Re: Lurker from Italy coming out of the closet

[Wolfgang_Wilhelm]

Hello Luca,

thank you for the informative email. I'm glad you wrote it.
I'm also looking for someone to start realizing.

My background is IT, too. I was working for Siemens - you know, don't you -
in the central IT department for the semiconductors and the passive
components
group within Siemens. When these parts separated from Siemens I was working
in the same field but as Siemens Business Services.
At that time I was responsible mainly for despatch notes and for some
technical
aspects. Additionally I was in a so called "hot line". Later I switched to
the EDI 
department and made EDIFACT.

To give you a perspektive what a despatch note program does, as it is not
even
mentioned in the first drafts in GNUe:
1.) It checks whether all things are fulfilled to make a delivery. For
example a
delivery doesn't make any sense when you don't have a delivery address.
Technically the program reacts on events from the outside: Changes in the
stock,
or a new day has started which makes a delivery to be due. These are
examples.
There are much more. 
A delivery requires quantity on stock or a message from the factory (that is
the
ERP system) that a lot with goods is ready. It requires that the delivery is

(over)due - especially just-in-time-customers like big automobile companies
don't 
accept any delivery which is too early. As these messages can come any time
the
program is up most time of the day.
Of course Siemens Semiconductors (nowadays Infineon) and the passive 
components (nowaday EPCOS) are a huge size but if you have to look only for
20 deliveries per day then why should the mashine didn't do that for you?
Of course you should be able to block the mashine from doing that.
2.) It checks for some other background, for example credit limit of the
customer
or checks because of trading limits. A trading limit is either politically
(Iraq for
example is blocked for delivery) or economically: Fees in Uruguay are so
high
that the minimum delivery should be 5000 US-$.
3.) It prints a paper called despatch note. In Germany the forwarder
receives a list
with all the despatch notes which he gets from the stock which is made out
of a 
seperate program linked to the information form the despatch note programm.
The copy of the despatch note is given from the forwarder to the customer -
that
is the person in the stock or the factory of the customer. They can check
that way
whether the things are delivered correctly. The invoice is something these
people 
see only in small size companies.
In special countries (weak currency or no open market for Euros, $, sfr,
pounds,
there was a special trait because of the bureaucratic sh... (sorry for that)
to be done
before the real delivery could be made. This part is not possible if you
have only
a billing program.
4.) It deducts the quantity from the stock - if delivery is made out of
stock and 
not directly from the factory - and shows the employees on a list where the
things
are. That is required only when you have a stock where the computer decides
about
the best place for incoming goods - so called chaotic stock keeping.
The program decides on some rules which quantity to take: The one especially
made
for the customer (with special tests) for example, rules like FIFO and LIFO
and some
more.
5.) It creates statistics about the whereabouts of the deliveries. That is
interesting
for sales for example because some enterprises (like HP) have a central
place
(a accounting department) where all bills are sent to, but the deliveries
are made 
to a factory.

All these funtions resultet in a huge programm (> 40 k loc in COBOL on a
main frame).
In LINUX / *BSD I would see these functions in some programs instead of one
giant.

What EDI is I probably don't have to tell you. EDIFACT is the dialect (?)
defined by the
UN.

When you are interested we can work together on the topic.

Best regards
Wolfgang

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