During Quest Forum Digital Event: JD Edwards Week, Oracle JD Edwards Product Manager A.J. Schifano facilitated a panel of customers who are creatively applying JD Edwards innovations to add ease and value to their company’s operations. By utilizing Orchestrator, Notifications, and more, these organizations have increased the efficiency of workflow across multiple business processes within their companies. Take a look at the imaginative solutions by Printpack Inc., Turner Industries, and Cray.

Customer Panel: The Latest JD Edwards Innovations

Printpack  Inc.

Stephanie Hatcher, Printpack’s ERP Development Manager, joined the customer panel. Printpack is a flexible packaging company that has been in business for 60+ years. Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, Printpack is the industry leader in flexible and specialty rigid packaging for items such as apple sauce cups, potato chip bags, candy wrappers, pet food bags, and more. The company employs 3,600+ associates, bringing in $1.3 billion in annual sales. Printpack utilizes 19 manufacturing plants across Mexico and the United States.

Printpack is currently on Apps 9.2 with Tools 9.2.3.3. They have Linux servers and are running Oracle Database 12.1 and Orchestrator Studio 9.2.4. As a company, Printpack is eager to use orchestrations every chance they get. Some of the current orchestrated applications are listed below:

• Created an Excel add-in to allow execution of Orchestration
  • Select path and Orchestration
  • Load data into the formatted template
  • Select to Run the Orchestration
• Data load for EHS Historical data
  • Implemented E1EHS in 2020
  • Use Orchestration to load historical data to E1 from Excel
• Large batch Journal Entries/Reversals
  • Use Orchestration to batch update JE or JE Reversal into E1 from Excel
• Process customer order data into E1 from Web App
  • Third-party customer portal created
  • Orchestration to create production sales and work order in E1
  • Orchestrations for customer requests for changes to quantity/requested delivery date or order cancellation
• Process item costs updates
  • Reduce multi-screen navigation for item cost update
• Label configuration
  • Application only allows one label configuration entry
  • Orchestration allows mass update to label configuration for customers

Hatcher also demonstrated the Excel add-in that Printpack utilizes and said that it is simple and easy to use. This orchestration was created from Printpack’s web developers, using JSON. To watch the demo, check out the video below.

Turner Industries

Matt Foval, Business Systems Analyst at Turner Industries, shared the way Turner Industries is leveraging Orchestrator to achieve desired results. Turner Industries was established in 1961 and consists of four divisions:

1. Construction
2. Maintenance & Turnarounds
3. Pipe Fabrication
4. Equipment & Specialty Services

These divisions allow Turner to exist as a one-stop solution for their customers’ requests. They issued 44,074 W2s in 2019 due to Turner’s ability to provide craft labor to clients from industry-certified employees who are job-ready. Turner was ranked #1 on Associated Builders and Contractors’ (ABC) Top Performers List for the second consecutive year.

Turner Industries is running Apps 9.2 and Tools Release 9.2.3.5. They are utilizing Sales Configurator, Sales Management, Inventory Management, Procurement, Work Order Processing, General Accounting, Accounts Payable, and Accounts Receivable modules. Turner has roughly 2,200 EnterpriseOne users across 11 facilities and 175+ job sites.

Foval was tasked with finding a solution to low efficiency in data entry for billing purposes. The challenges included a frequent need to switch between mouse and keyboard, screen-to-screen navigation hurdles in E1, and excessive validation of configured pricing. Dynamic validation was unnecessary because Turner Industries invokes a later step in the process in which checkers validate the entry.

The solution was a two-part development effort. The first part included a keyboard-only date entry program in E1 with minimal validation. In essence, this is an Excel spreadsheet which writes to a custom E1 file. The second portion of development regarded creating an advanced orchestration that takes the data on that file and moves it onto existing sales orders. The team was able to eliminate the need for users to open the P3210 configurator for advanced pricing through the use of Orchestrator. Results showed an increased speed of roughly 150 percent in billed data entry users.

To learn more about the custom form developed by Turner Industries, watch in the video below.

During his presentation, Foval sang the praises of the Orchestrator Health Monitor – explaining that it empowers the company to view how well the orchestration is working. Without this monitor, it would be impossible to analyze the actual effectiveness of the new process.

Individuals at Turner Industries took an introductory course on Orchestrator from Larry Furino at ACBM Solutions in order to develop all of the back-end automation. Furino helped the team to conceptualize the best way to utilize Orchestrator during development. After development began, production took around three months. If Foval needed to rebuild this orchestration, he believes he could recreate the entire series of orchestrations in as little as one day.

Cray

Marcia Holmes-Rousell is the Business Systems Analyst at Cray, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company. Cray was founded as Cray Research in 1972 by the “father of supercomputing,” Seymour Cray. High-performance computing addresses the growing demands of big data analysis and storage across a spectrum of users and industries. Some of these include science and government labs, financial analysts, and professional sports teams. Cray’s main location consists of a manufacturing facility in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. Engineering services are based in Minneapolis, and headquarters can be found in Seattle.

In 2019, Cray was awarded contracts to produce two of the fastest computers in the world. These new generation class exascale systems will perform at a speed of a quintillion calculations per second. Furthermore, much of the worldwide modeling currently in research and analysis of the COVID-19 crisis is being performed on Cray supercomputers.

Cray’s JDE EnterpriseOne footprint is laid out below:

• Originally implemented JDE in 2004
• Currently running 9.2 Apps and Tools release 9.2.3.5
• Full suite of modules – Finance, Payroll, HR, Procurement, Sales Order, Fixed Asset, SWM, Inventory, Manufacturing
• 1,000 users across major locations
• On-premise
• Integrated systems: Agile, Salesforce

Cray’s initial focus was to automate communication to users when an event takes place within E1. The challenges included an array of custom workflows used to notify users when something happened in the system, an unfriendly workflow tool, and the inability to avoid customizations when using Workflow. There was a need to be attached to the ER of applications to kick off notifications at the appropriate time.

The Orchestrator-applied solution allowed the following abilities:

• Utilize message service requests or notifications to accomplish communication through auto-generated emails after an event has taken place
• Sent messages are no longer reliant on standard DD messages. The user determines the message
• Embedded links or reports are for the information needed to review records
• Removal of the need to customize applications by attaching the Orchestration through the form extension functionality

Four orchestrations emerged from the work put into this.

The first orchestration auto-creates revenue business unit preference setup for international customer’s ship-to addresses. Further, it verifies the mapping to the business unit is set up. If the country code has not been previously attached to its corresponding BU, an email will automatically send to Finance to set up the mapping.

The second orchestration launches a notification of open records when a supplier is made inactive. The orchestration determines if there are active records (open POs, open SOs, item/branch plant records) for inactive suppliers. If so, a notification is sent summarizing the number of open records and providing links to the records for review. Additionally, an email is automatically sent to the user attempting to update which includes data needed to work with other uses and records.

A third orchestration creates a notification when the country of origin is updated on an item or branch record. The notification is launched when the country or origin is updated. An email is automatically sent to a defined distribution list, notifying the recipient of the updated item, brand, and COO code. Cray used a custom form and Cafe One to link it to record on the screen. Through Form Personalization, they removed the field that would have been used to update manually.

The fourth orchestration launches a notification of open sales order lines when an item has been obsoleted. The orchestration determines if there are any open sales order lines with that item number. If so, a notification is sent indicating the obsoleted item and providing a link to the records in customer service inquiry for review.

To watch a demo of Cray’s orchestrations, check out the video below.

Key Takeaways

This presentation of imaginative applications of Orchestrations is intended to inspire you to take advantage of the potential of JDE innovations for your organization. The opportunities are endless, and creativity is the key to solving current problems and overcoming hurdles. Printpack’s Hatcher was quoted stating, “Every time we can think of to use Orchestrator, we use it.” Her team has brilliantly implemented orchestrations from Excel. Foval’s 150 percent increase in the speed of data entry at Turner Industries is both persuasive and motivational. Through Orchestrator Studio, your organization has the potential to achieve results of impressive scale, too. If diving into Orchestrator Studio is an overwhelming thought, consider taking Foval’s approach and invoke help from an Oracle partner. Finally, Holmes-Rousell of Cray rejected a cumbersome traditional workflow in favor of modernized orchestrations and notifications. As you leverage the latest in JD Edwards innovations, your organization will come closer to reaching its fullest potential.

For more information, check out the Quest Forum Digital Event: JD Edwards Week presentation attached below.