Goods Receipt Document Imaging

1. Goods Receipt Document
Imaging at Nebraska Public
Power District
Presented by
•Darrel Wieberdink – NPPD
•John Walls – Verbella CMG, LLC

2. 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

3. Goods Receipt Document Imaging at NPPD
NPPD and GGS Background
• 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

4. Goods Receipt Document Imaging at NPPD
Previous Goods Receipt
Document 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.

5. Goods Receipt Document Imaging at NPPD
Previous Goods Receipt
Document 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.

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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.

9. 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

10. Goods Receipt Document Imaging at NPPD
Imaging Solution Details
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

11. 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.

12. Typical Configuration
PBS ContentLink
SAP R/3
SAP Archive Server
Content Server
IBM, FileNet, IXOS
File system or data base
(No optical Media support) CAS Storage
Jukebox Centera
Server
Retrieval-Client
Clients SAP - GUI
Scanner
NoScan Client
Scanner Interface for SAP
Content Server

13. Barcode Scenario Overview
SAP
Barcode is entered Barcode Number
With SAP and SAP Key fields
transaction Added to
BDS_BAR_IN Table
SAP
Scanning
software SAP process new If a Match is found
entries in both of both entries are
Document is these tables looking
Scanned and deleted and an entry in
for Matching Bar the Link Table TOA01
Barcode is read codes is made
Integration
Image and Barcode Doc and ID and Bar
is sent to Archive code are sent to
Server SAP BDS_BAR_EX
Table

14. Enter Barcode

15. Manual Bar Code Entry

16. 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

17. Kofax Ascent Capture

18. Classification and Extraction
of Index Fields
Extraction

19. Goods Receipt Document Imaging at NPPD
Imaging Solution Details

20. Release to SAP
Released to
SAP

21. 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.

22. 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

23. Virtual Re-Scan (VRS) Eliminates
Rescanning
Low Contrast
Logo
Dot Matrix
Text
Highlighter
Carbon Copy
Handprint
Coffee Cup
Stain
Shaded
background

24. Kofax VirtualReScan™ (VRS)
Image File Size = 213 KB

25. 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

26. Goods Receipt Document Imaging at NPPD
Receiving Document Image Display
Access
Material
Document
for Receipt
Services
for Object
Icon

27. Goods Receipt Document Imaging at NPPD
Receiving Document Image Display
Attachment
List
displayed

28. Goods Receipt Document Imaging at NPPD
Receiving Document Image Display
Archived
document
displays in
viewer

29. 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

30. 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

31. 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