November 19, 2001
- Highlights:
- We will be closed Thursday and Friday, November 22-23rd
Century Electric Supply of Libertyville, IL recently ordered the Power Plus system. Century becomes our third new Power Plus user this year. Unlike the others, Century is not a start-up. They just celebrated their 25th anniversary. A key person there is Beth Brooks, whom some of you may have met during the several years she worked at Idlewood Electric. Having someone on board who is already familiar with the system should help the installation go smoothly.
Special thanks goes to the folks at Hein Electric in Milwaukee who hosted a real nice prospect visit for Century. Securing new Plus users benefits all users.
Recent Enhancements:
- The FM07 screen has been enhanced to allow privileged users to override cost when creating items from Trade Service. When you select an item from the Trade Service search screen, it will now bump up against the TS Vendor Options file and prefill your adjusted replacement cost. Privileged users can then change the cost, if necessary. This enhancement is primarily aimed at our three new sites who are currently merrily creating their inventory files from scratch. It just seems like there's a lot of times when vendors don't give consistent multipliers to make the TS Vendor option approach work as well as it used to. Existing sites may find this feature helpful when bringing in new lines.
- The recent enhancement that allows you to request transfers directly in order entry and PO55 purchase order entry, has been improved for sites that elect to tank up the transfers rather than creating them right away at the end of the sales order or purchase order. There is now a screen, OP80, which will allow you to adjust the pending transfers. This screen also allows the user to force the creation of the transfer. So, now there are three choices for when such transfers are created:
- Immediately at time of po/so entry
- On demand at user discretion, using the new OP80 screen
- Automatically - normally as part of WFL/OE/PICKING
- A new dataset (TVA-DATA) has been added that allows you to specify the vendor abbreviations you want to use for Trade Service vendors. This dataset now supplements the vendor master, i.e., the IN/521 program when loading records into TS-DATA will first check the vendor master to obtain the abbreviation, but if there is no vendor record, then it will check TVA-DATA. This addresses the following conditions:
- 1) Situations where there are multiple TS vendor numbers for the same vendor abbreviation, e.g. Siemens and Cutler-Hammer.
- 2) Lines that you don't yet stock and have no vendor master yet, but may have in the future.
- 3) Sites that don't use the TS vendor numbers.
Note: There is no maintenance screen for TVA-DATA. There is an initial load program, FIX/TVA, that will populate it with PSI's recommended abbreviations. Subsequent maintenance can be performed with DMINQ, ERGO or Infoaccess. However, it should be noted that no maintenance is needed if you have a vendor master with the same number, since the vendor master overrides TVA-DATA.
A couple of our new sites have gone with Unisys LT300 LAN terminals. These are terminals that look and function quite similarly to T27's or UT200's, but connect via an Ethernet 10/100 connection. These terminals are ideal for sites that want the datacomm speed and the simple, more modern CAT5 wiring, but don't want to buy all PC's or invest in terminal servers.
Also, the printer pass thru capability on the LT300's is faster and more reliable than that found when using PC's in terminal emulation mode.
We can get you LT300's for $540 new or $315 refurbished (like new). Please call if interested.
- We will be closed Thursday and Friday, November 22-23rd for the Thanksgiving Holiday. Have a happy one!