Basel, CH – December 2023

PDAO (Process Data Acquisition Operation)

 

In various processes of our Food Management solution, so-called process data is created through data acquisition. The PDA data records created and the process information they contain are referred to as such; PDA is short for Process Data Acquisition. The data entered contains all information relevant to the process, such as material, batch, quantities (entry unit, double unit of measure), reference (production order, purchase order, sales order, etc.).

 

Areas of application

Process data is generated in almost all areas of application, from Livestock Reception and Disassembly to the production and picking of goods. The configuration settings made in the Process Data Acquisition area enable and control the recording of the various application areas mentioned above. For example, such data records are created in Disassembly and Further Processing, in- and outbound, or in Goods Receipt for Order and are usually made via the touchscreen applications of the msg Food Management solution in the plants.

 

 

In the Cycle-Based Production (CBP) module, on the other hand, PDA operations are not used, as data is entered using activities, which are then posted. The reason for this is that not only data entries are made in a cycle, but also various transaction data such as sales orders, purchase orders and production orders which are also generated via activities. In addition, there are statistical activities that can contain a wide range of information but are not posted.

 

As already mentioned, there are various functionalities that are closely linked to the PDA operations. For example, yield control in Disassembly, weighing strategies, order pair formation, label printing and period batches are all based on the PDA concept. In addition, many other areas of the msg Food solution are also closely interlinked with the PDA operations, which clearly illustrates the central relevance of the component.

 

Posting

In the food industry, a large number of entries are made within a short period of time in various application areas (e.g. disassembly and production). Immediate posting of these entries would instantly generate inventory-relevant postings, which is not always desirable. To prevent this, the PDA operations created with the data entries are posted at a later point in time. Batch jobs are usually set up for this purpose, whereby similar PDA operations (e.g. same plant, same storage location, same material) are grouped together. With the help of this collective posting per job, the temporal separation of the entry on the one hand and the inventory update on the other is ensured. Synchronous posting can be set for each data acquisition process and terminal using the appropriate settings, i.e. you can define in great detail how the posting should be carried out. Manual posting of these PDA operations is also possible, but not a standard procedure.

 

Another option is to create statistical postings that are not posted at all and have no stock relevance. Furthermore, in some processes, such as stocktaking, it may be necessary to release PDA operations before they can be posted.

 

Extensibility

PDA operations can be extended to include customer-specific fields, which are filled accordingly when posting via the terminal. For example, if you want to know in which smoking chamber a particular salami was cured, you could save this information as a customer-specific field.

 

Customer benefits

What direct benefits do customers derive from PDA operations?

  • High speed: very strong performance is achieved thanks to the ability to post PDA operations asynchronously.
  • Label printing: the high performance also applies to label printing, which takes place almost in real time via the Softproviding PrintMonitor and is triggered by the PDA operation.
  • Synchronous/asynchronous posting capability.
  • Traceability/batch classification: together with the Origin Tracking module, PDA operations can be used to classify batches with the relevant characteristics, thereby ensuring seamless traceability.
  • Reporting level: PDA operations are generated for almost every data entry in the plant and therefore represent a very detailed source for reporting activities.
  • Statistical recordings.

If this article has piqued your interest, please do not hesitate to contact Stephan Kronbichler (Business Development) for further information E-mail, phone +41 (0)61 508 21 42.