Manager Buzz

April 22nd, 2008

Software For Your Hard-Drive

Posted in Software Hall

All your software is stored on a hard-drive. But how about software FOR your hard-drive - private disks, partition managers, disk defragmenters? Here is the scoop on the latest tools.

Paragon Partition Manager

The program is suitable for both professionals and home users. Basic partitioning operations are: resize, convert, move, split, copy, and mount partitions. You can restore accidentally deleted partitions. It also offers free space redistribution and hard drive defragmenter. It lets you install several separate operating systems on one hard drive. The Paragon Boot Manager is included into the package. Smart Partition technology that performs all operations without losing a single byte of data. Supported file systems are FAT 16/32, NTFS, Ext2/3FS, and ReiserFS.

Additonal Information - http://www.deprice.com/paragonpartitionmanagerpersonal.htm

Dekart Private Disk

Dekart Private Disk creates one or more virtual disks on your hard drive and/or other external storage devices. Once a user creates a virtual encrypted disk, that disk is assigned a new drive letter and appears to the user like any other system drive (like the A: or C: drive). When the disk is mounted, the data is automatically encrypted and decrypted when the user writes or reads this data respectively. Dekart Private Disk encrypts and decrypts all data stored on the encrypted disk with virtually no performance penalty. When the disk is unmounted, either manually or by logging out of Windows, the secure data it contains becomes completely unreadable and undetectable by the operating system.
Dekart Private Disk allows you to store your information on a host of media such HDD, FDD, CD, CD/R, CD/RW, MO, MD, ZIP-disks, flash drives, all types of flash memory cards, PDAs, and even digital cameras. You have the flexibility to allow multiple users to share a single PC.

Additional Information - http://www.deprice.com/dekartprivatedisk.htm

HDD Regeneration

If your hard drive is damaged by bad sectors, it is not only becomes unfit for use, but also you risk losing information stored on it. If you suspect that your hard disk drive is damaged and contains bad sectors, you have difficulties to copy data from your disk, your operating system is unstable or you unable to boot to Windows altogether - don’t rush to throw out your disk and don’t think that your important information is irretrievably lost. HDD Regenerator will regenerate your hard drive by magnetic reversal. As a result, not readable damaged information will be restored. With all this going on, the existing information will not be lost! HDD Regenerator regenerates hard disk drives exclusively at physical level. It ignores file system and can be used with FAT, NTFS or any other file system, and also with unformatted or unpartitioned disks.

Additional Information - http://www.deprice.com/hddregenerator.htm

John Deprice owns and operates Deprice.Com. For latest software tools, check out http://www.deprice.com/utilities.htm

April 10th, 2008

Great Plains Bill of Materials Setup & Customization for Process Manufacturing - Overview

Posted in Software Hall

Microsoft Great Plains has full-featured Manufacturing suite of modules: Capacity Requirements Planning, Job Costing, Master Production Scheduling, Materials Requirements Planning, etc. However Microsoft Great Manufacturing serves so-called discrete manufacturing market niche. At the same time Great Plains fits to mid-size companies, where manufacturing processes might be categorized as light assembly. One of our clients, mid-size crane trucks manufacturing facility recently outsourced all the parts assembly to overseas partners and concentrated on sales, distribution, leasing and only light final assembly. This small article describes you how you could deploy Microsoft Great Plains Bill or Materials in process manufacturing. We will describe combination of Sales Order Processing (SOP) module to get customer orders, Bill of Materials (BOM) to assembly for the order, Inventory Control (IV) to allocate materials and Purchase Order Processing (POP) to replenish inventory

• Order Taking. In SOP you create Sales Order and you use standard functionality - place order in the batch and then upon the completion you transfer order to Invoice to bill the customer. If you participate in international business, you should take advantage from Multicurrency (MC) feature, expanded on SOP (Euro, Yen, Yuan, Peso, Real, etc.).

• Manufacturing. In the case of light process or discrete manufacturing we recommend you to call Bill of Materials engine upon the saving of Sales Order to allocate assembled part into final product. This is classical Great Plains Dexterity customization, which should be tuned to your specific customer needs and this work could be done by Great Plains Dexterity Source Code partner only.

• Catch Weight. If you are in process manufacturing - your raw materials are purchased in random weight units, and you need to account them in these units: cases, rolls, casks, etc. Typical solution in Great Plains is to have Great Plains Dexterity custom logic to associate the cask with Serial or Lot Number and record it in your inventory in pounds or kilograms. In this case you can return defective unit back to your supplier, identifying it by serial number and make correct inventory adjustment

• POP/Replenishment. Purchase Order Processing has PO Generator to automate replenishment by ABC code, reorder level and other criteria

• Inventory Adjustments. In process manufacturing you have variable input to get fixed output. The simplest way to realize the variances - make Inventory adjustment transactions on the regular basis.

• Reporting. As the solution we recommend is definitely budget one, lacking functionality should be covered with accurate and flexible reporting. We recommend you to have Crystal Reports programmer helping you in pilot project. Be sure that she/he has good knowledge/experience to work with Microsoft Great Plains tables structure.

Good luck and you can always seek our help in customization, implementation, integration and support. Call us: 1-866-528-0577 or 1-630-961-5918, help@albaspectrum.com

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies - USA nationwide Great Plains, Microsoft CRM customization company, serving Chicago, California, Arizona, Texas, Florida, Georgia, New York, Australia, UK, Canada, Continental Europe, Russia and having locations in multiple states and internationally ( http://www.albaspectrum.com ), he is Dexterity, SQL, C#.Net, Crystal Reports and Microsoft CRM SDK developer