EDI Departments

This can become complicated depending upon who you use as your EDI provider and who you use as your distributor. Generally speaking, you have three options.

You can set up unique IC02 locations for each and every department that will participate in the LUOM followed by setting up ED40s for each Vendor/Location/Account Number combination, or you can use "department setup" which allows you to transmit the RQ01 location in a segment of the EDI file (the SDQ segment I beleive) that the vendor can use to associate the PO with the appropriate department. There is a third option where you can use GLNs, but that will likely require you to setup the unique IC02 locations anyway and it takes quite a bit of setup outside of Lawson to establish GLNs for your locations.

If you are using GHX and Owens & Minor, all three options are available. If not, you may be limited to option 1 (separate IC02 locations for each and every department), which is traditionally how most orgs handle this. You will likely end up with thousands and thousands of ED40 records if you follow this path so whoever does the setup needs to be well organized and good with MS Addins.

Jeff,
With ProcessFlow there is another option. We use some ProcessFlow maps to automatically set certain RQ Loc/supplier combinations to "Drop Ship" upon release of the requisition. The easiest option is to use the RQ Location address. It would be up to your business operations to determine if receiving was required/desired. The immediate impact would be to transmit the RQ Loc address in the EDI-850 information. Secondarily, you may also need to set up the ED40 entries that Mike talked about (tp_O_DEPT), but this will be dependent on your supplier(s) requirements (seperate ShipTo accounts by RQ Loc, or a single ShipTo account and the supplier using the supplied address).

Not having any experience outside of GHX, I am not sure what your VAN would be able to offer to simplify your ED40 build. One option within GHX is their ConnectPlus table which can be used to create many-to-one relationships for inbound documents (which greatly reduces the ED40 load). That is not necessarily an endorsement, as there are some risks to being so reliant on the C+ tables (primarily that it is all but 'black box' and not directly viewable).

Good luck,
Red

We use the _O_DEPT set up with O&M and GHX. the ED40 for _O_SHIPTO is set for the "From Location"/main storeroom. This appears as the Ship To on PO20. The ED40 _O_DEPT is set for the req locs - it populates the N1^ST on the EDI for GHX (and is not boarded with them, it's pass through info) and appears on the Drill Around on PO20. (Drill Around on the Line, look for PO Line Source folder towards the bottom of the list). It also appears with the req information on the PO100 reports.

I have 6 docks so there are 6 SHIPTO accounts boarded with GHX and in ED40. I have 700 req locs tied to the various docks - those all have unique ED40 records, but as stated, as we don't maintain them in GHX, it's an "add/delete" at will function. The inbound comes in by vendor and PO - no records additionally needed for them - and pending receipts route based on the PO ship to for the correct receiving department.

Edit: We keep this setup as I only have to load the ED40 _O_DEPT for Owens.  (Soon to be Cardinal) I never have to load them for any other vendor - so my ED40 is only large for O&M.  The rest just have the 6 Ship To docks.

Jeff - the example Kat provides is what I called option #2. As you will notice, she is using GHX and Owens & Minor, so this option is available. Not sure it is available for you, but it will be available if you use GHX and Owens.

Kat - you may have to rethink your approach for Cardinal when you set them up. The last time I checked (approx 12 months ago), Cardinal did not support the TPID_O_DEPT option.

Thanks for all the help. It is going through GHX to O&M. The setup I am trying to use is like Kat's and Mike's second option. It looks like I am set up correctly but O&M didn't get the department. Time for more testing.

Ask GHX for the map - we had an issue going from 9.0 to 9.01 and had to get a new process from GHX even though Lawson assured us their map now worked. Switched to what my IT calls "laws_out_ghx_91" and the field started populating.

Rita with Cardinal's EDI has just gotten the map to work as long as the req loc is loaded for them - we're testing now.

Update on my testing - yes, Cardinal can use the O_DEPT with a "gotcha"

for O&M we just use:
TPID_O_SHIPTO Lawson Value: [ico2][vendor][purchfr][co] External Value: account number
TPID_O_DEPT Lawson Value: [ico2][vendor][purchfr][co] External Value: req loc.
This populates the N1^ST-02 segment with our req loc and N1^ST-04 with our IC02 account number.

For Cardinal we will be using:
TPID_O_SHIPTO Lawson Value: [ico2][vendor][purchfr][co] External Value: account number
TPID_O_DEPT Lawson Value: [ico2][vendor][purchfr][co] External Value: req loc.
TPID_O_DEPT_SHIPTO Lawson Value: [company] External Value: ON (As in "turn on dept as shipto")
at which point we populate both the N1^ST-02 and -04 with the reqloc

The biggest GOTCHA being that these -04 values must be boarded with GHX so we cannot add req locs as rapidly as we could in the past, but will still be able to transmit building the hundreds of ED40s ONLY for Cardinal Health.


Final Update - 4/2/2014
And one last "gotcha" was that somewhere on this planet is a Cardinal Client who boarded a req loc with the value as mine and GHX will not allow the boarding request.  Save yourself headaches and use Cardinals account numbers from the start. 

So the fallout was, I have IC02 for the main docks ONLY.
ED40s for all vendors except Cardinal and Owens are those 6 accounts.
For Owens I have the additional TPID_O_DEPT on ED40 for every req loc.
For Cardinal, I have that AND the TPID_O_DEPT_SHIPTO plus I board the values with GHX.

Process for new req loc -
1. Create in RQ01.  Do NOT create ED40 at this point.  Any PO during build will transmit under the IC02 account number.  The palettes may be off, but the orders go through as do receipts and invoices.
2. Create account in GHX - use req loc as the account number. (cc Cardinal contacts to expedite)
3. Cardinal verifies with their unique 8digit number and GHX is live.
4. Now create ED40 TPID_O_DEPT Lawson Value: [ico2][vendor][purchfr][co] External Value: Cardinal Account Number.

Is there a step by step process document for Lawson ED40 (LIST NAME, LAWSON VALUE AND EXTERNAL VALUE) ?

Lawson documents "Lawson EDI and EDI Professional for Supply Chain Management User Guide" and "EDI Trading Partner List".