Check Processing Goes Around, Comes Around, at Flex-N-Gate
THE BACKGROUND When they were not fulfilled, Flex-N-Gate IS Director Janice Koss stuck to her mission, ultimately acquiring a check processing solution from ACOM that not only provided her with all of the MICR laser printing advantages she had sought through the failed WinTel system, but which also allowed the return of check processing activities to the AS/400 environment favored by the company. Flex-N-Gate is an Urbana, Illinois-headquartered company that began business some 30 years ago as a single-site manufacturer of pickup truck stock racks and which now operates two plants in Vedersburg, Indiana and one-each in Danville, Illinois and in Detroit. The company manufactures bumpers and a variety of other parts. According to IS Director Koss, each of Flex-N-Gate’s remote locations is set up as a separate “company” on the central AS/400 computer, which is located in Urbana. IBM 5494 remote controllers at the remote sites allow PCs, terminals and other devices to form local networks which are able to communicate with the AS/400. The divisions perform their respective application functions locally, accessing the central computer over a T1 line. The locations all utilize the same total solution manufacturing software package, CMS, which integrates not only the suite of programs required for factory operations, but also applications for financial management, electronic data interchange and more. Payroll operations utilize a separate system, the Optimum Payroll Solution. THE PROBLEM Management hoped to effect economies by eliminating the need to preprint and inventory separate check forms for each of its operating and administrative units: Flex-N-Gate, BumperWorks and MasterGuard. In the process, the company hoped also to conserve a significant amount of the production time that was being spent by accounts payable, payroll, information systems and management personnel on check printing and post-processing activities: loading and tending the pre-print forms on the printers; and bursting, sorting and signing the finished checks. When one of the Vedersburg units required a check run, for example, the respective manager would run a cash requirement request which was submitted to Urbana for approval of a disbursement. With the approval obtained, he/she would call for a spool file, then load the appropriate pre-printed forms on to the local line printer. Check numbers were carefully logged for security purposes, and any jams or other interruptions were appropriately noted. Once the checks were printed, they were sorted, burst and handed off to one or more authorized executives for signature – a process which took the better part of a day. The Windows-based system was intended to obviate most of the foregoing activity, Koss says, and theoretically it did. Using blank check stock, software running on a Windowsbased desktop computer was able to produce the entire check form, including signature, in a single pass through the MICRenhanced laser printer. With an initial installation in Urbana, Flex-N-Gate implemented others in Vedersburg and in Detroit, each at a cost of about $5,000. “We used the PC-based MICR laser system for nearly a year,” Koss says. “It was never really effective and in trying to make it work, we spent a lot of time and money on support. It was clumsy in operation. We did not have a dedicated PC for the system, so to start the check processing, it was necessary to take over whichever PC housed the software and go into Windows to start the check writing system. Then it was a matter of moving back and forth between the PC and the AS/400, where the accounting and financial information was housed, to obtain the spool file. Performance was questionable, with a 600-check payroll file often taking 20 minutes to get from the PC to the printer.” Even worse, Koss says, the system often failed to get the check formats correct, dropping lines containing information such as employee numbers, department numbers and check numbers. “Almost immediately, we knew we would have to find a different solution, but the PC solution worked for a while,” Koss says. “This particular solution simply was not stable enough for such high priority activities. When you are dealing with paychecks, particularly, you have to get them out and you have to get them right. We could not continue to waste time on such things as bad formatting and unexplainable delays. It got to the point that when payroll people walked through the door, our IS people cringed!” What Koss & Co. were looking for all along, she says, was a MICR laser solution that would work in an AS/400 environment. But there just didn’t seem to be any. She queried her software vendors, CMS and Optimum, and neither could provide an answer. Simply stated, the EBCDIC data streams produced by System3X and AS/400 computers are intended for production on IBM midrange/mainframe system line printers, which communicate with the computers over Twinax cable, as do their computer terminals. But laser printers understand ASCII, not EBCDIC and they communicate not over Twinax, but using Ethernet, Token Ring, or other PC network protocols, over parallel cables. THE SOLUTION Koss discovered ACOM through an Internet search and was particularly interested to learn that the company was a single source, providing end-to-end solutions that included the LinkTM printer controller/protocol converters; design software for creating and editing forms (QuickFormTM); check-writing software (QuickCheckTM); Xerox laser printers, for which the company performed its own MICR-enhancing engineering; as well as consumables, MICR toner and blank check stock. “This offered an ideal opportunity,” she says. “I have been in situations where you have to assemble a system from multiple vendors, and I learned that it is important to find a single source. We felt ‘…this is new. Let’s get it right’.” Koss purchased QuickCheck software for the company’s AS/400, three Link controllers and three Xerox DocuPrint 4517 MICR-enhanced laser printers, one each for its Urbana, Vedersburg and Detroit operations. The Danville location requires a relatively low volume of checks and these are produced in Urbana. In a sense, the company is back to its original procedure, with the exception that instead of using preprinted stock, with all of its time- and resource-intensive post-processing and signing requirements, the payroll and payables staffs at the various sites now sit comfortably at their desks throughout the whole process, fully in control. Vedersburg-based AS/400 Programmer Cindy Corley set up the new system and has experienced first-hand the ease with which Flex-N-Gate’s largest manufacturing units now produce their payroll and payables quickly and securely. SUCCESS Best of all, Koss says, check processing is back in the AS/400 world, right where she, as IS director, wants it. “We are comfortable with the AS/400 environment,” she says. “It is a very stable environment, and ACOM’s software is very stable as well. With the ACOM system, if you know the AS/400, you know all you have to know to operate QuickCheck/400.” In all, Flex-N-Gate spent between $25,000 and $30,000 on the ACOM system, but Koss was able to balance some of that cost by reassigning the printers from the previous system.“The additional expense was not serious and we now have a check processing system that fully satisfies the needs of its users as well as the vision of our management,” she says.“And it makes me happy that I no longer have to baby the system to make sure our checks get produced. I have had to do no work on the system since it was installed.”
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