Goods Receipt Document Imaging at Nebraska Public Power District

Presented by

•Darrel Wieberdink – NPPD•John Walls – Verbella CMG, LLC

ASUG Midwest-Central Chapter MeetingApril 21, 2006

Goods Receipt Document Imaging at NPPD

Agenda

• NPPD & Gerald Gentleman Station Background

• Previous Process & Resulting Problems

• Imaging Solution Design

• Imaging Solution Details

• Benefits Achieved

• Potential Next Steps

• Q & A

• Nebraska Public Power District• Public entity, political subdivision of State of

Nebraska, largest electric utility in Nebraska• Customers: 400+ wholesale / 80,000+ retail• $645M revenues (2004)• 2200 employees

• Gerald Gentleman Station• Located near Sutherland NE• 2 – 650MW Coal Fired Units, largest generating

station in Nebraska• Consistently at or near #1 performing fossil fuel

plant in the nation

Goods Receipt Document Imaging at NPPD

NPPD and GGS Background

Goods Receipt Document Imaging at NPPD

Previous Goods ReceiptDocument Process

• GR Documents (e.g. Packing List, Bill of Lading, Freight bills, Material Certificates) removed from packages.

• GR processed and posted in SAP.

• Paper GR Documents sorted and matched with Purchase Orders, filed by warehouse staff.

• If needed for reference by Engineers, Planners, Buyers, AP, etc. – had to go to Receiving Warehouse and search through files.

• Records retention on paper files.

Goods Receipt Document Imaging at NPPD

Previous Goods ReceiptDocument Process

• Problems with Previous Process• Labor intensive process for sorting and

filing GR documents.• Inability for variety of staff needing access

to documents to readily get to them.• Paper-based records retention issues –

labor intensive.• Filing space growing.

Goods Receipt Document Imaging at NPPD

Imaging Solution Design

• Receiving personnel process GR and assign barcode to Material Document in SAP.

• Paper GR Documents are sent to Admin. staff end of each day as a batch.

• Admin. Staff batch scan paper GR Documents

• Automated scanning software stores images into SAP as ArchiveLink document, uses barcode to link to corresponding Material Document

Goods Receipt Document Imaging at NPPD

Imaging Solution Details

Solution Components:• SAP ArchiveLink• SAP Content Server• Kofax Ascent Capture• Kofax Release Script for SAP• Kofax VRS• Kodak scanner

Goods Receipt Document Imaging at NPPD

Imaging Solution Details

SAP ArchiveLink

• SAP ArchiveLink is a communication interface between R/3 application components and external components (content servers or general desktop applications). It is integrated in the basis component of the SAP R/3 System.

• To use ArchiveLink, you must have installed a storage system. The document to be stored must already be in, or be converted to electronic format. It does not matter how the document is physically stored in the storage system.

Goods Receipt Document Imaging at NPPD

Imaging Solution Details

ArchiveLink Features• The following documents can be stored in a

storage system using ArchiveLink:• Incoming documents • Outgoing documents • Print lists • Archive files

SAP Content Server - What is it?• Software for storing structured data (ADK files) and

unstructured documents in repositories.• Content server product of SAP Web Application

Server (application server in NetWeaver).• Supports Storage on the File system or DataBase• Multi-OS support including • Windows• Various Unix systems (New as of 6.30)

• Does not support optical Media• No SCANNING Interface

Goods Receipt Document Imaging at NPPD

Imaging Solution Details

• SAP Content Server - Availability

• Current version is 6.30 released in October

2003.

• License is included in mySAP license.

Goods Receipt Document Imaging at NPPD

Imaging Solution Details

Typical Configuration

Server

SAP R/3

Archive Server IBM, FileNet, IXOS

Retrieval-Client

SAP - GUIClients

Scanner

Scan Client

CAS Storage CenteraJukebox

SAP Content ServerFile system or data base

(No optical Media support)

PBS ContentLink

No Scanner Interface for SAP Content Server

SAP

Integration

Scanning software

SAP

Barcode is entered With SAP

transaction

Document is Scanned and

Barcode is read

Image and Barcode is sent to Archive

Server

Barcode Number and SAP Key fields

Added to BDS_BAR_IN Table

Doc and ID and Bar code are sent to

SAP BDS_BAR_EX Table

SAP process new entries in both of

these tables looking for Matching Bar

codes

If a Match is found both entries are

deleted and an entry in the Link Table TOA01

is made

Barcode Scenario Overview

Enter Barcode

Manual Bar Code Entry

Goods Receipt Document Imaging at NPPD

Imaging Solution Details

Kofax Ascent Capture• Data and Document Capture Software• Best known for Forms based OCR (Optical

Character Recognition)• Backend Neutral- Does not contain any type

of storage Software or Hardware and supports any third party content management solution in addition the SAP Content Server

• Highly scaleable, and customizable

Kofax Ascent Capture

Classification and Extraction of Index Fields

Extraction

Goods Receipt Document Imaging at NPPD

Imaging Solution Details

Release to SAP

Released to SAP

Goods Receipt Document Imaging at NPPD

Imaging Solution Details

Kofax AR4ERP Release into SAP• Comprised of both SAP function Modules and

VB scripts that call the needed function modules and pass index values.

• Relies on SAP standard functionality to archive the documents and update the internal barcode table.

• Supports both late archiving with barcode and early archiving with workflow.

Goods Receipt Document Imaging at NPPD

Imaging Solution Details

Kofax VRS• VRS – Virtual ReScan, allows for the

scanning of documents• Kofax, Fujitsu and Bell & Howell all sell their

scanners with VRS as an option

Virtual Re-Scan (VRS) Eliminates Rescanning

Highlighter

Coffee Cup Stain

Shaded background

Carbon Copy Handprint

Dot Matrix Text

Low Contrast Logo

Image File Size = 213 KB

Kofax VirtualReScan™ (VRS)

Goods Receipt Document Imaging at NPPD

Imaging Solution Details

Kodak Scanner• Departmental Scanner• 25 ppm, with a 50 ADF • USB 2 Interface, no need for SCSI Card• List price $1,195.00• Other comparable scanners fi-5120C2

Reasons for Choice• Light volume• NPPD is familiar with Kodak• Very small foot print on desktop

Goods Receipt Document Imaging at NPPD

Receiving Document Image Display

Services for Object

Icon

Access Material

Document for Receipt

Goods Receipt Document Imaging at NPPD

Receiving Document Image Display

Attachment List

displayed

Goods Receipt Document Imaging at NPPD

Receiving Document Image Display

Archived document displays in

viewer

Goods Receipt Document Imaging at NPPD

Imaging Solution Benefits Achieved• Shipping Information is available directly via SAP to

all who have need to access it:• Engineers• Planners• Warehouse staff• Maintenance staff• Accounts Payable

• No Warehouse staff time spent filing paper documents

• No Admin. Staff time spent matching receiving documents to Purchase Orders

• Reduced file space• Eliminated paper records retention issues

Goods Receipt Document Imaging at NPPD

Potential Next Steps

• Interest in implementing similar process / solution for Goods Receipt Documents at other NPPD plants and T&D warehouse locations.

• Expand use of ArchiveLink document imaging to other types of business documents• Vendor Invoices for Accounts Payable• Vendor Quotations, responses to RFPs / RFQs• Documents for Maintenance Notifications & Orders (shop

papers, procedures, work instructions, etc.)• Various outbound documents

Goods Receipt Document Imaging at NPPD

Q & A

• For further information contact:• Darrel Wieberdink – NPPD djwiebe@nppd.com• Phil Awtry – NPPD peawtry@nppd.com• John Walls – Verbella CMG john.walls@verbellacmg.com