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Foy's EPICS Events |
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Extrusion
Production Information and Control Systems |
September 2005 * Volume 9, Issue 3
In this issue
Katrina
hits Taber Employees Hard
Web-based
Training a Great Success
Finally!
Quantity Discounts and Surcharges!
Advanced
Data Collection Screen Improved
Other
EPICS V8.1 Update Information
Free
Video to Review EPICS Updates
Foy
Speaking at Aluminum Extruders Council Management Meeting
Welcome
to New EPICS Customers
2006 User Conference Plans
The 8th annual EPICS User
Conference will be held at the Stratosphere Hotel in
The 2006 conference will have a slightly different schedule than past gatherings. The conference will kick off on Sunday evening, April 30, with the registration reception. Conference sessions will be held on Monday and Tuesday. On Wednesday, Foy will conduct an optional intensive training session, concentrating on the new features introduced at the conference and during the previous twelve months. (Attendees should bring a notebook computer with a wireless network card.)
The new schedule and location enables us to get much better hotel rates than in previous years. Instead of the normal $185 room rate, the 2006 rate will be under $70. We will also revise the conference hours somewhat – we will start earlier, take a shorter lunch break, and finish earlier. But we will not reduce the conference content – it will still be packed with the same number of hours of valuable information.
Mark your calendars now for the 2006 EPICS User Conference, April 30 – May 3, 2006.
Many of you have met people from the Taber Extrusion plant
in
As you know,
I know each of you will join us in keeping our friends at Taber in your prayers.
The Foy “Webinars” have been a great success among EPICS
users.
The charge for a Foy Webinar is only $50 per login. You can display the Webinar on a video projector if you have several people to train. Sessions are limited to ten participants, so be sure to sign up early.
If you missed a webinar, be sure to checkout the schedule of upcoming sessions. Several of them are repeats of subjects previously presented. See the training schedule here on the Foy Inc website. In addition, Scott regularly emails a notice of upcoming sessions.
pVelocity Inc, a Toronto-based developer of profit
optimization software, has signed a marketing alliance with Foy Inc. pVelocity will develop and market an
EPICS-specific version of their suite of products. We will assist them as they develop a turnkey
interface to EPICS. 
pVelocity greatly expands on Foy’s “Die Profit Contribution” concept by offering multiple methods of analyzing profit contribution not only for the press but for all departments and for the entire operation. They have a powerful “what if” tool to help identify the impact on profit of various marketing and pricing strategies.
pVelocity joins a select group of companies that leverage off the wealth of data contained in the EPICS database. Companies such as Granco Clark, Advantage Manufacturing Concepts, Preactor, and now pVelocity, offer products that multiply the value of your EPICS installation.
You can learn more about pVelocity at www.pvelocity.com.
For several years, one of the most-requested
EPICS enhancements has been the ability to handle quantity discounts. For those of you with the optional EPICS
Pricing Module, the upcoming EPICS 8.1 update adds this feature. As an added bonus, surcharges can be handles with
the same enhancement.
The discount and surcharge feature works somewhat similar to the Tax Schedule that was introduced in EPICS V8.0. Tax Schedules allow you to create a list of all possible taxes, then build any number of schedules that contain various combinations of these taxes. Each customer can then be assigned a schedule.
In the same way, the new Quantity Discount feature allows you to build a list of all possible discounts and surcharges, and then create any number of schedules that contain combinations of these discounts and surcharges. You can then assign one of these schedules to each customer. You can even assign a schedule to a customer part.
Of course, you must have the optional EPICS Pricing Module in order to utilize these new features. If you do not have this module, it can be easily added – just give us a call.
The EPICS 8.1 update includes numerous improvements to the Advanced Production Data Collection screen (although some of these items were included in the minor updates such as V8.0.4.) The changes to this screen include:
- Allow multiple racks or sales order items to be processed in a single posting
- Allow READ/WRITE permissions by department
- Allow QBE for all data on screen including billets, individual SOItems, and Downtime
- Permit partial racktags to be printed for individual SOItems
- Fix count of die changes posted to MachineHist
- Prevent usage of inactive billets
- Enable PageUp/PageDown to scroll through records
- Show Alloy and Temper on Available Racks tab
- Recalculate weights or pieces when extrusion sample weight is changed
- Eliminate extra mouse-clicks required to view Available Racks tab
- Add "Press Schedule" tab for extrusion
- Improve grid editing
- Reset workorder status when un-posting completed lot
- Clear remaining Pc and Wt when posting completed item
- Correct Oracle-specific inquiry errors
- Add full support for lot splitting when posting from master workorder or rack
- Warn user if Stop time = Start time for a department with HrFlag set
- Fix SOItemDept.RemainPc updates of partial runs
- "Execute" button asks user if they want to print racktags
The upcoming EPICS 8.1 update will include several of the top wishlist items that were requested at the 2005 EPICS User Conference. These items, and their position on the final Wishlist, are:
- (3) Easily insert departments into a routing. A new Routing Maintenance screen has been added, allowing you to revise routings by simply by selecting a department from a list and clicking navigation buttons to add, delete, or move.
- (4) Detect multiple ship-to customers on same sales order on shipping screen. The Post Shipment screen now warns the user if a shipment contains tickets bound to more than one ship-to customer.
- (9) Make sure that all Cust-dependent fields
change on SOEntry when changing customer. Pertinent SOEntry fields are now changed
if the customer is changed. But the
user is asked if items should be re-priced.
- (14) Add Priority and RushFlag to Press
Schedule screen. Done. The Press Schedule screen has also been
improved to warn the user if a die is being scheduled that has no valid
active copies. Press and container
can now be changed on the schedule screen for unscheduled items. And column positions are now remembered
if the user changes them.
- (15) Identify person receiving from outside processor. A new field, ReceivedBy, has been added to the Ticket table.
- (16) Add new date field for customer’s true request date. A new field, CustReqDt, has been added to the SOEntry and SOItem tables.
The regular EPICS update will be released and available for
download on Tuesday morning, September 6.
All
The update, EPICS 8.1, contains a number of new features, some of which are described above. The full list of changes will be described in the Help file that will be released with the 8.1 update.
Some of the other significant updates are:
- A new DLL (epicslink.dll) allows other applications to post production data to the EPICS database (with prior approval from Foy)
- Context sensitive help has been added to numerous screens
- When sending reports straight to a printer, an options dialog box now appears
- Fixed mill ends calculation
- Minor fixes on cutback calculation
- Allow more than 32000 pcs to be posted on one item
Do
you sometimes find the description of new features included in an EPICS update
to be somewhat overwhelming? Well, a
picture is worth a thousand words.
Starting with the V8.1 update, we will be providing you with a video
that introduces the changes included in the update. The video features
These videos are not designed to be training videos – we will offer training webinars for new features as needed. But the videos will certainly allow you to quickly see the changes and enhancements and get an idea of how they work.
The video for the EPICS V8.1 update will be available from the Support area of www.foyinc.com shortly after the update is released.
If you will be at the AEC session, stop by and see the latest and greatest EPICS features.
welcome to New EPICS Customers
In our last newsletter, we welcomed two new EPICS Lite
customers: Zarbana Industries in
epics customers
On any given day
EPICS is helping over 10,000 people
at over 75 extrusion
plants around the world.
