Goods Receipt Document Imaging at Nebraska Public Power District ASUG Midwest-Central Chapter Meeting April 21, 2006 Presented by Darrel Wieberdink – NPPD John Walls – Verbella CMG, LLC

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

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

GR processed and posted in SAP. 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.

Problems with Previous Process 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.

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? 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

SAP Content Server - Availability 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.

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

Barcode Scenario Overview SAP Barcode is entered With SAP transaction Barcode Number and SAP Key fields Added to BDS_BAR_IN Table SAP Scanning software 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 Document is Scanned and Barcode is read Integration Doc and ID and Bar code are sent to SAP BDS_BAR_EX Table Image and Barcode is sent to Archive Server

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

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 Low Contrast Logo Dot Matrix Text Highlighter Carbon Copy Handprint Coffee Cup Stain Shaded background

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

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

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

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

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

No Warehouse staff time spent filing paper documents 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