Electronic Picking Solution

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Electronic Picking Solution with bar codes for
ACCPAC Advantage Series
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• The following is a presentation of MJD Softwares
  solution for bar code picking for ACCPAC
  Advantage Series.
• In a normal warehouse without bar coding, a
  warehouse person would pick against a printed
  picking slip and record picked quantities.
  Someone then has to manually enter the picked
  quantities into ACCPAC. These processes can be
  slow and error prone.
• MJDs bar coding solutions eliminate practically
  all the errors that happen in the manual
  recording of picked quantities, and speed up the
  overall picking procedure. An efficient picking
  process will be reflected in an elimination of
  mis-shipments to customers and accurate
  inventory, which in turn will be reflected in
  increased sales.

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• MJDs picking solution is made up of three main
  components
• O/E Host Interface
• MJD Nexus
• Live Picking

• Additional requirements are
• Symbol hand-held data terminals
• PBT for Windows

• Optional Add-ons
• ACCPAC Options Serialized Inventory
• Uniserials from Unidevco

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The O/E Host Interface is a program that installs
into the ACCPAC Advantage Series System
Manager. It manages the exporting of orders for
picking, and then later imports the picked
quantities data.
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The O/E Host Interface setup screen allows you to
configure options for the exporting and importing
processes. Options for exporting include error
handling, how to deal with orders previously
exported, and which quantity field to use as the
quantity to be picked, among others.
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The import screen of the O/E Host Interface Setup
allows the user to set error levels to check for,
and whether or not to automatically post orders
that have errors. You can also configure the
import to happen automatically, or to be done
manually.
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The next component of the picking solution is the
MJD Nexus. The Nexus is made up of several other
programs, all important to the transferring and
management of data between a PC and the hand-held
terminal. On a day to day basis a user would use
the CommServer (communication server) and the
Q Browser (lists transactions to send and
receive).
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There are two other components that come into
play in this solution. The first is MJDs PBT
for Windows program. It is a bar code database
and bar code labeling program. The bar code
databases (there are three Internal, Vendor and
Customer) are used to store bar codes. The bar
code/item translation table is uploaded to the
hand-held terminal, so that when a bar code is
scanned, it is translated into its corresponding
ACCPAC item number. The second is the Symbol
hand-held terminal. It is actually a computer
with and integrated bar code scanner. The
terminal runs MS-DOS, it comes with 4.2 Megs of
RAM, and 8 or 16 line screen, and a 35 or 45 key
keyboard.
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Below is a basic diagram of the flow of data
between the different components that make up the
MJD electronic picking solution. The screen
following this one is a more detailed flow chart
of the overall process flow that the Bar Code
Picking Solution takes. Following that screen
will be a step by step walk through of the entire
process, from exporting the orders, to scanning
the items, to importing the picked quantities
data back into ACCPAC.
O/E Host Interface
MJD Nexus
Live Picking
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1.
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2.
6.
3.
5.
Live Picking
4.
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Step by Step Walkthrough
To begin with, orders are entered and posted into
the ACCPAC Order Entry module.
1.
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Orders to be picked are exported via the MJD O/E
Host Interface.
2.
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Using the Order Export function in MJDs O/E Host
Interface, the user selects the criteria for
exporting. For example, the user can select a
range of orders for a particular customer that
are expected to be shipped within a given time
period.
3.
The user clicks the export button and the export
process reports on the number of orders exported.
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The orders are exported as files to the MJD
Nexus. They can then be viewed through the Q
Browser program. The orders within the Q Browser
can be managed by the warehouse manager such that
the orders can be prioritized and assigned to
specific users.
4.
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The main screen of the Live Picking program shown
here, displays the applications name, data
relevant to the user, and a menu of functions
that are available to the user. The warehouse
worker, in this case HARRY using hand-held
terminal WHS1, begins the process of loading
orders to be picked onto the hand-held terminal.
5.
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The user is prompted to enter the number of
orders or transactions they wish to load onto
the hand-held terminal. It is also possible to
load a list of available orders onto the
hand-held and have the user toggle which ones
they want to load. The former method would be
used if a warehouse manager was organizing which
orders to pick, the latter would be used if the
picker was to decide what to receive.
6.
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On the PC, side the CommServer program must be
running. It is the communication software that
sends and receives data from the hand-held
terminals. Once it receives a request from a
hand-held terminal to upload orders it will begin
transferring the data.
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To transfer data to and from a PC and the
hand-held terminal(s), the terminal must be
placed in a communication/charging cradle. The
cradle is connected to a PC via a null-modem
cable plugged into a serial port on the PC. The
cradles come in single and 4 slot configurations.
8.
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The hand-held displays the number of the
transaction being loaded and its progress. It is
possible to load several orders at one time. Up
to 35 different orders can be on a hand-held
terminal at one time.
9.
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Once the orders are loaded, the user is taken
back to the main screen of the Live Picking
program. The next step would be to start the
Process picking function to begin picking
orders.
10.
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The Process picking function will display the
orders that have been loaded onto the hand-held,
sorted in the order that they were loaded. The
user can press the period key . which will
toggle the view to show the customer number and
the order date, making it easier for them to know
which order to process first. The status column
indicates if the order is RDY(ready) to be
picked, OPEN means some items have been scanned
and DONE means everything was fully picked.
11.
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Upon entering on a order, the program will
display the header information associated with
that order. The picker can view but not edit this
information. The Live Picking application is
highly configurable. All of the fields on any of
the Live Picking screens can be turned on or off,
and can also have automatic defaults.
12.
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After viewing the header information, the program
takes the user to the item detail list screen. It
lists all the items on the order, sorted by
either bin or item number. The Status column
indicates the particular status of each item.
Items yet to be scanned have no status. Items
fully picked would have a status of FULL and
items that were only partially picked would have
a status of PART. The user need not manually
select an item, but can just scan its bar code,
which will bring up its detail view.
13.
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14.
The item detail screen lists all of the item
information that was included in the uploaded
order. The user simply has to scan the bar codes
on each item to increment the picked quantity.
They can also manually type in the picked
quantity. If they scan a bar code belonging to
another item number on the same order, the
program will jump to the detail screen of the
newly scanned item. If the user under or over
picks the item, they will be prompted to confirm
that is what they wish to do. The program can
also be configured to not allow over picking at
all.
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Once the user has scanned all the items to be
picked they can look and know immediately if any
items on the order are missing or not fully
picked. The user could now either download
the picked data for this particular order or
pick another order.
15.
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The user selects the picked orders to download to
a PC by highlighting them and pressing S for
Send. Once they have selected all the picked
orders that they wish to download, they press the
Clear key to go back to the Live Picking main
menu.
16.
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From the Live Picking main menu the user selects
the Send pick slips function, by highlighting
it and pressing the Enter key.
17.
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The Live Picking program will prompt the user to
place the hand-held terminal into the
communication cradle before beginning a
transfer. Before pressing 9 to begin, the
user must ensure that the CommServer portion of
the MJD Nexus is running on a PC.
18.
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On the PC side, the CommServer must be opened, as
it is the communication software that receives
the order data from the hand-held terminals. As
it receives transactions, it places them into the
Q Browser.
19.
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The program sends the order data down to the PC,
one order at a time and displays its progress
until all the selected orders are transferred.
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Once the transfers are complete, the status of
the downloaded transactions changes to DONE. The
user can now delete the downloaded orders from
the hand-held terminal by selecting them and
pressing the Delete key. At this point the
hand-held portion of the picking process for the
orders selected is complete. The user can now
process the remaining orders on the hand-held or
upload more.
21.
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On the PC side, the Q Browser displays the
downloaded orders, which are now ready to be
brought into ACCPAC via the O/E Host Interface.
22.
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This is the Order Import screen in O/E Host
Interface. The user can select which orders to
import or can configure the import to
automatically bring in any new orders as they are
downloaded from a hand-held. The import posts
the order data and updates the picked quantity on
the orders.
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Once the orders are imported they are
automatically removed from the import screen.
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The order data is now safely stored in ACCPAC,
having arrived there in an efficient and error
free manner.

• This ends the demonstration of MJD Softwares Bar
  Code Picking Solution.
• If you have any questions or comments, please
  contact us at
• info_at_mjdsoftware.com
• phone [phone]
• www.mjdsoftware.com

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of their respective companies.