Forecast Shipments Update

Future Three provides a shipper entry online conversation that allows users to enter data relevant to shipments.  The fields entered include Ship-to Customer Number, Part Number, Ship Date, Ship Quantity, Stock Location, Company, Warehouse, and Lot Number.  Only the Ship-to Customer Number field is validated at shipper entry time.  The rest of the information is validated in the interface to MAC-PAC by the Forecast Shipment Inventory Relief Program (IC140E).

Shipper data entry may occur several times until all shipper data has been entered.  Once all of the shipper data has been entered, several steps of processing occur in Future Three including bar code scanning, etc.

Once these steps have been completed, ASNs (advanced shipment notifications) are generated by the Extract Advanced Shipping Notifications option on the Bill of Lading Processing Menu in Future Three.  This is a batch job that may be run once or more than once during the day.  The extract ASN job formats shipment records from each transaction entered at shipper entry time on the Forecast Shipments Transaction File (IC140AP1) in MAC-PAC.  This job generates shipper numbers and sequence numbers to be formatted on IC140AP1.  A shipper number, sent from Future Three, is synonymous with the invoice number.  Sequence numbers are not directly related to invoice line numbers.  Future Three determines these numbers and passes them to MAC-PAC.  MAC-PAC always uses the shipper number as its invoice number unless that number has already been used as an invoice number in MAC-PAC.

The company and warehouse fields on the file are formatted (left-justified) from the company and warehouse fields on Future Three's Part X-REF File.  The stock location field is formatted from the Shipped Location field on the Part X-REF File.

Once the forecast shipment records have been formatted and the ASN generation job has finished, Future Three's batch program calls MAC-PAC's Forecast Shipments Inventory Relief Program (IC140E).

MAC-PAC's Forecast Shipments Inventory Relief Program performs several functions:

·     Validates all data on each forecast shipment transaction on IC140AP1.

·     Prints all invalid transactions on an error report and formats an error field on IC140AP1 with a code identifying that record as having fields in error.

·     Updates MAC-PAC's inventory files for all valid transactions.  On the Warehouse Balance File, year-to-date and current period activity fields are updated.  These fields are updated if a flag on Reference File category 432 signifies that part statistics should be updated.

·     Updates MAC-PAC's inventory control audit trail files used in Inventory Accounting for all valid transactions.

·     Calculates the unit cost for the item being processed if the transaction is valid, and formats the unit cost on IC140AP1.  The unit cost will always be in stockkeeping units of measure.

·     Retrieves the projected demand record for the item in the warehouse if the transaction being processed is valid.  The Customer Reference Number field is formatted on the Projected Demand File key depending on the value of the summary flag on Reference File category D26.  If the field has a value of N, the Customer Reference Number field is formatted with the nine right-most bytes on the Bill-to customer.  The remainder of the bytes in the field are formatted with blanks.  The Demand Type field is formatted with the default Future Three ship demand type stored on Reference File category D26.  When the correct projected demand record is retrieved, it is updated with the ship quantity on IC140AP1.  This allows the ship quantity to consume the forecast when a tentative schedule is generated.

·     Processes non-released orders.  Uses the Process Non-Release flag on Reference File category D26.  If the field has a value of Y, then the forecast shipment transaction is processed normally.  If the field has a value of N, then the forecast shipment transaction is bypassed and the error flag field is marked as processed.

·     Marks the transaction on IC140AP1 with a special code in the error flag field if the transaction was successfully processed.