Some feed mills produce feed in batches that can directly relate to a delivery to a flock. For these operations, it makes sense to have an integration that reads these production records, sends them to flock accounting as priced feed deliveries, and then uses them up in inventory control.  

Prerequisites

• To use this feature full circle, we will need:

  • Access to ERP Work Order

  • Access to ERP Inventory Control

  • Access to CONNECT

  • Access to LIVE with affiliation to the flocks that will receive the feed deliveries 

Database Configs: ERP Work Order to Aeros LIVE Feed Deliveries

Producing Work Orders in ERP 

In ERP, we'll create work orders for feed formulas, allocate and produce them. We can do this one at a time or for multiple runs, but what is important is that each work order will represent one feed delivery in LIVE.

When we produce them, we will need to select our Destination Location. This should represent a farm or house in our LIVE system. If it represents a farm, then we can configure ERP to list houses in the Destination bin and set those as well.

Additionally, we can import Produced Work Orders using CONNECT's Feed Production import. Whether work orders are imported by WEM file, or by one of our other interfaces (RePete, Easy Automation, etc) As long as the destinations match or can be mapped to LIVE farms and houses, we can import them as produced work orders, the inventory is created, and that is what we will need for creating batches. 

Staging Work Orders From ERP

Feed Mill → Work Order to Feed Delivery → New Batch

When we are ready to manually create a batch We'll click "Create New". Clicking here will load a dialog window that will load information about the last batch that we processed.

Like other CONNECT batch creation screens, there is a field that let's us override the date we are processing this batch for. if we suspect that we may have missed records in a prior batch we can back date this to before their inventory creation date and include them. The code that creates batches will always check to see if we haven't already staged records, so we'll never have to worry about creating a new batch that has already staged records.

When we are ready to import bin readings, we'll click "Import / Create Batch".  

This will bring us to our batch screen, where we can see all of the readings we are staging here.

We imported two work orders for finished feed inventory. The records will have the following values to look out for:

• idReferenceIn: This is the unique identifier for the inventory created by the work order. We use this id to validate that we haven't already staged inventory. 

• Work Order ID: .

• Formula Code:

• Delivery Date:

• Ticket Number:

• Net Units / Net Grams:

• Formula Cost:

• Adjustment Code / Adjustment ID:   

Committing Staged Records to LIVE Feed Deliveries

Feed Mill → Work Order to Feed Delivery → View Existing

To view batches that have already been created, we can click the "View Existing" tab. This will bring up a search form that will help us look for batches that have been created.

Once we find the batch we need to review, we can double-click it or select it and click "Load" at the bottom.

There are filters on this batch that will allow us to search for batches that have specific records in there. These filters are:

• Division Code Filter batches with records that contain this division code.

• Ticket Number: find batches that include this work order number.

• Farm Code: Find batches that include this farm code.

• House Code: Find batches that include this house code.

Batches can be deleted from this screen by right-clicking the selection. Only Batches that have been staged but not committed to feed deliveries can be deleted.

Before we send any records to LIVE, we can perform a "Test Commit". This is handy while we are implementing or troubleshooting, because we can catch bad mappings before sending data down.

This will perform all validations against the database and find the matching identifiers for the flock and house that we will use to create the feed delivery record.

Here is what is validated:

• Company Code: This has to match a company code in LIVE.

• Division Code: This has to match a division code in LIVE.

• House Code: This has to match a house code in LIVE.

• Bin Code: Must match a bin code in LIVE.

• One Active Flock: Because we do not pass a flock code, CONNECT will look for an active or pending flock in this house to assign the delivery to. If there are none, or more than one, we'll receive an error.

• Plant Code: The Feed Mill Code must match a plant code in LIVE.

• Delivery Date: This is required, and will fail validation if not provided.

In this example, we can see that one of these records is missing a bin code, and will not commit. Also, there are overlapping flocks placed in this house- that will need to be resolved in LIVE before feed deliveries can be committed.

The flocks for this house will need to be reviewed, and their placement and estimated or actual depopulation dates should be updated so they are not both in the house when this feed delivery needs to be committed.

Closing flocks will also remove them from the list. If one flock is not valid, closing it will resolve this issue. 

Click "Commit"

Create a Feed Delivery in LIVE for the total amount of the Inventory,

• Convert the units to grams for the feed delivery.

• Delivery Cost? Med Cost? Milling Cost?

Create a Usage for that Inventory in ERP. Post Inventory to GL.

Mark the staged record as committed, save the feed delivery id and usage id to the stage record. 

Scheduling Batches

Settings → Other → Schedule Tasks

We'll add records to the schedule list if we want to schedule these batches

• "WorkOrderFeedDeliveryCreate": Creating this scheduled item will import and stage work order production to CONNECT.

• "WorkOrderFeedDeliveryCommit": Creating this scheduled item will commit the staged records to LIVE as Feed Deliveries, and to ERP as Inventory Usage.