatically sending warning messages to any users that are locking up needed files (i.e., anyone in PO0410, etc.), asking them to exit the programs. If after five minutes they still haven’t released the file locks, their sessions are ended immediately. MRP can then proceed.

Message Cop

This program monitors the *SYSOPR message queue for batch jobs that have encountered errors and have no auto-reply entries. Pages are then sent out to the appropriate AS/400 administrator(s) to indicate the job is stopped.

Auto MS0827 Injector

To speed up the product creation process in PRMS, this program automatically injects unit of measure conversion records into the MS0827 table based on product attributes such as size, weight, etc.

Vendor Complaints/Measurement

Includes a series of reports and programs to log issues with vendor product and measure vendor performance based on conventional standards (on time / in full).

Third Party Package Enhancements

DBQ Enhancements

CNX has done extensive work integrating this quality control package from Murphy Software with PRMS.

Label Printing Enhancements

CNX has also done extensive work integrating PRMS with TL Ashford barcode labeling software, including numerous front-ends for generating labels in production and shipping.