Integration with 3PL (Third Party Logistics Provider) Updated Post – Epicor ERP Custom Software Solution

• 13 February 2013
• cre8

Tags: 3PL Integration, BPM Hold, Custom Computer Programing, Custom Software Solution, Epicor ERP, Epicor software, Order Status, Order Type, Sales Order Entry, Third Party Logistics

Integration with 3PL (Third Party Logistics Provider) – Epicor ERP Custom Software Solution

A custom software solution was created to integrate Epicor Software and a 3PL (Third Party Logistics Provider). Each plant in the Epicor Software system is a location for the provider and holds inventory in one of three (3) statuses: Available to ship, nettable but not available to ship, and non-nettable. This solution maintains and synchronizes inventory while allowing allocation and tracking of serial numbers between the logistics provider and Epicor Software. The user is now able to notify Epicor Software which parts are not to be processed automatically for any Sales Order, which is not possible through standard Epicor Software.

Two (2) checkboxes were added to the ‘Part Entry’ and ‘Part Tracker’ forms:

 

 

 

  

This custom software solution gives the user the ability to automatically place a BPM Hold on every Sales Order referencing a specific Part and by so, marking them for manual processing. On the other hand, standard Epicor Software would require each Sales Order to be manually placed on (or removed from) Hold, consuming valuable time and thus impacting efficiency.

Different types of Sales Orders are handled throughout the various plants and as these Sales Orders move through their life cycle, statuses must be maintained to be used by the system and be visible to the user. In order to provide this functionality to the user, both the ‘Order Entry’ and ‘Order Tracker’ forms were updated to include additional fields which show User Codes from Types ‘ORDSTATUS’ and ‘ORDTYPE’:

 Once an ‘EB2B’ type order, is removed from Hold or has a ‘New Order’ status, it is eligible to be transferred to the 3PL (Third Party Logistics provider) through a schedulable System Agent task. This part of the custom software solution, enables the user to choose when and how often orders will be processed:

As soon as the process is executed, every eligible Sales Order will be processed; an XML file including the order information is created and uploaded to a specific location for the 3PL to handle: