Deep Thoughts with Richard Schoen

I just returned from a trip to Disneys Magic Kingdom with my wife, 4 and 5 year old daughters and grandpa Dennis and grandma Joann to celebrate the holiday season. It was fun to re-live the magic of being so young through their eyes. I have to admit I almost cried a few times from the joy I felt seeing their excitement and enjoyment of all things Disney.

For me it wasn’t about the magic of Disney. I simply enjoyed seeing my kids enjoy Disney and wear non-stop smiles for the entire week.

I also had fun seeing all the technology in action.  It’s hard to send the technology side of my life on vacation.  I always end up coming up with new ideas.

 From a technology perspective I was amazed by the way Disney has integrated technology into their systems by giving you a key to the world when you check in to your hotel.

Your room key gives you access to the hotel, parks, stores and all things disney.  They also use biometric fingerprint security to insure the person holding the key is the right person with each park re-entry. Cool stuff.

What I am thankful for this year is a wonderful family, good friends and another year of building technology solutions that help our customers streamline their businesses.

Happy holidays to all. We at RJS look forward to working with you in 2012 to make all your technology dreams come true.

 Almost twenty years after the paperless office concept was born, many companies are still mired in printed paperwork. Orders and Invoices come in via mail and fax. Invoices, Statements, Bills of Lading, CAD Drawings and other documents are still printed and manually assembled in many cases to create shop floor paperwork and shipping documents. These processes still generate paper, but there are ways to gain tangible Return On Investment (ROI) from automating the assembly and processing of key business documents.

 Let’s look at a common scenario where automating the assembly and distribution of documents can streamline paper flow and greatly reduce manual labor and errors when assembling paperwork for the shop floor..

 Manufacturing Customer X has to generate shop floor paperwork to be sent to the shop floor with every custom order being processed for the day. Employees then manually mark up the documents and scan the completed paperwork. The customer doesn’t feel the environment is conducive to touch screen terminals, so they currently still generate paperwork. Since each order requires a generated system report, paired with a copy of an electronic CAD drawing and work instructions, the process is very laborious. Each night the system documents are printed. At 5 am each morning, someone from engineering picks up the stack of documents and manually prints the CAD drawing to go with each order. Then another clerical person prints the appropriate machine instruction documents and staples the entire paperwork package together. Each day there are over 1000 job packets generated based on the job scheduling system, so repeating this process manually wastes at least 9 hours per day since there are three people involved in the paperwork assembly process. Since the highly paid engineer holds the key to the CAD drawings, they are directly involved in the print and assembly process rather than spending their valuable time working on CAD drawings.

 Even though Customer X doesn’t want to go entirely paperless with their paperwork generation process, they can easily reduce or eliminate the 9 hours per day being spent manually assembling paperwork. Imagine a scenario where each night the 1000 system documents are generated in the evening. As soon as each system document is generated it identifies which CAD drawings need to be assembled and printed with the system document. Then the work instruction documents are called in and printed in sequence. Finally each document is auto-stapled by the printer so nobody needs to be involved in the assembly process unless the printer jams, runs out of paper or toner.

 This story is true however the customer names have been removed to protect the innocent. If you think your company could benefit from automated document assembly and automation technology, contact the experts at RJS to help you capture, manage, secure and distribute your important business documents

If your company spends considerable man-hours tracking orders between the time a product quote is requested and the actual product is shipped, RJS can assist you in streamlining your fulfillment process. This pain point is widespread in industries where products or services are customized – manufacturing for example. In some cases the order or quote request can get lost before it actually gets entered into the order entry system.
Let’s first look at a fairly common and flawed process and then explore a solution using WebForms, which web-enables order-to-fulfillment, eliminates redundant data entry and electronically routes between sales, engineering, accounting, order processing and shipping departments.

The current process may go something like this:

- An order is received by email, phone or fax for your product or service.

- In some instances, the product is mass-produced and can just be grabbed from the shelf and shipped. This particular order however, requires a quote for product customization.

- Because of this, the quote request needs to be routed from sales to the development or engineering team for a review to make sure they can fulfill the customer’s special order.

- Once engineering has determined they can configure or build the product to specifications, the accounting team needs to estimate the product cost, margins needed and the final pricing for the product.

- The order can finally get entered into the order entry system for processing, shipping and billing.

Because these steps are likely done via paper documents being passed around in a manila folder or a steady stream of “reply all” emails, the chance of errors or the quote request getting lost in translation is very high. Problems are often found in customer support prior to shipping or even worse, by the customers themselves. Not only are these mistakes completely avoidable, but companies can lose considerable profits and damage brand equity when employing imperfect order-to-fulfillment processes. Unfortunately, this scenario may sound all-too-familiar. Don’t worry, we can help!

A new streamlined process using WebForms might look like this:

- Customer goes to your website and fills out a new order or quote request, or simply calls a salesperson who takes their order.

- In either case, the order or quote information is immediately captured to a web-based form where it can be monitored and tracked until the order is completed.

- Once captured, the order form is electronically routed to various departments where they add their information to the all-encompassing form.

- Once it clears these steps, the quote or order can be entered or captured automatically into the order processing system and fulfilled.

By capturing the quote information at the beginning of the process and tracking it until the time the order is entered and shipped, we have averted the dreaded “you screwed up my order” call and have delivered the product correct to specifications and on time.

If you’re looking to improve your order-to-fulfillment process and want keep your customers happy, contact RJS to learn more about our WebForms product and how you can streamline your customer and vendor business processes.

Check out my recent article in IBM Systems Magazine regarding digital signature capture, a topic near and dear to my heart. Ths article is a good introduction to digital signature capture and how it can be used by organizations.

I created the PHPRUN command a few months back when I started learning PHP. 

I always like to see what else a scripting language is capable of when I am testing. 

I figured since we use QSH and PASE all over the board, then PHP should be able to participate in this mix. 

Feel free to download and use the PHPRUN command.  Source code is included for the CL script if you want to modify and enhance it. 

There’s also a README source member in the source file RJSPHP/SOURCE

Basically the PHPRUN command will run any PHP script with parameters and will allow you to send output back to the regular 400 job by placing STDOUT into a physical *OUTFILE and rolling through the file and processing results. This is a great way to intermix, RPG, CL and PHP. The command also bubbles back the PHP return codes to a data area so you can monitor for a successful script completion from a CL or RPG program. 

PHPRUN Command Download  – Contains RJS FTP Library Installer for RJSPHP library http://downloads.rjssoftware.com/files/commonclasses/rjsphp/rjsphp.exe

REQUEST: If you make any changes or tweaks to the scripts or add any additional functionality, please send them to me so I can incorporate them into the library. I already have several ideas for how to make this more useful, but let’s have some outside input. 

Have fun and send your feedback to me via email.  richard@rjssoftware.com

I recently found an interesting site that lists open source alternatives to several software products such as Veritas Backup Exec, Microsoft Office, Visio and more.  if your shop is considering using open source products or you’re just curious to learn more about the open source alternative products available, check out the Open Source Alternative site.

IBM’s announcement of the System i blades is probably one of the most compelling statements by IBM that the System i landscape is changing and I believe it’s for the better. 

First and foremost this is an improvement on the scenario we have used for the past ten years on the iSeries with the integrated xServer cards.  They have always been one step behind current technology and have been seen as a second class way of deploying Windows on the iSeries.  However I’ve used the integrated server cards for years and found them to be very stable.

From a practical perspective the new Blade cards will allow shops such as RJS to truly consolidate their iSeries, Windows, Linux or AIX environments all together in a shared chassis with shared disk and less cables.  RJS is planning to implement one of the Blade Centers internally to consolidate our own server sprawl. I’ll post updates as we move forward.

Some say this is the end of the System i.  I say it’s just the beginning of a new way of life where our System i servers live harmonious with all of the other servers in our shops. Only time will tell for sure. Goodbye to cable and server sprawl.

I can’t say I agree with the new name change to “i”, but read about the cool new Blade Server technology here at the IBM i web site.

Check out the news release for iForms, our new native Electronic Forms and Report Writing software. Business reporting, data exporting and electronic forms in a single native iSeries applicationhttp://www.rjssoftware.com/news/news-press/iforms-press-release

Check out the news release for iPDF, our new native PDF API for RPG developers
http://www.rjssoftware.com/news/news-press/ipdf-press-release

Check out Bob Cozzi’s iSeries TV site for a Podcast done at the 19th Annual Omni Technical Conference in Chicago. This month, Bob Cozzi previews the WDSC 7 announcement. Then he visits the 19th Annual OMNI User Tech Conference–the oldest and largest Chicagoland User Group. Includes interviews with Joe Pluta from Pluta Brothers, David Gibbs from Midrange.com, Help Systems and Derek Nordaune of RJS Software Systems.  There’s also some footage from Randall Munson’s RJS sponsored presentation entitled: Discover the Magic of System i.