Business Planning and Control System is an Enterprise Resource Planning

Enterprise resource planning

Enterprise resource planning systems integrate internal and external management information across an entire organization, embracing finance/accounting, manufacturing, sales and service, customer relationship management, etc. ERP systems automate this activity with an integrated software application...

 (ERP) software.

BPCS, the acronym for the software, is pronounced as "Bee picks".

Overview

BPCS was developed by System Software Associates (SSA), which later became SSA Global Technologies

SSA Global Technologies

SSA Global Technologies was a company developing Enterprise resource planning software. On May 15, 2006, SSA Global announced that it would be acquired by Infor Global Solutions. The acquisition was completed on July 28, 2006...

 (which was then acquired by Infor Global Solutions

Infor Global Solutions

Infor Global Solutions is a privately held U.S. software company that specializes in enterprise software ranging from financial systems and resource planning to supply chain and customer relationships.-Company overview:...

), and is used to control the operations of manufacturing companies. BPCS includes MRP

Material requirements planning

Material requirements planning is a production planning and inventory control system used to manage manufacturing processes. Most MRP systems are software-based, while it is possible to conduct MRP by hand as well....

 logic

Logic

In philosophy, Logic is the formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, semantics, and computer science...

 to manufacturing operations, provided there are high standards of data validity such as engineering

Engineering

Engineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of...

 specifications and inventory

Inventory

Inventory means a list compiled for some formal purpose, such as the details of an estate going to probate, or the contents of a house let furnished. This remains the prime meaning in British English...

 accuracy. It runs on several systems, with the IBM System i

IBM System i

The IBM System i is IBM's previous generation of midrange computer systems for IBM i users, and was subsequently replaced by the IBM Power Systems in April 2008....

 (also known as IBM AS/400 or IBM eServer iSeries), being most popular. It is written in As/Set, RPG

RPG programming language

RPG is a high-level programming language for business applications.It has a long history, having been developed by IBM in 1959 as the Report Program Generator - a tool to replicate card processing on the IBM 1401 then updated to RPG II for the IBM System/3 in the late 1960s, and since evolved into...

, SQL

SQL

SQL is a programming language designed for managing data in relational database management systems ....

 and other IBM

IBM

International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...

 languages somewhat unique to the System.

Many of the BPCS applications are somewhat stand-alone, in that companies can choose to implement only the financial applications for example, and none of the manufacturing. The competitive strength of BPCS over other ERP vendor competition, however, is in its manufacturing and planning applications.

BPCS Applications

BPCS Applications are very dependent on BPCS software version release, because SSA enters into partnerships with different speciality suppliers of applications such as Data Mining

Data mining

Data mining , a relatively young and interdisciplinary field of computer science is the process of discovering new patterns from large data sets involving methods at the intersection of artificial intelligence, machine learning, statistics and database systems...

, Bar Coding

Barcode

A barcode is an optical machine-readable representation of data, which shows data about the object to which it attaches. Originally barcodes represented data by varying the widths and spacings of parallel lines, and may be referred to as linear or 1 dimensional . Later they evolved into rectangles,...

, etc. and suppliers that integrated with a particular version.

The BPCS Application suite includes:

Financial

• Costing CST
• Accounts Payable
  Accounts payable
  Accounts payable is a file or account sub-ledger that records amounts that a person or company owes to suppliers, but has not paid yet , sometimes referred as trade payables. When an invoice is received, it is added to the file, and then removed when it is paid...
  
   ACP
• Accounts Receivable
  Accounts receivable
  Accounts receivable also known as Debtors, is money owed to a business by its clients and shown on its Balance Sheet as an asset...
  
   ACR
• Billing
  Invoice
  An invoice or bill is a commercial document issued by a seller to the buyer, indicating the products, quantities, and agreed prices for products or services the seller has provided the buyer. An invoice indicates the buyer must pay the seller, according to the payment terms...
  
   BIL
• General Ledger
  General ledger
  The main accounting record of a business which uses double-entry bookkeeping. It will usually include accounts for such items as current assets, fixed assets, liabilities, revenue and expense items, gains and losses. Each General Ledger is divided into debits and credits sections. The left hand...
  
   GLD
• Cash Management CSH
• Multiple Currencies
  Currency
  In economics, currency refers to a generally accepted medium of exchange. These are usually the coins and banknotes of a particular government, which comprise the physical aspects of a nation's money supply...
  
    MLT
• Currency Translation CTR
• Financial Assistant FIN
• Fixed Assets FXA
• Payroll
  Payroll
  In a company, payroll is the sum of all financial records of salaries for an employee, wages, bonuses and deductions. In accounting, payroll refers to the amount paid to employees for services they provided during a certain period of time. Payroll plays a major role in a company for several reasons...
  
   PAY
• Business Modeling
• Data Mining
  Data mining
  Data mining , a relatively young and interdisciplinary field of computer science is the process of discovering new patterns from large data sets involving methods at the intersection of artificial intelligence, machine learning, statistics and database systems...
  
  

Planning

Most planning

Planning

Planning in organizations and public policy is both the organizational process of creating and maintaining a plan; and the psychological process of thinking about the activities required to create a desired goal on some scale. As such, it is a fundamental property of intelligent behavior...

 functions can be used in either Distribution or Manufacturing.

• Forecasting
  Forecasting
  Forecasting is the process of making statements about events whose actual outcomes have not yet been observed. A commonplace example might be estimation for some variable of interest at some specified future date. Prediction is a similar, but more general term...
  
   FOR
• Master Scheduling MPS
• Material Requirements Planning
  Material requirements planning
  Material requirements planning is a production planning and inventory control system used to manage manufacturing processes. Most MRP systems are software-based, while it is possible to conduct MRP by hand as well....
  
   MRP
• Capacity Planning
  Capacity planning
  Capacity planning is the process of determining the production capacity needed by an organization to meet changing demands for its products. In the context of capacity planning, "capacity" is the maximum amount of work that an organization is capable of completing in a given period of time...
  
   CAP
• Distribution Resource Planning (inter facility) DRP
• Planner's Assistant PLN
• Simulations
• Just In Time
  Just In Time
  Just in time is a production strategy that strives to improve a business return on investment by reducing in-process inventory and associated carrying costs. Just-in-time production method is also called the Toyota Production System...
  
   JIT

Distribution

Most planning functions are used in both Distribution

Distribution (business)

Product distribution is one of the four elements of the marketing mix. An organization or set of organizations involved in the process of making a product or service available for use or consumption by a consumer or business user.The other three parts of the marketing mix are product, pricing,...

 and Manufacturing.

• Inventory
  Inventory
  Inventory means a list compiled for some formal purpose, such as the details of an estate going to probate, or the contents of a house let furnished. This remains the prime meaning in British English...
  
   INV
• Purchasing
  Purchasing
  Purchasing refers to a business or organization attempting for acquiring goods or services to accomplish the goals of the enterprise. Though there are several organizations that attempt to set standards in the purchasing process, processes can vary greatly between organizations...
  
   PUR
• Customer Order Processing ORD
• Billing
  Invoice
  An invoice or bill is a commercial document issued by a seller to the buyer, indicating the products, quantities, and agreed prices for products or services the seller has provided the buyer. An invoice indicates the buyer must pay the seller, according to the payment terms...
  
   BIL
• Sales
  Sales
  A sale is the act of selling a product or service in return for money or other compensation. It is an act of completion of a commercial activity....
  
   Analysis SAL
• Promotions and Deals PRO
• Performance Measurement PRF
  • such as supplier quality and on-time, company performance in supplying customers, internal quality control
• Multiple Environments, Companies, Divisions, Facilities, Warehouses, Locations.

Manufacturing

Most planning functions are used in both Distribution and Manufacturing

Manufacturing

Manufacturing is the use of machines, tools and labor to produce goods for use or sale. The term may refer to a range of human activity, from handicraft to high tech, but is most commonly applied to industrial production, in which raw materials are transformed into finished goods on a large scale...

.

• Manufacturing Data Management BOM
  • Also Routings as SFC sub-set
• Inventory
  Inventory
  Inventory means a list compiled for some formal purpose, such as the details of an estate going to probate, or the contents of a house let furnished. This remains the prime meaning in British English...
  
   INV
• Shop Floor Control SFC
• Master Scheduling MPS
• Material Requirements Planning
  Material requirements planning
  Material requirements planning is a production planning and inventory control system used to manage manufacturing processes. Most MRP systems are software-based, while it is possible to conduct MRP by hand as well....
  
   MRP
• Capacity planning
  Capacity planning
  Capacity planning is the process of determining the production capacity needed by an organization to meet changing demands for its products. In the context of capacity planning, "capacity" is the maximum amount of work that an organization is capable of completing in a given period of time...
  
   CAP
• Laboratory Management LMS
• Just In Time JIT
• Quality Control QMS
• Repetitive Manufacturing
• CIMPath (barcoding and data collection) CIM
• Advanced Process (chemical) Industries API
• Performance Measurement (factory production) PRF

Systems Applications

• ASAP Information Retrieval
• Misc Reports & Retrievals
• System Parameters or Business Rules
  • Transaction Effects
• Documentation
• Data Base X-Reference
• Interest Area Menus
• Sliding Y2K Window
• Data Base upgrade