Base

In the Units application of the Base framework, the types of units have been extended.

The new unit types “Energy”, “Power”, and “Area weight” are now available.

Organization-dependent units for weight and volume

Weights and dimensions can now be displayed in alternative units in various applications (“Items”, “Identifiers”, as well as voucher applications). The display automatically adapts to the respective organization context.

The most important functions at a glance:

• Assignment in Customizing: At the organization level, a different “leading unit” can be defined per unit category (e.g., “lb” instead of the system unit “kg” for sites in the USA).
• Display options: The values can be displayed flexibly via tooltip or permanently via new virtual columns (suffix: “different quantity unit”). These can easily be added via the design mode.
• Automation in logistics vouchers: In the delivery order type, it can be activated that reweighed or remeasured values are proposed directly in the different unit.

Performance improvement for item price history

Due to the complexity of the version management, the item import used to be very slow.

After the performance improvement, the entries of the item price history are now stored differently in the system. The business object com.cisag.app.inventory.obj.ValuationPriceHistory, in which the entries of the item price history were stored, has been replaced by two business objects: com.cisag.app.inventory.obj.ValuationPriceHistory2Key, which serves as a key table, and com.cisag.app.inventory.obj.ValuationPriceHistory2Value, which serves as a value table. The old business object is no longer used.

This enables a faster entry of item price data, especially when importing items in large quantities.

Design mode in purchasing, distribution, and production proposals

New cockpit applications and maintenance applications for purchasing, distribution, and production proposals are now available in the system. A core feature of both is the comprehensive design mode, which enables adding and removing fields and columns as well as managing personalized views and table designs.

The new cockpit applications offer actions similar to those of the previous proposal applications, but with mass operations. In combination with a corresponding maintenance application, which is intended specifically for editing individual proposals, this integration is expected to significantly improve the overall user experience.

• Cockpit: Purchasing proposals
• Cockpit: Distribution proposals
• Cockpit: Production proposals
• Edit purchasing proposals
• Edit distribution proposals
• Edit production proposals

Due to technical challenges with the design mode of the old applications for purchasing, distribution, and production proposals, these are being replaced by the new applications. In order to provide customers with a transition phase, the previous proposal applications remain available in version 6.5, but will no longer be available as of version 6.6.

Calculated values in purchasing and distribution proposals

New calculated columns providing additional information for purchasing and distribution proposals have been added to the new cockpits.

The following columns have been added to Cockpit: Purchasing proposals:

• Availability quantity
• Open delivery quantity
• Gross price
• Total gross amount

The following columns have been added to Cockpit: Distribution proposals:

• Source availability quantity
• Target availability quantity
• Open source delivery quantity
• Open target delivery quantity
• Gross price
• Total gross amount

The values of the above-mentioned columns are updated by corresponding actions such as “Calculate availability”, “Calculate open delivery quantity”, and “Query price” with the required parameters. This additional information helps users decide whether a new purchase is required.

New cockpit applications for partner data

For an improved analysis of your partner data, new cockpit applications have been introduced. These enable a targeted evaluation based on partner roles within the respective functional areas.

The new cockpits are assigned to the corresponding frameworks:

• Base framework:
  • Cockpit: Employees
  • Cockpit: Partners
  • Cockpit: Partners/Financials
• Purchasing framework:
  • Cockpit: Suppliers

• Sales framework:
  • Cockpit: Customers

Scope of functions:

• Relevant data contents: Each cockpit is tailored to the specific requirements of its area and displays the information relevant there. In addition, some detail searches are available, which can be activated if required.
• Automatic organization context: The cockpits automatically filter the data according to the current organization context.
• Flexibility: All cockpit applications are customizable, so that views, activated detail searches, selection fields, as well as displayable columns and sort orders can be adapted individually.
• Output: The familiar functions for the output of objects remain available.

Purchasing

New background actions for verifying and posting supplier invoices (Cockpit: Supplier invoices)

The possibility of mass processing of supplier invoices has been introduced in order to increase performance and shorten the lead time of the process.

For this purpose, two actions that start the following background applications have been added in the Cockpit: Supplier invoices application (available in the Purchasing and Financials frameworks).

• [Post supplier invoices] – Allows posting multiple supplier invoices one after another. After successful posting, a posting number is saved.
• [Verify supplier invoices] – Allows the mass verification (validation) of invoices originating, for instance, from external systems (e-invoice, OCR, DMS, EDI), with errors and warnings recorded in the message log.

In the Supplier invoices application, the order of the standard actions has been changed by placing verification before posting, which makes error handling easier.

Improved control over promotional price lists in trade cost calculations

A new mechanism has now been introduced into the system to allow more precise control over the data used in price calculation.

A new checkbox “Consider promotional price list” is now available in the Trade cost calculations application. It allows users to explicitly include or exclude price lists defined in the Purchasing price lists application under the “Promotion” category.

This control function applies to price calculation for both standard and promotional price lists maintained in the Purchasing price lists application.

Processing of multiple sites in the Generate purchasing proposals application

The system has been extended with the possibility of generating purchasing proposals for multiple sites. Multiple sites can specify and retrieve their respective storage locations using the newly introduced Purchasing proposal storage location assignments application. In connection with material requirements planning, this application allows users to define a default receipt storage location for a site. In this way, the system can automatically select the correct storage location when generating purchasing proposals for multiple sites.

Consideration of the transitional goods receipt time in the Calculate purchasing proposals application

To resolve the problem of missing proposals caused by an insufficiently forecast inventory recognition duration, the system’s time range calculation used when calculating purchasing and distribution proposals has been corrected. The end of the recognition time range is now uniformly extended by one day plus the “Transitional goods receipt” time from the item planning data. This extension is now applied universally, regardless of whether a delivery calendar is used.

Financials

Using the current execution date as the posting date for invoices

The Transfer invoices action, which transfers supplier invoices or customer invoices to the connected financial accounting, has been extended.

The Transfer invoices action can be run in the Cockpit: Supplier invoices and Cockpit: Customer invoices applications of the Purchasing, Financials, and Sales frameworks.

In the dialog window of the background application, the “Posting date setting” parameter has been extended with the “Use execution date” option. If this option is selected, the system uses the current date of the background application’s execution as the posting date.

This is particularly relevant when the background application is started on a scheduled basis. If the processing of the invoices takes place with a time delay, the date of the actual execution is always used as the posting date.

Production

Extension of the rescheduling of production orders with the blocking of line items

The control of changes to quantities and times during the rescheduling of production orders has been improved. The possibility of manually blocking selected line items within a production order during rescheduling has been introduced. To this end, the new attribute “Quantities and times blocked” has been added at the detail level of the production order. With this field, users can indicate specific line items whose quantities and times should not be recalculated. The remaining line items are recalculated by default.

Improvement of the scheduling mechanism in production orders

Previously, when rescheduling production orders, a checkbox controlled whether the administration time/transitional goods receipt time should be included in the calculation. However, the transitional goods receipt time could not be controlled separately.

The system now offers an improved way of controlling administration time and transitional goods receipt time separately for each production order. Specifically, the “With administration time/transitional goods receipt time” checkbox has been removed from the rescheduling dialog and replaced with a new “Administration time” field, which is stored and displayed in the order header. This simplifies the workflow, improves the predictability of scheduling, and increases user-friendliness.

Editing and formatting of long text in the product configuration

The possibility of editing long and formatted text in fields of the Long text type in the product configuration dialog window has been introduced. An editor icon (diamond symbol) has been added next to a field of this type. After selecting the icon, a new window opens with a full editor that allows contents to be entered and formatted. The change covers all applications that use the product configuration dialog, i.e. production orders, purchase orders, and product configuration rules. The new function ensures a uniform way of editing complex descriptions in these areas. By using the editor, the user can conveniently work with longer contents without the limitations of the standard text field.

Standardization of the operation time logic – editing exclusively at the resource level

A change has been implemented that standardizes the calculation of the processing time in production orders. Previously, the value of the “Target processing time” field in the line item editor was both calculated from resource times and offered for manual editing, which could lead to inconsistent scheduling results. From now on, the processing time is always calculated on the basis of the resource work time, both during scheduling and during manual adjustments. This means that the user only needs to edit the resource work time and the system updates the processing time automatically. This update ensures that the target processing time of the operation is calculated as the maximum of all assigned resources – a logic that now applies uniformly throughout the system to processing and setup times. This change eliminates previous ambiguities, guarantees data consistency, and improves the predictability of scheduling.

Standardization of the Operation dependencies data model

A change has been implemented to fully align the storage of production operation dependencies in the database with their display and selection in the user interface. Previously, the selected dependency type was not stored directly in the user interface; the system derived it afterwards from a combination of technical parameters, which could lead to ambiguities. This change introduces a uniform value set (ValueSet) that ensures that each dependency type is stored exactly as selected by the user. This eliminates problems caused by overwriting user selections and enables correct data validation.

Individual configuration of the rounding of the operation time to full batches

The project introduced the possibility of specifying for each individual operation whether the resource work time should be rounded up to the next multiple of the absolute reference factor. Previously, this rounding could only be activated globally via system properties:

• com.cisag.app.production.QuantitiesCalculator_RoundUpOperationBatch
• com.cisag.app.production.QuantitiesCalculator_RoundUpExtOp

This prevented a precise adjustment of the behavior to different operation types. Therefore, this behavior has been replaced with the possibility of configuring the rounding directly in the operation master data.

The new checkbox “Round up target processing time with reference factor” is now available in the operation header and in the line item editor of production orders, including external operations. This allows the system to calculate the processing time correctly when the execution of the operation requires complete work cycles of a resource. An example of this is an oven that bakes a certain number of loaves of bread at the same time for a certain time.

Product cost calculation tree structure

Previously, the tree structure of bills of materials, operations, and resources was displayed on the “Calculation information” tab in the Product cost calculation application. However, the system did not store any corresponding references between semi-finished products and their subordinate details in the database, so it was impossible to drill down to detailed information when creating reports.

The extension introduces the new attribute ProductCostCalculationDetail:parentGuid which, together with the attribute ProductCostCalculationDetail:level, makes the hierarchical tree structure of the calculation available for OQL queries, simplifying its use in customer adaptations and external software.

Reporting date in the Production issues application

The change introduces the reporting date in the Production issues application and ensures its correct accounting validation without changing the data structure and without affecting existing processes.

Forecasts in the fixing horizon

The change introduces the optional consideration of forecasts within the fixing period of the item, which affects the inventory calculation and the quantities of the proposals. The feature can be activated in the Material requirements planning application via the “Forecasts in the fixing horizon” checkbox. When the feature is activated, forecasts within the fixing period of the item are read into the planning and taken into account when offsetting the forecast quantities against the actual issues.

Inventory management

Locking and releasing of loading units

Control over the loading unit management has been increased by introducing actions for locking and releasing.
In the Cockpit: Loading unit inventory application, the [Lock loading units] and [Release loading units] actions have been added
The new actions can be executed via workflow.

Generating inventory requisitions for special inventory

The [Generate inventory requisitions] action in the Cockpit: Inventory application has been extended with the support of special inventory. With this change, it is possible to relocate inventory:

• from released inventory to special inventory,
• from special inventory to released inventory,
• between zones for special inventory

In the Generate inventory requisitions dialog – provided that the selected inventory requisition type has the utilization Special inventory – the Special inventory parameter is editable for the target location. This makes it clearly recognizable whether the inventory requisition concerns special inventory.
The new function makes it possible to quickly create inventory requisitions for special inventories without using separate applications or manual processes

Reorganization of loads

The long-awaited possibility to reorganize (delete) completed load documents has been introduced.

For this purpose, the Reorganize loads application has been added.

A prerequisite for the reorganization is that the loads have the status “Shipped” and are additionally provided with a deletion marker.

In the Cockpit: Loads application, actions for setting and removing deletion markers have been activated.

Addition of filtering by classifications of inventory items in lists of the Inventory management framework

It has been made possible to search and filter by all 5 classifications of inventory items in cockpit applications from the Inventory management framework. This enables an extended search, e.g. the identification of hazardous materials in the warehouse, whose hazard level is coded in classification 3, or queries about the current value of item groups (e.g. bicycles, coded in classification 1).
The function has been added, among others, to Cockpit: Inventory, Cockpit: Inventory count sheets/line items, Cockpit: Inventory orders/line items, Cockpit: Inventory counting lists/line items, Cockpit: Loading unit inventory, and Cockpit: Storage location inventories/items.

Design mode in the Routes application

The design mode is now available in the Routes application. As a result, the application is configurable as of the new version.

Deletion of storage locations

In the Cockpit: Storage locations application, actions have been provided that make it possible to delete storage locations and to set/remove the deletion marker.
To delete a storage location, the following conditions must be met:

• no inventory in the storage location,
• no unprocessed inventory transactions,
• no active physical inventory locks,
• Inventory management server shut down.

ACID for the creation of storage location reservations

The function introduces transaction-safe (ACID) creation and deletion of storage location reservations via the Inventory management server, reduces synchronous reservations in applications, and reorganizes the handling of picking and transfer of ownership, without changes to the user interface.

The most important change is that storage location reservations are not created upon the creation of the indirect picking (via inventory order), but only during the inventory transaction.

The changes aim at higher stability and better performance under high load, as well as a lower risk of inconsistent or corrupted data.

Quality management

Extension of the Quality management module with in-process inspection and support for production inspection

The new quality management module offers improved support for quality inspection during the production process and for quality inspection of the finished product. The possibility has been added to create inspection plans for production with a complete list of parameters, so that users can select the measurements to be performed at each production operation. Users can dynamically adjust the measurement scope, add additional parameters, or skip selected analyses based on the production process. Support for multiple in-production quality inspections has been introduced, together with the possibility to repeat inspections with individually selected parameters. In addition, a function has been implemented that allows results from in-production quality inspections to be automatically copied to the analysis of the finished product if the results match.

The most important features of the new functionality:

• The “Operations” application has been extended with the “Inspection operation” checkbox, which users can use to define inspection operations.
• In the “Control plan assignments” application, users can assign inspection operations for quality control in the production process to a control plan.
• The “Production order types” application has been extended with the “Quality inspection” tab, in which users can define the inspection plan and inspection order type for operations.
• The “Quality inspection data” view has been added to the line item table of the “Production orders” application; it contains information on inspected, accepted, and rejected quantities. The new “Generate inspection orders” action has been introduced to create inspection orders in the production process.
• The “Receipt of goods” application has been extended with a check that makes it possible to confirm whether a quality inspection is required during the production process but the inspection process has not yet been completed.
• Document reference chain: displays inspection processes during and after their execution.