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Foy's EPICS Events |
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Extrusion Production Information and Control Systems |
In this issue
The 2006 EPICS User Conference in Review
Advanced Invoicing Screen Added
Other New Features in EPICS V8.3
THe 2006 EPICS User Conference in review
The 8th
annual EPICS User Conference convened in Las Vegas, Nevada at the Stratosphere
Hotel April 30th through May 3rd, 2006. With 72 participants
from 28 companies from around the globe this was the most highly attended
conference yet. Most attendees came from the US and Canada, but some traveled
from Mexico, El Salvador, Ecuador, and from as far as Australia and South Africa. Extruders met to discuss how they are using EPICS and to provide input
on how EPICS can be further enhanced in the future to meet their needs.
The conference began Sunday evening with a come-and-go reception. The evening’s entertainment was an excellent view of the Las Vegas skyline and of a Nevada dust storm from the 24th floor of the Stratosphere Hotel. The two-day conference began Monday morning with a welcome from Jim Foy, founder and president of Foy Inc. Each day concluded with an ever-popular Wishlist session, a time when Foy Inc receives its “marching orders” for the next year from EPICS users. New to the User Conference this year was the addition of a training day on the Wednesday following the regular conference sessions. Forty-two attendees remained for this additional day of training on the newest EPICS features.
Featured
at the conference were the many EPICS enhancements added during the past year
at the request of EPICS users. John Stenger introduced the new Quotation
Module, a module which allows the creation of price quotes for either new or
existing customers or dies and the easy creation of sales orders from a quote.
John also discussed many other new features including multi-level plant hold,
auto fill-from-stock, billet chemical composition, linking external documents
to EPICS, and quantity discounts and surcharges (just to name a few).
Chris Delzell and Scott Wilson presented a number of “forgotten features”, features that have been with EPICS for some time but whose usefulness may have been forgotten. John and Scott reviewed the Advanced Production screen emphasizing its many advantages over the old production screens. On the administrative side, Chris gave a presentation on various database backup strategies and the importance of having good backup data. John introduced Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and discussed its enhancements. Jim Foy gave an in-depth presentation on how EPICS calculates billet requirements. Jim also reviewed which operating systems and database versions are now supported by their vendors and by Foy Inc.
Two guest companies were invited this year to present products which can provide enhancement to EPICS. Steve Young and Cindy O’Malley from pVelocity explained how their product can improve profitability by providing detailed historical information of die performance. Gerry Leonard of Advantage Manufacturing Concepts presented a number of “cybants” which can extend the functionality of EPICS in both data input and data analysis.
The
Training Day, new to the conference in 2006, was an additional day of training
on the newest EPICS features. Led by Scott Wilson, the day began with an
in-depth explanation and demonstration of the new Quotation Module and the
Corrective Action Module. Other morning sessions included details of the
Chemical Composition features, Auto Fill-from-Stock features, the Advanced
Invoicing screen, importing sales orders from a customer spreadsheet, how to
use Discounts and Surcharges, and how to use Tax Schedules. Afternoon sessions
included Advanced Production, Rack Tracking and Master Workorder. The final
session of the day presented a variety of new features such as new permissions
for production and linking documents, as well as an informal
question-and-answer discussion time.
Based on comments received from attendees, the 2006 EPICS User Conference was a great success. “Extremely worthwhile”, and “Time well spent”, were the most common comments. The conference (after the AEC general conference, the largest meeting of extruders in North America) is a time of sharing ideas and goals. EPICS is, in fact, the culmination of the experience of literally thousands of extruders. The annual EPICS User Conference is the crucible for those ideas and experience in the developing of new goals.
From everyone at Foy Inc, thank you for a great conference. Slides from the presentations used at the conference, as well as photos of conference activities, can be found here. We hope to see you next year for the 9th annual EPICS User Conference.
Another significant enhancement in EPICS V8.3 is the Advanced Invoicing screen. This screen offers a major improvement in the user interface for invoicing personnel. It is similar to the Advanced Order Entry screen that was added in an earlier update.
The Advanced Invoicing screen displays all items on an invoice on a single screen. In addition to its use as an invoicing screen, it also replaces the Invoice History screens.
This new feature is explained in more detail in the EPICS Help file that will be distributed with the V8.3 update.
A new customer grouping capability has been added in EPICS V8.3. Users can now create a group such as “ACME PLANTS” and assign any number of customers to that group. A die can then be assigned to that group, allowing any group member to use the die. This feature allows a convenient alternative to single customer ownership and standard dies.
A new configuration setting allows you to strictly enforce die ownership settings at order entry.
Customer groups can also be applied to Parts, allowing a limited group of customers to use the same part.
A new
Prices tab has been added to the Customer screen, providing a much easier
method of viewing the customer’s pricing structure. A drop-down list of
allowable pricing descriptions simplifies new entries.
Other Pricing Module improvements include
- adding TEMPER and SPECCODE to the allowable pricing descriptions
- allowing importing of all supported pricing rules from both Bill-To and Base Price customer
- replace text such as PACKCODEB3 with description from the PackCode table
- ability to have customer Base override system Base
- ability to have other customer price lines override system price lines
- allow discounts and surcharges based on piece length
In early June, Foy Inc will offer webinar training sessions on using the new order entry and pricing features. We will email the schedule in the next few days.
In addition to the major new features described above, several dozen other enhancements have been made. Among these are:
- New Parts-related table to store standard production rates by department for each part. This will be of great interest if you are using tools such as Preactor, pVelocity, or other scheduling or costing tools.
- Improved time-handling on Advanced Data Collection screen
- Allow decimal weights on packing tickets and invoices
- New packing configuration settings to define stock ticket format, ask user if each packing ticket printed OK, and to turn printing of stock tickets on or off
- Allow predefined printer selection for all Crystal reports
- Master workorder configuration settings to define how to sort and distribute pieces to items, and to disable automatic distribution of pieces.
- The Reserve Orders tab is now only shown at order entry if reserve orders are available. Also, users can right-click on an item to rescan for reserves. Reserve orders are now excluded from the Enhanced Shipping scan screen.
New EPICS Customers
Four more extruders have started using EPICS since the last newsletter.
- Empire Resources Extrusion in Baltimore, Maryland
- Profab Industries in Dundee, Ohio
- Independent Extrusions (INEX) in Hamilton, New Zealand
- Capral in Penrith, Australia
The highly anticipated Quotation Module will be released with update 8.3. The module allows quotes to be created for either existing or prospective customers using existing or proposed dies. Once the quote is created, a quote document similar to the acknowledgement may be printed. New sales orders can be generated directly from the quote any number of times allowing customers to order by quote number, essentially providing a method of storing customer order data for quick order entry.
Based on the design of the Order Entry screen, the Quotation Module has a familiar interface. It is easy to learn and easy to use because entering a quote is very similar to entering a sales order. Most of the functionality of the Order Entry screen is used in the Quotation Module as well. All pricing module rules apply and discounts and surcharges may be applied. User fields, notes, and linked documents used in the Quotation Module will automatically carry over to Order Entry.
In the same way, prospective customers (quote customers) and proposed dies (quote dies) are maintained on screens modeled after familiar EPICS screens. Because they are so similar, the control panel frame on the right of the screen has been shaded yellow to avoid any possible confusion. If an order is placed based upon a quote, the quote customer and quote die records can be made into active customers and dies with the click of a button.
For additional information please call Foy Inc. at 972-782-7282. Additional information can also be found in the EPICS Help.
The EPICS Quotation Module is priced at $3500. To try the Module for 30 days at no cost, call Foy Inc and ask for a free trial license.
epics customers
On any given day
EPICS is helping over 11,000 people
at 80 extrusion plants around the world.
