Реферат: Business Information Systems Essay Research Paper GRC

STEP 3B: LOT CONTROL (ANOTHER WAY TO ALLOCATE SK)

Each item number is unique to itself. It is different from all the other item numbers in the warehouse (unless, by accident, the same item has been put into stock under two different stock numbers). Certain unique items have attributes within the item that may be different and it may be desirable to separate the stock of the item by the characteristic. For example, let us say that we are stocking grade ‘A’ milk under the stock number “MIL-1.” 1000 cartons of the milk have an expiration date of 9/27/1998, 1700 cartons have an expiration date of 10/10/1998 and 2000 cartons have an expiration date of 1024/1998. The milk itself is always identified by its stock number of “MIL-1” and always ordered as such. The problem is that under that stock number it is desirable to segregate the milk by the attribute of “Expiration Date.” This is accomplished by creating three different lots of the milk under the same stock number and segregating the lots. When milk is ordered, you can select the lot that has the oldest “Expiration Date” to ship to the customer. Each lot has a different lot number that is unique. Lots may have more than one attribute that can be tracked. In fact, each lot could have quite a few attributes being tracked. In the case of the milk, fat content percent, date inspected and cream content could also be tracked. Also, whenever one of these attributes change, the change is recorded as a change of ‘level.’ For instance, let us say that the content of cream has changed for half the lot. The lot can be split into two lots; the lot where the cream content has changed would have a different level than the lot that has not changed in cream content.

STEP 3C: TEMPLATES (A WAY TO HANDLE REPETITIOUS ORDERS)

During the process of making a quote or sales order, it is likely at times that customers will be ordering the same long list of materials over and over. This could entail many hours of entering data. In addition, different customers may order a specific product that requires they also order certain items that go along with it. By using templates, much of these efforts can be avoided. Merely save the items as a template while creating a quote or sales order and give them a template name. Whenever these items are required for a sales order, just call or the template name and the items will appear on the sales order.

STEP 4: PROCESSING, TRACKING AND STATUSING ORDERS

Sales Order Control provides the big picture of what is happening to all of your sales orders. You have the ability to decide which order needs to be processed first based upon the due date to the customer. BIZVIEWS is a “Due Date” system and therefore the priority for an order is set by the date due to deliver to the customer. If it is necessary to change the priority of an order, then change the due date to an earlier one.

“THE CONCEPT OF “SLACK”: The topmost first browser screen in Sales Order Control contains a field called ‘Slack.’ Slack is today’s date minus or plus the Committed Due Date for delivery of the order to the customer. For example: Today is June 20, 1998 and the customer was promised delivery on June 15, 1998 (five days ago). The slack is –5. The browser displays the slack value of each order in slack number order. If all the orders had a slack of 0, this would mean that all orders are being delivered on their due date. By processing the orders with the largest negative slacks first, you will be following the proper priority order.

When you click on the order that you want to work on and go to the second screen, you can review each of the items on the order and the progress that has been made towards shipping the order. By pressing the right button on this screen, you are presented a menu of many choices such as CREATE A PURCHASE ORDER, SHIP ITEM, etc. Process the orders through to completion.

STEP 5: INVENTORY – IMPORTANT CONCEPTS

ITEM NUMBERS: The INVENTORY FILE is made up of item records. Each item in the file is a record. In the old days, we would say that inventory was just made up of “parts,” but this is no longer true. We use the term “items” now because there are many different kinds of items in the file. For example, there are “planning” items used in Master Planning, Features, and Options. The are also reference items (item numbers of drawings that represent the part in stock). Specific item numbers are sometimes called “SKU’s” (Stock Keeping Units).

One of the best features in BIZVIEWS is that the description of an item can now be as long as you want for sales orders, purchase orders and invoices. Normally, the DESCRIPTION field in BIZVIEWS is 30 characters long. We have another field in the INVENTORY file called LINE NOTE. This field is 120 characters long. When you print any of the documents described above, the LINE NOTES directly adjacent to the DESCRIPTION field and it looks like one description of 150 characters. In addition to all of this, the ITEM NOTES field prints directly below the LINE NOTES and this gives us an unlimited description.

CATALOGS versus WAREHOUSES: In BIZVIEWS, it is important to understand the difference between CATALOGS and WAREHOUSES. A catalog is a listing of items from a specific source. It could be a listing of all the items that you sell and buy. It could also be a listing of all the items that one of your vendors sells (i.e. a manufacturer, distributor or wholesaler). Each listing is kept in its own separate file called a CATALOG file. A catalog file contains information about each item, such as its description, manufacturing part number, cost, and price. In the SET-UP section of the program, you are asked if the catalog that you set up is also a physical warehouse where a stock balance is kept on the items. Unless you have answered that it is a physical warehouse, you will never be given the opportunity to add or take away stock from that catalog. Items ordered from that catalog have to eventually be put into another catalog that has been designated as a warehouse. Therefore, the same item will be duplicated in both catalogs. To summarize, a catalog provides a listing of items that you can select for orders. A warehouse is a catalog that has associated inventory records with it where stock is stored. You can also select these items for orders, and when the orders are complete, the items quantities are incremented in the associated inventory file.

STEPS 6 & 7: CREATE AND RECEIVE IN PURCHASE ORDERS

PEGGING: The single most important feature of BIZVIEWS that many purchased programs lack is the function called “pegging.” Pegging allows you to relate back from a purchase order or order to be shipped to the original source (sales order) where the requirement was made for a purchase or shipping order. Most systems will tell you that you have to create a purchase order for a specific quantity of a product, but when the items arrive you have no idea which sales order(s) the items should be delivered to. BIZVIEWS always provides information that pegs the sales order to the material that is available. The process that pegs orders is called allocations.

CONSOLIDATED PURCHASE ORDERS: If you have a large volume of sales orders with many items that are purchased from specific vendors who can be identified before-hand in the INVENTORY file, then many hours of purchase order creation can be saved by using consolidated purchase orders. Basically, you run two programs: the first program automatically attaches a vendor name to all of your items that require purchase orders in a few seconds. The second program takes all of these items, consolidates individual purchase orders by vendor, and creates purchase orders for many items almost instantly.

COMPUTER REQUIREMENTS

All our products are written in Visual FoxPro and are IBM compatible. At this time we do not offer Macintosh support. Macintosh products are expected to be released third quarter of this year.

Absolute minimum requirements would be a Pentium class processor with the following:

· 32 MB RAM

· VGA monitor

· Mouse

· Printer supported by Windows

· Windows 95/98/NT recommended. Windows 3.11 require that the configuration file (config.sys) be changed to include:

FILES=200

BUFFERS=30

NOTE: Although the program has been demonstrated to run without any problems on WINDOWS 3.11 in the past, we no longer support this Windows version and do not in any way guarantee that it will run with this version. The on-line HELP text requires at least Windows 95.

The program runs with all The program runs with all standard local area networks. Networks tested to run with this system are: Windows 95, Windows for Workgroups, Windows 3.1, Windows NT, Novell NetWare, Personal NetWare, Banyan VINES 5.0, IBM LAN Server 3.0, Microsoft LAN Manager, and LANtastic 6.0.

STEPS TO IMPLEMENTING A NEW PROGRAM AT YOUR COMPANY

Probably on of the most important and difficult tasks for a company to accomplish is the implementation of a new computer system, such as BIZVIEWS™. The purpose of these chapters is to walk you through the thought processes of what you need to consider in order to successfully install the new product.