Ford European Parts Distribution System (EPDS) is a new Ford process to control the local supply of parts to, and on behalf of, Ford dealers. Dealers pre-order their parts for workshop jobs from their Local Distribution Centre (LDC) and inform the EPDS of local delivery requirements. The dealers themselves stock only a limited supply of parts.
This program deals with the automatic sending of parts requirements to the EPDS at regular intervals. A scheduled task scans the Purchase Control transactions database for any orders flagged with a special EPDS order status and collates them into a single purchase order. Each line of the purchase order is written to a file in EasyParts format and is submitted to the EPDS server.
The origin of each order is checked to determine whether the request was placed from an internal department or an external customer. If the order is internal the due in date is sent, otherwise the Sales Ledger account is sent.
A facility is provided to set up parameters for the LDC supplier short code, the order status code and the list of internal departments.
Before you can use Ford LDC Parts Orders, you must ensure that the Autoline system is set up correctly. This is normally carried out by, or on advice from, a consultant.
