Leah, RIch, The guidelines for the 846 state:
The transaction set can be used in the following ways: (1) for a seller of goods and ser-vices to provide inventory information to a prospective purchaser, with no obligation to the purchaser to acquire these goods or services; (2) for a representative of a seller of goods and services to supply inventory information to that seller; (3) for one location to supply another location with inventory information; and (4) for an inquiry as to the availability of inventory with no obligation on the seller of goods and services to reserve that inventory. First, let me state that I have never used the 846, but I do know a good deal about the use of Lot Nos. Since the statements offered so far are very general in nature, let me make some guesses and try to answer Rich's question "is it important to know the quantity per lot number". Rich appears to work for his own software business (congratulations, RIch, so do I, so I empathize with you). Rich's customer appears to want to receive inventory quantity-on-hand information from a warehouse. The EDI software that RIch's customer is using appears to be feeding this EDI information into some other software application and that application appears to be reconciling the information received from the warehouse with its own information regarding the same quantity-on-hand that it received from the warehouse. While it isn't clear whether Rich's customer is a seller or a buyer, my guess is that his customer is a seller. So, why would a seller want to reconcile inventory in a warehouse against its own records at the Lot No. level? The seller is usually using Lot Nos., either by law or by choice, to enable it to track any one unit of its products back to the source of that product, for any number or reasons: Let's suppose that a person shows up sick at a hospital with a box of something in hand and the hospital needs to know what it was and where it came from to know how to treat the patient. So, it reports the code on the container to the distributor who looks up the Lot No. and from the Lot No. looks up the manufacturer who reports the content of the product, date of manufacture, manufacturing environment, all other reports of illness from the product in this Lot No., etc., etc. etc. Or a part in a product failed and injured someone - or....... the list goes on. This supplier then may need to notify all of their customers who received product belonging to this Lot No. to issue a recall of the product, and that can only be done by referring to the shipping documents on which the Lot Nos. in each shipment are recorded to determine to whom they were shipped. Now, that works just fine as long as the person recording the Lot Nos. on the shipping documents in the warehouse records those Lot Nos. accurately. But, what is the chance of a recording mistake being made by warehouse personnel who are pressed to get at truck loaded and off the dock by a certain time so that the truck can arrive at the customer's dock within an appointed time frame to avoid a fine or penalty being levied on the supplier? And, how does the supplier know how accurately the warehouse is recording those Lot Nos on the shipping documents ? Only by requiring a periodic inventory report of quantities-on-hand at the warehouse by Lot No. to compare with what it recorded as shipped on each shipment during that period to be sure they agree. The alternative is for the application software used by the supplier to tell the warehouse what inventory to ship, by Lot No., and the associated quantity and then hold that wrarehouse responsible for picking and loading the inventory in the correct quantity for each Lot No. And, the same potential problem still exists. The supplier has to reconcile the warhouse's inventory against its own inventory for that warehouse periodically to be ensure the accuracy of its shipping information in case of a recall or lawsuit. I appears to me, Rich, that you have found a way to represent the quantity-on-hand by Product and by Lot No. in the 846, even though there may be no guideline for it. But, as long as you and the warehouse agree as to the structure of the 846 that you are trading with eachother, there are no EDI police looking over your shoulder that I know of. It sound to me like it's a problem with the application software not knowing what do with with this EDI data, or the interface between the two. So, now that I've stuck my neck out, please let me know how close I came in my guess. <Sales PItch for The Southern California EDI Roundtable> RIch, your phone number is in the Los Angeles area and I serve on the Board of DIrectors of the Southern California EDI Rountable (dba The Southern California e-Business Forum). We are a non-profit group of end-users and vendors of e-business products and services. We meet approx. 4 times a year, for lunch, and we live for the opportunity in discuss issues just like this. Please look us up at www.scedir.org or www.scebiz4m.org. You can register to have your name added to our Contacts list, which will get you the announcements of our upcoming meetings. You can always join us for lunch, cost is $15.00, or you can become a member for $25.00 a year, and that includes 1 lunch at no additional charge - so you see, there is a free lunch somewhere. </Sales Pitch> Thank you for giving this list an opportunity be of assistance, because if you have a question that you want to ask, just think of how many others may have the same question and haven't asked it. I have never used the 846, and I'm eager to hear what others have to say about it so I'll be able to provide my clients with that information when they ask for it. Kindesst regards, Dave Taylor Sysmark Information Systems, Inc. 49 Aspen Way Rolling Hills Estates, CA 90274 (O) 800-SYSMARK (800-797-6275) (F) 310-377-3550 (C) 310-561-5200 www.sysmarkinfo.com ----- Original Message ----- From: Leah Halpin To: Rich Silva ; [email protected] Sent: Saturday, June 25, 2011 4:20 PM Subject: Re: [EDI-L] <Reprise> EDI, the Incoming 846 and LOT numbers... Rich, I have very limited experience with the 846 and none with "lot" numbers (except Honda Lot Numbers and small lot numbers, but, hey, that's a whole different story). So, I have a question, is it important to know the quantity per lot number? It seems like you want to know it, but you haven't explicitly said so. I also have a comment and a suggestion. Comment: It seems like the issue is with the ERP rather than the EDI, so maybe if you mentioned what the ERP is or asked people in a group related to your ERP you might get a better answer. My suggestion is to clearly state what business process you are trying to support or business problem you are trying to solve and someone on this list might be able to share an innovative solution that you have not thought of, which may or may not involve the 846. In any case, I wish you luck. Leah ________________________________ From: Rich Silva <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Saturday, June 25, 2011 1:50 PM Subject: [EDI-L] <Reprise> EDI, the Incoming 846 and LOT numbers... Hi, <Maybe this will make this a little more readable> I wanted to maybe clear up a few points... I know that this depends on the relevant Specs... Except that neither I, nor the Warehouse involved have a spec that covers or has an example of this issue... But they are willing to send what I need to receive to have the expected results... I can go to the SW provider and ask for an Enhancement... But if I go that route, I want to make doubly sure I am not asking for a "square peg" to fit in a "round hole"... And I want to make sure I am asking for something that actually aligns with Best Practices (whatever that means with respect to EDI) = = = = Original message, reformatted, subtly changed, follows = = = = Have any of you experience with the Incoming (or even Outgoing) 846 and Stock Codes with more than one LOT number? If you have Stock distributed across a number of LOTs at your warehouse, how would that be documented in an EDI 846? I would think that you should be able to document the QTY on hand (or available) of each LOT for each Stock Code? As an experiment I manipulated the Stock/LOT levels for a couple of Stock Codes within the Application and then manually generated an 846 "from my Warehouse" for those two Stock Codes matching the levels I had set. The Stock and LOT distribution as in the below table… Lot Stock code WH received on hand Expiry date Creation date 0111 43.539V 90 8,000 8,000 06/22/11 01/22/11 0211 43.539V 90 2,000 2,000 06/22/11 02/22/11 0311 43.539V 90 1,000 1,000 06/22/11 03/22/11 0611 43.505 90 8,000 8,000 06/22/12 06/22/11 0711 43.505 90 2,000 2,000 07/22/12 06/22/11 0811 43.505 90 1,000 1,000 08/22/12 06/22/11 The 846 I generated contained (amongst the usual fluff) the following detail lines: LIN**VN*43.505*UP*830324001410*LT*0611 QTY*33*8000*EA LIN**VN*43.505*UP*830324001410*LT*0711 QTY*33*2000*EA LIN**VN*43.505*UP*830324001410*LT*0811 QTY*33*1000*EA LIN**VN*43.539V*LT*0111 QTY*33*8000*EA LIN**VN*43.539V*LT*0211 QTY*33*2000*EA LIN**VN*43.539V*LT*0311 QTY*33*1000*EA My expectation was that importing this would generate no variances since each Stock/LOT number QTY matched the On Hand QTY? Instead I received a variance for each line, declaring the Total Stock QTY. (And then I checked, no there is no option to recognize the Stock any other way) That doesn’t seem right to me… So, I generated, this time using the Same application I am Importing the 846 through, an outgoing 846 for the same Warehouse, the lines in it look like: LIN**VN*43.505*UP*830324001410*LT*JUL08 LIN**VN*43.505*UP*830324001410*LT*0611 LIN**VN*43.505*UP*830324001410*LT*0711 LIN**VN*43.505*UP*830324001410*LT*0811 QTY*33*11000*EA LIN**VN*43.539V*LT*0111 LIN**VN*43.539V*LT*0211 LIN**VN*43.539V*LT*0311 QTY*33*11000*EA (FWIW, the JUL08 LOT has no On Hand or Available stock) Which at least suggests what LOTs exist, but not how much stock is available in each of them… So maybe I am a bit confused… Anyone have some comments on this? Am I expecting something that just isn’t going to arrive in an 846? Or is there a different way (or document) I can use to do the same thing? Richard Silva Silva Software Services – United States Phone: (310) 387-8364 Email: [email protected] Please consider the environment before printing this email. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ ... Please use the following Message Identifiers as your subject prefix: <SALES>, <JOBS>, <LIST>, <TECH>, <MISC>, <EVENT>, <OFF-TOPIC> Job postings are welcome, but for job postings or requests for work: <JOBS> IS REQUIRED in the subject line as a prefix.Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EDI-L/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EDI-L/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: [email protected] [email protected] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [email protected] <*> Your use of Yahoo! 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