Defining a Item

[mukandjde]

Our is a Steel Manufacturing Company manufacturing Stainless Steel & Non Stainless Steel Rolled Products. We have started implementing JDE. We would like to know for steel industry, How best to define a item.

 

[DSauve]

mukandjde,

I'd begin with defining what your needs for using items will be. How do you want to plan them? Do you have standard descriptions/abbreviations to use? Do you have certain category codes you wish to use for reporting purposes? Do you have extended notes (beyond the two 30-character description fields)? Will you be using advanced pricing?

Sorry, but there are a lot of questions you and your end-users need to consider, which will drive how you setup items.

 

[justdoerror]

Not answering your question but I think we can be helpful for you as a BAD example of implementation. We are having nightmare even year after going live.
First, don't follow everyting consultants say. Teacher's answer is not always right in real life.
Second, test through detail. We had some open issues when we went go live thinking they were minor so that we could deal with them later. Remember, JDE is releasing patch every week.
Third, this is system project for company wide involvement. not company project involving system. don't let end user govern the project. As a result of company project, we had lots of dreams, crappy system, and disappointments.

 

[tricci]

Hi,
Definig an Item, lots of work ahead unless you have not predefined and consulted with your: engineers, vendors, customers and internal SME and staff, sales and marketing and developers and the rest of your community.
then you need to embark on a PDM program that will analyze and strip the naming structure of your product. I recommend not to listen to the quick and dirty solutions, to the "how long can it possibly take to restructure the definitions?"you want to be careful, think like if you were to cross a mine field; be careful and listen all around you, the structure of the item description can slow down the operation of a company as the item cannot be found, or its duplicated or just plain a lot of pain to find it.
in the mean time have fun

 

[Doogie]

Again, not much to add on the practical level as you need allot of information to define your solution. Having been involved with doing this several times in large companies you will always experience problems to some degree regardless of the solution you choose. You need to consider every angle - especially from the users perspective for retrieving and understanding information. Remember that the name of your item is supported by additional information in the Item Master for reporting, grouping etc. and that the name is just a name at the end of the day. Consider the 'Search' limitations of your name - some of the most succesful codes I have seen use a prefix that indicates the type of item.

Doogie.

 

[rekblad]

Look into item segmentation especially since you have the same base products but deliver them differently. This works well and the segments can be defined to meet your needs in terms of reporting, availability and accounting.