HI,
Does anyone have the experience with item numbers updating on the system?

We are thinking about changing our item number shceme method.
In order to do that we are thinking about replacing current item numbers
with new ones supporting the new shceme.

Can I run over the existing ones?
should I duplicate my catalogue.

Thanks.

I would not recommend actually changing the item numbers. There are so many occurrences in referenced and unreferenced fields that something is bound to break sooner or (more likely) later.

What you can do is use standard Baan inventory tools, in this case cycle counting, to move your items out of your inventory, and then move them back in under a different number.

This process can even be automated if the volume gets too high.

Your old item numbers would still exist in your system, so be sure to mark them, block them, and post frequent reminders that you will shoot anybody who still continue to use them.
You can eventually get rid of them through archiving, but this will take some time.

Dear Dudutal97,

I assume the management has come up with very good reasons why they should change the item code. My suggestion would be to use the alternative item code system to map new codes to old ones, followed by customisation in all sessions necessary so that the session will consult the alternative item code system when looking for items. This way, you can still have the historical sales/purchase/production/whatever reports for the items even when you change the item code

A short technical note: this will then be considered adding alias to the current item codes, instead of strictly changing the item codes

Rgds,
Paul

Now that's a bold assumption...

I assume the management has come up with very good reasons why they should change the item code.

:D

My suggestion is always try anything major like creating new items in a test company first before you actually do it in the production company:

0. Dump the data from the live co. to the test one.

1. Remove all stock from all warehouses and all open orders (sales orders, production orders), i.e. by cycle counting etc

2. Create the items and reenter the stock back

3. Use Signal codes on the old items to flag them as 'deleted' items'

NB: However, also thing about your reporting issues in the futures since you will have two items to reconcile for reporting purpose before you build up history for the new items.

Good Luck!

It is not simple.

In fact, I faced this few months back. The steps I followed was:

1) Identify all tables fields that has the domain tcitem and cpitem.
2) Among those tables, identify tables that has records and eliminate tables that has no data
3) Group tables by package and start with the highest level table in terms of reference. Not easy though.
4) Read the new item from the file for the old item and do a db.update. Sometimes, you cannot escape referential intergrity and in those cases, I took dump of table and changed the item in the data dump and loaded back in
5) Some tables are tooo tooo huge that I was unable to do db.update. The database segment started throwing messages. And it would take a day sometimes to handle such tables. I used to take dump and act on file, and load back in.

After effort for 20 days, it was dropped. All other ideas to transform to new items with old items in system can lead to many other problems.