BOL Styles / Standard Practices

system · December 30, 2011, 5:19pm

Hi Greg,

In one case I ended up duplicating the BOL Exactly in Crystal. What a pain in the neck that was.
But it satisfied the shipping department.
Sometimes you just have to give in...

Luckily they were used to laser printing them so I didn't have to worry about tracker feed or pre-printed forms.

--- In vantage@yahoogroups.com, "greg_clauser" <gclauser@...> wrote:
>
> We just went live on shipping in 9.05.607 and are having issues with the BOL. The shipping department had demanded that they continue to use their old multi-copy form (4 copy, tractor fed, impact printer) and have the BOL form in Crystal modified to their liking.
>
> I was not involved from day one on this but now they are complaining about a number of things that were probably not completely defined for the person trying to make their custom Crystal BOL form.
>
> They do process a tremendous amount of packing slips and BOLs so I want to make sure that we're doing this the most effieient way and not just trying to duplicate something they were used to in JobBoss.
>
> Anyone out there still using pre-printed multi-copy forms and impact printers for BOLs? I have excellent laser printers and would like to use those instead. I guess I'm asking for ideas on best practices.
>

system · December 30, 2011, 10:47am

We just went live on shipping in 9.05.607 and are having issues with the BOL. The shipping department had demanded that they continue to use their old multi-copy form (4 copy, tractor fed, impact printer) and have the BOL form in Crystal modified to their liking.

I was not involved from day one on this but now they are complaining about a number of things that were probably not completely defined for the person trying to make their custom Crystal BOL form.

They do process a tremendous amount of packing slips and BOLs so I want to make sure that we're doing this the most effieient way and not just trying to duplicate something they were used to in JobBoss.

Anyone out there still using pre-printed multi-copy forms and impact printers for BOLs? I have excellent laser printers and would like to use those instead. I guess I'm asking for ideas on best practices.

system · December 30, 2011, 11:22am

That's exactly the life we lived prior to Vantage, and that's exactly the first thing I took away from them when we went live. It's amazing, product still went out the door, they stood around in disbelief that change happened and life still went on. Start working with them on the 5 why's, why do you need 20 copies of the same thing? What is everyone doing with them? If the process has been in place long enough half the time they have to make up the answers as to why they're doing it that way. The amazing thing is for the most part everyone was sticking them in a box and not looking at them. Paper makes folks feel good, its tangible. All that same information still resides in your database. Show them the cost savings, we saved over $15K a year in forms, printer maintenance, and time spent handling and processing that non value added crap. Signatures can be made electronic, or at the very least batch scanned (doc link etc.). Take an ROI approach to changing the process, get management to buy in, that's really the support you need for change management. We went from tractor fed four copy BOL's to one copy laser printer, from packing slips printed in duplicate, hand folded, stuffed in a pre-printed adhesive bag applied to a cardboard tag, wired to the pallet, to one copy printed directly to a poly tag fixed to the product auto printed on a zebra at shipment. But we approached the process from a lean perspective and had management buy in. If it was left up to me to convince the incumbent shipping supervisor that change was needed, we'd still be doing thing as we had since circa 408 bc. Changing your ERP software is a golden opportunity to evaluate your current process map (Make one!) and develop a future state process map (Make one!). They should seldom if ever resemble one another. Just my opinionated two cents :)

Rob Bucek
Production Control Manager
PH: (715) 284-5376 ext 311
Mobile: (715)896-0590
FAX: (715)284-4084
[Description: cid:1.234354861@...]<http://www.dsmfg.com/>
(Click the logo to view our site)<http://www.dsmfg.com/>

From: vantage@yahoogroups.com [mailto:vantage@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of greg_clauser
Sent: Friday, December 30, 2011 9:48 AM
To: vantage@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Vantage] BOL Styles / Standard Practices

We just went live on shipping in 9.05.607 and are having issues with the BOL. The shipping department had demanded that they continue to use their old multi-copy form (4 copy, tractor fed, impact printer) and have the BOL form in Crystal modified to their liking.

I was not involved from day one on this but now they are complaining about a number of things that were probably not completely defined for the person trying to make their custom Crystal BOL form.

They do process a tremendous amount of packing slips and BOLs so I want to make sure that we're doing this the most effieient way and not just trying to duplicate something they were used to in JobBoss.

Anyone out there still using pre-printed multi-copy forms and impact printers for BOLs? I have excellent laser printers and would like to use those instead. I guess I'm asking for ideas on best practices.

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