English Español Português Products Overview Sales Forecasting Perpetual Inventory CIMSPAD Production Scheduling Raw Material Planning Distribution Scheduling Transportation Scheduling Services Technical Support Knowledge Base Training Year 2000 Monthly Tips Downloads Free Demo Sales Literature Updates & Patches User Manuals Shareware Business Partners Becoming a Partner Company Information Company Overview Clients Location Employment News Announcements			Latest News and Announcements The latest release of CIMS is out. Here is a list of some of the changes that can be found in the newest release; Sales Forecasting: -The ability to generate simplified automatic forecasts at the account group level was added. -When printing account group forecast reports, both the package code and description are now printed on the reports. -The number of decimal places displayed and accepted on screen for forecast motivating factors can now be controlled by the user. This parameter can be controlled in the motivating factors editor. -Search capability was added inside the account group forecasting editors. The user can enter an account group code or description and jump directly to the correct line. This can be accessed by the graphical user interface button or by pressing the "/" key on the numeric keypad. -The forecasting report "Forecasted Sales by Account Group" now allows the user to select which types of forecasts will be printed, including all combinations of simplified automatic forecasts, motivating factor forecasts, and manual entries. -A new chart and a new report were created showing Daily Sales Forecasts, Daily Actual Sales and Inventory on the same chart or report. These can be found in the Sales Forecasting Editor. -A Daily Sales Forecast Report was created which allows one or more days to be printed over time and also allows more than one sales center to be accumulated on the report. Daily sales forecasts, if any exist, are printed. If daily sales forecasts are not available, the report will estimate a daily sales forecast using the weekly sales forecast and the percentage sales by day from the Product Code Editor. This report can be found in the Forecasting Editor. -Simplified Automatic Forecasts by account group can now be generated by date and package size from the main screen of the Sales Forecasting Editor. This allows a simplified automatic forecast to be quickly created at the account group level, without requiring the user to visit every account group screen. -The concept of account group forecast status or hierarchy was created, providing the capability that forecasts made using one model will not overwrite existing forecasts created using another "lower" model. Manual changes are at the highest level, followed by motivating factor forecasts, followed by simplified automatic forecasts. Thus simplified automatic forecasts will not overwrite existing motivating factor forecasts or existing manual entries. Likewise motivating factor forecasts will not overwrite existing manual entries, but will overwrite simplified automatic forecasts. Manual entries always overwrite the others. The user can "force" the status back to any level by using the right mouse button to click on the desired type of forecast in the account group forecasting screen. CIMSPAD and Inventory System. -Support was added to CIMSPAD for future UPC/EAN bar codes up to 24 characters in length. This will be needed in the future because the Uniform Code Council has determined that the supply for current 12 digit UPC numbers will be exhausted by the year 2005, so the standard size of the UPC code will be increased. CIMS is ready now for this change. -CIMSPAD now has the ability to increase the baud rate of the hand-held data transfer above 19200. CIMSPAD version 7.0 or above is required for this. In the miscellaneous data system, under SITE PREFS, there is a field called “Handheld COM Port’s Baud Rate.” This setting can now be exactly 19200, 38400, or 57600. If you increase the baud rate setting on the PC, you must increase it on the hand-held computer to exactly the same value. To do this press the OTHER button on the hand-held computer, then choose SETUP. Change the option titled COM PORT & BAUD to the new setting. -On the report "Inventory with Dates and Location Addresses" selection and filtering of types and dimension is now allowed in addition to the existing sort options. The user can now select to print any part of the data and sort by any field in ascending or decending order. -In the location addresses table in the Warehouse Editor a new field was added called "Days Remaining Critical". This new field can be used in conjunction with the "Days Remaining Warning" field to provide up to three levels of highlighting of aging product on various date related and rotation reports. Products which have less than "Days Remaining Critical" left in their life will be printed on these reports with bold italic underline font. Products which have less than "Days Remaining Warning" left in their life will be printed in bold italic font. Products which have more than "Days Remaining Warning" left in their life will be printed in a normal font. This feature is available on the "Hand Held Raw Data" report and on the "Inventory with Dates and Location Addresses" report. -A new inventory report was created called "Inventory by Location Address" This shows the locations in columns and shows the total amount of each product in each location. It accumulates multiple lots and types of product which may be found in the same location address. The new report provides another way to look at the inventory using location addresses. -CIMS/CIMSPAD can now selectively add supporting items like pallets or shells according to each counted dimension on the hand-held computer such as pallet, layer, case or unit. The supporting items are added according to the dimension counted and the state of the new fields in the Site Preferences of the Miscellaneous Data System. Shipping and Distribution. -A new chart was created which compares forecasts against inventory maximums. The chart uses the weekly forecast and the maximum from the Monday of the week. It can be found in the Inventory Editor and the Distribution Scheduling System. -Default shipping document comments can be created in the Product Code Editor for each item. When that product is added or suggested onto a shipping document, the default comment will automatically be added. This is handy for products which may require special handling such as hazardous materials, or to use as a reminder for additional information to be collected or extra steps to be taken by the loader or transport driver. -The shipper listing reports now print the status of the transport load on the next line below the document number. Status indicators include void, committed/shipped, loaded and scheduled. -The total units of full good product is now printed on the shipper listing report at the end of each document. -A new miscellaneous data field was added to the "site prefs" editor. This field is called "Shipping documents use preprinted form". If this check field is cleared, the labels of the various fields on the shipping document will be printed allowing the use of blank paper to print shipping documents and loading tickets. The check field should remain checked if still using preprinted forms. -The Distribution Scheduling System now has separate buttons for printing loading tickets and shipping documents. The loading tickets will now also show additional product information relating to the location address of the item in the warehouse and the date code associated with each lot. This can improve rotation by allowing fork lift loading operators to find the oldest product first, and can improve loading efficiency by reducing search time. The information comes directly from that collected with the CIMSPAD hand held computer. Transport Scheduling System. -A new report was created called "Transport Average Load Weight" which shows the number of loads to each destination, the total weight of the transports and the average load weight. This report is date-to-date capable and can be found in the Inventory Editor and Distribution Scheduling System. File Conversion Utility. -The GLS STANDARD file conversion utility for importing product codes now accepts separate files for importing package codes and descriptions, and flavor codes and descriptions. Much better error messaging was also added. See the documentation in File Conversion Utility for details. -The File Conversion Utility "GLS Standard Import for Daily Actual Sales by Customer" was improved to accept a "family" of input files instead of just one file extension. This allows the user to feed several files for each time period, one for each of several operating units or companies, instead of forcing users to include all sales from multiple companies in a single file. -In the File Conversion Utility the user can now specify the destination directory and filename for the BPCS forecast export. -In the File Conversion Utility the CBFS export of forecasts now uses warehouse "Code 4" instead of "Code 3" to translate the warehouse code. -A new File Conversion Utility for CCBCC was created allowing orders to be imported from the "200 Report". -New File Conversion Utilities were completed for PCNA customer feed import and weekly actual sales feed import. Overall System Improvements -System wide reports showing multiple locations were improved to dynamically allocate memory and allow for a much larger number of products and locations to be printed on these reports. -The program WINMODEM.EXE which allows data transfers with hand held computers was renamed to GLSMODEM.EXE to avoid name conflicts with the popular hardware telephone modem of the same name. The new version of the program, is now called GLSMODEM.EXE. -Reports were provided for the package and flavor databases in the Product Code Editor. -The restriction that production partners must be of the same flavor has been eliminated. Production partners may now be of any flavor and may even run on different production lines.
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