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If you have ever tried to quickly identify your critical planning issues by flipping through a thousand page BPCSMRP/MPS report, you'll love this Unbeaten Path enhancement.

Our PaperSaver report provides users with true exception reporting for the BPCS master production scheduling and material requirements planning systems.

It focuses attention on the issues that really do need prompt management attention.

Unbeaten Path's design gives the user flexibility to establish decision rules to select a subset of the normal BPCS MRP/MPS messages for printing. BPCS MRP/MPS messages which do not meet the decision rule tolerances are not printed.

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Users can specify a "Buffer Days" (BfrD) tolerance for each of the five different types of BPCS MRP/MPS message. Each BfrD tolerance is measured in full days. Here are some practical examples of how the enhancement works.

      A BfrD tolerance of 5 days is established by the user for de-expedite messages. If BPCS identifies a situation which would ordinarily generate a "de-expedite-by-three-days" message, this message is dropped by the PaperSaver before printing.

      A BfrD tolerance of 4 days is established by the user for expedite messages. If BPCS identifies a situation which would ordinarily generate a "expedite-by-four-days" message, this message is dropped by the PaperSaver before printing.

      A BfrD tolerance of 3 days is established for firm-up messages. Let's say that the planning horizon date is through October 10th and the release date for a planned order is October 12th. Our enhancement will then look ahead past the planning horizon by the three day BfrD tolerance and prepare a firm-up message for printing.

These examples illustrate that our PaperSaver enhancement provides two general benefits.

  1. First, it serves as a screen to shield the user from BPCS messages that have little real value. Acting on messages of this genre typically introduce unnecessary noise into an MRP system.
  2. Second, the enhancement searches for and presents actionable messages that the standard BPCS MRP/MPS report would not have otherwise generated.

There's one other important benefit, of course:

  1. The PaperSaver saves trees!
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132 E. Parkfield Court
Racine, WI 53402-3139, USA
Toll Free: (888) 874-8008
Fax: (414) 681-3525
E-mail: upi@execpc.com
Web: www.unbeatenpathintl.com

© Unbeaten Path International Ltd. 1993 • BPCS is a registered trademark of SSA, Inc. • Unbeaten Path International Ltd. is not affiliated with SSA, Inc.

 

Bells & Whistles® for BPCS

PaperSaver Exception Report

Sample Execution Results

The following real-life statistics were obtained from a division of Textron Corporation — which purchased Unbeaten Path's PaperSaver for BPCS MRP exception reporting.

 



"Vanilla"
BPCS MRP200 Program
Results

Paper Saver Results With Zero
Buffer Days Specified

(least favorable scenario)

     
Number of planned items:

33,201

33,201

Total number of exception messages generated:

7,610

7,610

Total number of printed pages:

almost 5,000

156

Total AS/400 execution time:

Several hours plus significant print time.

23 minutes
plus some print time.

Typical user feelings:

Users feel guilty because they never get around to reviewing all the printed exception messages.

Users feel great because their
job is more organized
and cut down
to a reasonable size.

 

The users at Textron also appreciated other facets of Paper Saver's functionality which are not addressed with "vanilla" BPCS software. Many of these additional features helped users to organize their jobs more effectively and focus on truly important exception messages. A short summary of key functionality differences appears on the following page.

 

 

"Vanilla" BPCS Functionality


Paper Saver Functionality

     
Can exception messages be printed sorted by type of message?

no

yes

The user has the option of printing in item sequence or message sequence.

Can "firm-up" and "release" messages be printed for a user-specified period of future time?

no

yes

There is flexibility to look forward a user-specified number of days for firm-up and release messages.

Can users exclude one or more specific kinds of messages from the report?

no

yes

The user can exclude one or more message types from the printed report.

Can users adjust the start date of the exception message reporting?

no

yes

Users can specify the start date so as to focus on messages from earlier or later time periods.

If the range of planner codes overlaps with the range of buyer codes, is there an easy way to select exception messages for:

a. Only all planners?

b. Only all buyers?

no, no

yes, yes

Users have the option of printing messages for only one buyer, or only one planner, or all buyers, or all planners, or for user defined buyer/planner combinations.

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