SPECTRUM ‘08 SESSIONS

This document will explain the many sessions that will be held at Spectrum ’08, including descriptions of the mini-classes. 

B&L HELP! CLINIC 

New this year, the B&L Help Clinic will be “open” all day long (with the exception of lunch time and break time).  You will be able to drop into the clinic (you won’t even need an appointment) and explain your “symptoms” to one of the B&L staff experts.   Questions are not restricted to any module and we will have internet access so that live BLIS & Odyssey sessions can be available.  You’ll be sure to find that they will have a “cure for what ails you.”  

ROUNDTABLES 

This is your chance to listen to or join in on discussions about the B&L software.  The roundtables give you the opportunity to learn about a particular module, whether you are using it or not.  A B&L expert will be available at each discussion to help answer questions. 

PANEL DISCUSSIONS 

There will be two panel discussions, each with a different topic (topics have not yet been finalized).  A panel discussion will consist of three customers who will each give a brief overview of how the topic fits into their business; a B&L expert will be on hand as well.  There will also be time for audience discussion and Q & A.
 

MINI-CLASS DESCRIPTIONS (Alphabetical Order Under Each Category):

7.0 Enhancements Part 1 - Doug Hinman                                                                            Monday, 9:30 am

BLIS 7.0 is available 4th quarter 2008.  The full list of 7.0 enhancements is available at www.blinfo.com. This class shows what's new in the base modules of BLIS including Order Entry, Shipping, Invoicing, and Quality.  Highlights include several new surcharge options, combining packing slips onto one invoice, controlling the BLIS Master Menu, and managing castings on hold at outside vendors.  You should plan on attending Part 2 immediately following this class. 

Objective:  To highlight the new features available in BLIS 

Audience:  All BLIS users and administrators 

7.0 Enhancements Part 2 – Doug Hinman                                                                         Monday, 10:30 am

This is a continuation of the Part 1 class.  It highlights the enhancements not covered in Part 1, with concentration on financial, container, and add-on modules.  Highlights include managing Master Container in Container Inventory and the new interface to the Odyssey Cost Estimating Wizard. There will also be some time for Q&A. 

Objective:  To highlight the new features available in BLIS 

Audience:  All BLIS users and administrators 

Advanced SQL – Doug Hinman                                                             Monday, 3:00 pm & Tuesday, 11:00 am

This class explores some of the advanced data access and update features possible with Structured Query Language. Data access examples include sub-selects, exception joins, and unions.  String manipulation and analyzing will also be covered, such as substring and concatenation.  This includes how to find fields with infamous decimal data errors. Data update examples include inserting records in a file based on data in another file and updating a field in a file based on a field in a related file. 

Objective: To provide advanced ad-hoc data manipulation knowledge 

Audience: Technical personnel who understand the BLIS database 

Advantages of Component Cores – Frank Roorda                     Monday, 4:00 pm & Tuesday, 1:00 pm

This class is intended to provide a meaningful overview of the component core.  Topics to be covered will include:  System Control, File definition, Scheduling impact, and Costing concepts.   

Objective:  To analyze how component cores affect the BLIS-400 system 

Audience:  This class would be suitable for production planners, engineering personnel, or accounting personal.  

Budgeting – Ron Thomas                                                                       Monday, 4:00 pm & Tuesday, 2:00 pm

This class is designed to teach financial staff and management how to create budgets to help manage expenditures.  Examples will show how to automate the Business Plan and Flexible Budgeting features for your financial accounting and cost accounting staff, and more.  You will also learn how to create your own budgets for the current and next periods, a period being a G/L year. 

Objective:  To discuss  the  fundamentals of the budgeting  capabilities within the general ledge system and how  it matches up to the standard cost system  

Audience:  Any member of management, accounting or otherwise, who has responsibility for pulling together the data for a financial plan  

Forecasting – Ron Thomas                                                                    Monday, 9:30 am & Tuesday, 9:00 am

See how easily you can forecast sales based on sales history, explode capacity & material requirements, and see a detailed forecast by customer and product.  We’ll show you how you can compare your forecast to actual shipments and also review various sales, capacity, and material requirement reports. 

Objective:  To discuss the fundamentals of sales forecasting in order to feed the budgeting system 

Audience:  Controllers, CFOs, sales managers, and other management who develop information for the budgeting system   

Introduction to SQL – Brenda Povlock                                           Monday, 1:30 pm & Tuesday, 10:00 am

This class will cover the use of SQL (Structured Query Language) to quickly display files, find duplicate records, and utilize key words (such as sum or count) to quickly add numeric data or get a record count.  The availability of various function keys, wildcard capabilities, and session settings will also be covered. 

Objective: To introduce a method to quickly access unprocessed data 

Audience: Technical personnel who understand the BLIS database 

Master Containers – Roger VanMeter                                            Monday, 1:30 pm & Tuesday, 10:00 am

A Master Container enhancement is being written which will provide the ability to perform a single transaction on a group of containers at the same time.  This class will review how the new enhancement in 7.0 will function.  

Objective:    To review how the new enhancement functions within the container inventory module  

Audience:   Administrators and/or those responsible for container Inventory

Surcharge Methods – Patrick McCrevan                                        Monday, 10:30 am & Tuesday, 9:00 am

Material and energy costs are often a large part of the manufacturing cost of your products. In this class, you will learn to use the Surcharge functions available in BLIS/400 to include these costs as part of the invoices you send to your customers. Metal, Energy, and Miscellaneous Surcharge configuration will be discussed. There are many combinations available to assist you in charging the right price for your products. 

Objective: Provide an understanding of the various options available in BLIS for surcharges associated with invoices 

Audience: System administrators, customer service, order entry staff 

Understanding BLIS Security – Patrick McCrevan                      Monday, 12:30 pm & Tuesday, 2:00 pm

In today’s fast-changing business environment, it’s often necessary to limit and expand employee access to various kinds of company data. BLIS Security has the means to be able to customize any given user’s capability to view, change, and print system and business data. This class will give you the understanding you need to add or manipulate multi-level security schemes to suit your varied employee data needs in BLIS/400. 

Objective: Assure each BLIS/400 user has the necessary and accurate level of security required to perform their tasks in BLIS/400. 

Audience: System administrators and/or those responsible for making security changes in BLIS/400 

Understanding BLIS-DC & Class 400
 Server Flow – Roger VanMeter                                                         Monday, 3:00 pm & Tuesday, 11:00 am 

If you have ever wanted to know how the software works together to get your data from the collection device to history and what piece does what, then this class is for you.  It may get technical at spots, but the overall flow is not that scary.  Come and follow the data on a journey from the production floor to production history, and see the sights as your data would.  

Objective: Follow the data on a journey from the production floor to production history. 

Audience: This class is best utilized by administrators and those who need to troubleshoot the flow.  For all others, it should be enough to know that the data goes from there to here very reliably, and others will fix it if it doesn’t. 

 4.1 Enhancements Class Part 1 & 2 – Brad Clark                                         Monday, 9:30 am & 10:30 am

Odyssey 4.1 includes a multitude of functional and user interface enhancements that will prove beneficial to all levels of Odyssey users and administrators.  The features and enhancements included in Odyssey 4.1 or pre-released as a fix level in Odyssey 4.0 will be covered from a high-level perspective, giving attendees a taste of what they will get with their update to Odyssey 4.0. 

Objective: To highlight the new features available in Odyssey 4.1 

Audience: Anyone who uses Odyssey 

Advanced Purchase Requisitions – DJ Medlin                          Monday, 4:00 pm & Tuesday, 1:00 pm   

Do you need to have multiple levels of approvals for requisitions?   Are there dollar amounts that go with the levels?  Then let’s look at more options to set up in the approval authority table.  We will also be looking at the automatic requisition generation and the different options that are available. 

Objective: To be able to set up multi-level approvals and use the automatic requisition generation 

Audience:  Purchasing agent, upper level managers

Budgeting – Kris Craft                                                                           Monday, 9:30 am & Tuesday, 10:00 am

This class offers an overview of using Odyssey’s Budgeting systems.  This class is meant for accounting and management staff.  Learn how to create budgets to help manage expenditures.  Examples will show how to create Annual, Business Plan and Flexible Budgets for your financial accounting and cost accounting staff.   

Objective:  To show how to create various budgets and pull these budgets into financial statements 

Audience:  Accounting staff and managers   

Intro to Purchase Requisitions – DJ Medlin                           Monday, 3:00 pm & Tuesday, 11:00 am

Are you concerned about your expenses?  We can help you keep a closer eye on them by using the Odyssey Requisition module.  This class will review all master files and system configurations that are needed for the requisition module.  We will highlight features such as creating automatic and manual requisitions, automatic and manual approvals, and creating purchase orders from the requisitions. 

Objective: To be able to create requisitions and turn them into purchase orders 

Audience: Purchasing agent, Upper level managers 

Linking Database Tables – Joe Harmon                                       Monday, 3:00 pm & Tuesday, 11:00 am

This class will illustrate how to link tables so records from one database will match related records from another.  For example, to connect an Order table and a Customer table, you must link them so that each order (from the Order table) can be matched up with the customer that initiated the order (from the Customer table). 

The linking processes are based on matching records from a parent table (left table) to records in a child table (right table).  The match is based on whether the value in the link field is identical in both the source and searched records.  The linking process is a form of record selection.   This class would benefit anyone wanting to create Intelligent Views or Crystal Reports using the Odyssey Database.  

Objective: To demonstrate the linking process in Odyssey as well as ways of finding out what key fields to use when linking tables   

Audience: Data Explorer, Intelligent View Designers, and Crystal Report Designers 

Maintenance Management – Jay Wigner                                     Monday, 12:30 pm & Tuesday, 9:00 am

This class will present an overview of what Odyssey Maintenance Management can do for your company.  Topics will include equipment management, repair parts, PM’s and PdM's, work order scheduling, workload assignment, predictive analysis, cost tracking, and more. 

Objective: Review setup and functionality of Maintenance Management module 

Audience: Management, system administrators, maintenance managers 

Progressive Billing for Tools – Frank Roorda                     Monday, 12:30 pm & Tuesday, 11:00 am

Want to get paid sooner for tooling work that you have performed?  This class will delve into the tooling module and demonstrate in detail how to utilize automated progress billings.  We will show detailed examples of the interrelationship between the tool order module, tool order schedules, production, and invoicing. 

Objective:  Understand how to utilize automated progressive tool billing options in Odyssey. 

Audience: This class would be suitable for anyone who works with tool order entry, billing, or accounting. 

Standard Cost Overview – Carol Gorbitz                                                                       Tuesday, 9:00 am

In this class we will discuss the two methods available in Odyssey for valuing product inventory: Percentage method vs Value Added method.  Although both methods use the same cost calculations, they vary in complexity.  You will get a brief overview of what’s involved in the Standard Cost month-end processing, including booking the cost to the General Ledger, changing routing and cost information, and getting variances based on those quantities or cost changes. 

Objective:  Overview of the Standard Cost Inventory Valuation Methods 

Audience:  Managers, cost accountants 

Using Cars for Internal Procedures – Brad Clark                 Monday, 1:30 pm & Tuesday, 1:00 pm

The Corrective Action Reporting module is not only for tracking problems against products, materials, cores, or tools; it can also be used as a tool for tracking, monitoring, and managing internal procedures.  This class will provide a case study for managing a user-defined internal project from inception through completion. 

Objective:  To provide a case study in how Corrective Action Reporting can be used for internal procedures or projects 

Audience: Managers, power users, system administrators 

Using Margin Analysis – Kris Craft                                                    Monday, 1:30 pm & Tuesday, 2:00 pm

Do you know your profit by customer and/or product?  What happens to customer profitability if you change product volume or price?  This class offers an overview of the features and benefits of the Margin Analysis screens in Odyssey, including “What If” capabilities.   

Objective:  To provide managers with a tool to determine if whether the Products they are producing are profitable or not   

Audience:  This class would benefit personnel who are responsible for overall company, customer, or product profitability.  

 Crystal Reports Tips & Tricks – Kevin Carlson                                        Tuesday, 10:00 am & 2:00 pm

Crystal Reports is the best method to make your documents “unique” to your company.  Do you have reports that require specific information for one customer but no other customer wants to see that particular information?  You could create separate reports, but in addition to the design, there are user training issues that apply.  We will review techniques in report design that will allow you to use the same report format and have the resultant printout be different, based on the input.  The use of the Odyssey “work files” and the limitations of them will also be reviewed.  There are also several new features in the Odyssey-to-Crystal interface that will be reviewed. 

Objective: Provide new ideas for current report design and usage, and review new Odyssey features 

Audience: Custom Report designers 

Dashboard ideas for Intelligent Views – Joe Harmon                           Tuesday, 9:00 am & 1:00 pm

Have you been trying to come up with Intelligent Views Dashboard ideas but not sure of what key information to display to the user?  Imagine accessing live data in the tools you use every day, then creating interactive dashboards that not only look good but are meaningful and useful.  Intelligent Views Dashboards let you do this.  Now you can identify important drivers of success, gain real-time insight into your business data, and communicate actionable information more effectively. 

Objective: To spark some creativity by giving examples of what can be done through Intelligent Views Dashboards 

Audience: Intelligent View Designers

Intelligent Views by Example – Jay Wigner                                  Monday, 9:30 am & Tuesday, 2:00 pm

So you have IV; now what do you do with it?  In this class we will discuss ideas for some effective views currently in use by Odyssey/BLIS-IV clients.  We will be creating these views in Data Explorer and viewing them from within Odyssey as well as through a web browser. 

Objective: Discuss ideas for how best to utilize some of the capability of IV and walk through examples of how to create the views 

Audience: Anyone interested in using IV to a greater extent.  System Administrators, Management 

Cost Estimating Wizard – Carol Gorbitz                                         Monday, 4:00 pm & Tuesday, 11:00 am

The Cost Estimating Wizard is built into base Odyssey but is available as an add-on to BLIS with import/export capabilities between the two systems.  The Wizard can be used to streamline data entry via templates and user-defined formulas and still use the proven B&L cost calculations to create your quotes.  This class will be an overview of the capabilities of the Cost Estimating Wizard, from designing the screens, building your templates, creating your own user-defined formulas, to creating your quotes and more.  

Objective:  Overview of the capabilities within the Cost Estimating Wizard 

Audience:  Managers, cost estimators