<![CDATA[CMS Solutions LLC - Vlog]]>Sat, 11 May 2024 12:35:22 -0600Weebly<![CDATA[Welcome to 2021]]>Thu, 21 Jan 2021 14:01:19 GMThttp://cmserppro.com/vlog/welcome-to-2021​CMS Solutions just finished a 16 month long implementation.  It was with a great company with over 300 users.  We were working under the umbrella of an Epicor Partner, so this was a new experience for us.  The front end was complex and was handled by them.  We were at the plant, setting up and training the team for go-live.  It was a bit tricky with the COVID outbreak, but we kept our timeline.  Go-live was a disaster, as the up front configurators could not get a method right.  I was onsite for 30 days, working every day, 12-15 hour days.  Adjusting 1000’s of jobs that had the wrong method, but with the strong team I was supporting, we pushed past it and got them back to work.  They now have a well trained and experienced team to go live with their other facilities without any help!!
 
CMS Solutions is taking a few weeks off, but then we will seek out our next adventure!  Availability after Jan 2021 is currently 100%, but that won’t last long.  
]]><![CDATA[Another Great Project!]]>Wed, 31 Jul 2019 17:36:57 GMThttp://cmserppro.com/vlog/another-great-project​“Just finishing up another GREAT project.  Our prior performances at this clients previous job had him calling CMS Solutions when he walked into an Epicor mess.  It took us only 7 visits to switch him to Standard Costing, move from 7 warehouses to just 2, reduce from over 100 resource groups to less than 12, create an ECO task-list for new part creation, upgrade to 10.2, revise part classes and product groups, assign customers to parts via a UD field, increase security, reduce the number of buyers, roll-out requisitions, deploy numerous dashboards for reporting, send emails for Epicor for various triggers, revamp the shipping process to include a single print BOL process, completely train the staff on basically every aspect of Epicor, map a completely new GL and institute serial and lot tracking!!  The customer knew exactly what he wanted, and CMS Solutions delivered!”
]]><![CDATA[1st Go-Live of 2019]]>Tue, 15 Jan 2019 16:35:15 GMThttp://cmserppro.com/vlog/1st-go-live-of-2019CMS Solutions just completed our first go-live for 2019.  This multi-company, multi-site customer contacted us in November after finding us via  a Google search.  They wanted a local resource to replace their Epicor consultants who were flying in.  Their Epicor implementation had derailed and was stalled.  They asked us if we could guide them to a January go-live.  After reviewing their position, and clearing our schedule, we worked out an aggressive training schedule.  Our Conference Room Pilot went smoothly just before Christmas, and we went live on the 2nd.  Lessons learned included the need for better set-ups on their Consolidated Purchasing processes, the need for increased and more in-depth training for the shipping/receiving crew, and more insight to the ‘odd’ scenarios.  Regardless, we missed no shipments, and job costing is now a much more focused process, as they never had that type of visibility.  Overall, the crew from Ponchatoula was very capable, highly motivated, and super quick learners.  
​]]><![CDATA[2 more projects completed!]]>Wed, 15 Aug 2018 09:54:30 GMThttp://cmserppro.com/vlog/2-more-projects-completedWe just finished 2 major projects, and have some openings in our schedule. Our latest go-live in Phoenix went very smoothly, with zero issues that impacted production. No missed shipments, no material impacts. We took a lot of time to integrate CAD-Link to our part master, and we created a new and inventive method to allow for minimal sign-ins to MES operations, yet retain a myriad of assembly material requirements. We created a batch issue process that resolved all of our material issues. It was about 120 degrees on the floor, but we spent days on the floor ensuring our employees were completely covered as we rolled out MES. The language barrier never became an issue, as all employees were ready to accept these great new processes. All in all, a great job by the client for their hard work, and all is well.
​]]><![CDATA[Post Go-Live Project]]>Tue, 09 Jan 2018 01:53:31 GMThttp://cmserppro.com/vlog/post-go-live-projectCMS Solutions just completed a great post go-live project.  The client was already live on E10, but was scheduling in Excel.  Our primary focus started out as simply scheduling, but once the client saw what we could bring to the table, they asked for more and more.  They are now live on Scheduling, using the Advanced Scheduling module.  They have a customized but very simple work queue to eliminate having extensive job travelers.  Along the way we implemented forecasting and running MRP for anticipated demand.  They were running serialization in Excel as well, and have started processing more and more parts using Epicor serialization.  They exceeded their capacity and purchased a new acquisition along the way.  Working together, we had the new plant up and on Epicor in 3 weeks.  We enhanced their engineering alerts process and set rules to prevent the manufacture or shipping of parts requiring engineering alerts.  We started a task based Case Management process, and now they have multiple processes for Case Management, with email notifications for newly assigned tasks.  Further enhancing the quality process, we created a much better Corrective Action process that has all of the information needed, as well as custom reports.  Overall, we created over 50 new dashboards/reports to data-mine the system for relevant business metrics.  To top it all off, we trained their staff to be able to stand alone in the areas they were slightly uninformed on.  We purchased DMT to be able to more easily manipulate the data.  (Note to self:  This team has the very best programmers we have ever worked with, and were well ahead of the norm.  They were only lacking in some Epicor fundamentals.)    
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]]><![CDATA[New Awesome E10 Upgrade]]>Tue, 10 Oct 2017 21:39:12 GMThttp://cmserppro.com/vlog/new-awesome-e10-upgradeCMS Solutions just finished another awesome Vantage 8 to Epicor 10 upgrade.  When they reached out to us, the customer had a highly customized system that was fraught with errors.  We did a very detailed Business Process Review to determine what functions they needed.  From that we developed a comprehensive plan and set a good schedule in place.  The client was open to any improvements and worked hard to vet out the TEST system. 
 
The customer did not want to upgrade their servers, but also did not want to utilize the Epicor hosting services, so we compromised.  We found them a great independent hosting service that performed the upgrades and provided the access.  The access is much simpler and worked perfectly. 
 
We went live with a minimum of issues, had no order or job issues, and missed no shipments.  Basically, we had only one impact.  (Note to self:  When extracting data from a progress database, check all DMT imports with Notepad ++ prior to pushing them.)  My old nemesis “hexadecimal’ showed up in a few reports until we pulled the data and cleaned it. 
 
In the end we had 67 custom fields that the customer uses, along with a few customizations and BPM’s.   
​]]><![CDATA[AR Open Invoice Upload]]>Fri, 21 Apr 2017 21:52:08 GMThttp://cmserppro.com/vlog/ar-open-invoice-upload
]]><![CDATA[Jobs, Plants and MES...]]>Mon, 17 Apr 2017 21:59:18 GMThttp://cmserppro.com/vlog/april-17th-2017
]]><![CDATA[April 12th, 2017]]>Wed, 12 Apr 2017 20:36:51 GMThttp://cmserppro.com/vlog/april-12th-2017CMS Solutions just finished a 5 month E10 upgrade for a large Multi-Company, Multi-Plant client. With help from Matt at Saberlogic (reporting issues) and Chad at Epic Solutions Online (rolling our DB’s), it was the very smoothest go-live ever. We had been working with this client for a while, and were doing more than just an upgrade. We brought them from a 20-30% Epicor utilization to well over 60% utilization. They are now using modules that they had been paying maintenance on for 8 years, but had never used. They understand more about the system, and how it can be used more efficiently.
 
When we first met them, their end users were disengaged, and had resigned themselves to live with their current state. Now, they are energized and excited about their Epicor platform. We exploited the advances in E10, and used our Technical expertise (shout out to Sean) to make magic happen in some areas. We even brought over their hundreds of custom reports, after trimming them down considerably by smarter use of dashboards and dashboard reporting.
 
This would not have happened if their team had not be so involved and had we not did a great PILOT!!!!
​]]><![CDATA[How to copy from Excel and Paste in Epicor]]>Thu, 06 Apr 2017 07:00:00 GMThttp://cmserppro.com/vlog/invoice-is-different-from-po
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