What is firming

Dear All,
please explain me what is firming. if i am firmin a plan order waht it mean and what r the results after firming.
actually i want to understand it in ref. to MRP.

Dear Shoiab,
Firmed procurement proposals are no longer changed by the planning run. They can only be changed manually.
You can firm all types of procurement proposals:
planned orders
purchase requisitions
Delivery schedules (schedule lines).
The system flags firmed procurement proposals with a star in the stock/requirements list and the MRP list.
There are 3 ways of doing this
1.Firming by Manual Changes
Procurement proposals that have been created or changed manually are given a firming indicator automatically by the system. You can cancel the firming by deleting the firming indicator at any time. You can also set the firming indicator manually, without changing the procurement proposal.
2.Firming with the Planning Time Fence
Order proposals that lie within a defined planning time fence are firmed for the planning run if they are set to an MRP type with the appropriate firming type. The firming indicator is not set and they are only firm as long as they lie within the planning time fence.
For schedule lines in the planning time fence, you can firm only the quantities that have already been transferred and not the current quantities. Transferred schedule lines are schedule lines that have been sent to the vendor by telecommunications and have been confirmed.
3.Firming with the Manual Firming Date
The manual firming date lengthens, if necessary, the planning time fence up to the date entered. This has the advantage over the planning time fence that you can firm procurement proposals for materials with an MRP type that contains no firming type.
To explore more,check this link
[Firming|http://help.sap.com/saphelp_erp60_sp/helpdata/EN/f4/7d2ca444af11d182b40000e829fbfe/content.htm]
Regards
Mangalraj.S

Similar Messages

Firming of order proposals

Hi,
I learnt from the books that the order proposals falling within the PTF are firmed and no automatic changes are done during the planning run. There are 4 firming types. Can you explain from the end user point of view what is firming and how do we do manual firming?
Sridharan

Hi,
Firming Planned Orders and Components
Planned orders created automatically by the planning run are continually adapted to suit changed requirements situations. If you want to prevent the planned orders from these automatic changes, you can firm them. Firmed planned orders are no longer changed by the planning run, that is, the order quantities and order dates are not changed. You can only change firmed planned orders manually.
Firming Planned Orders
When manually creating or changing a planned order, the system automatically proposes the firming indicator. If you do not want to firm the planned order, you can cancel this indicator.
If the planned order has been firmed, the system will no longer make any automatic changes to either quantities or dates in the planned order at material level. However, the components of the planned order material may be adapted if the bill of material has changed.
Firming Components
Any manual changes which you make to the date or the quantity in the planned order are automatically passed on to the components by the system. If you want to ensure that no further automatic changes can be made to the components of the planned order material, you can set the firming indicator for components when processing the planned order. If the firming indicator is set for the components, the planning run will not re-explode the BOM.
The firming indicator is automatically proposed by the system when you manually change or create material components in the processing function of planned orders. The indicator for firming the components can only be set if the planned order is also firmed.
You can also firm individual components to prevent automatic changes to quantities and dates. You set the firming indicator for individual components in the screen for processing components.
Firming Type
The firming type determines how order proposals are to be firmed and scheduled within the planning time fence during the planning run.
The following firming types exist:
Firming type 0:
u2022     Order proposals are not firmed automatically. With this firming type, no firming is carried out, instead, the materials are only provided with the indicator for MPS. Thus, they can be planned in the special planning run for MPS.
Firming type 1:
u2022     Order proposals that move into the planning time fence are firmed automatically as soon as their date lies at least one day before the end date of the planning time fence. The date of new order proposals that are created in the planning time fence is rescheduled out to the end of the planning time fence. Therefore, these new order proposals are not firmed.
Firming type 2:
u2022     Order proposals that move into the planned time fence are firmed automatically so soon as their date lies at least one day before the end date of the planning time fence. Within the planning time fence no order proposals are created by the system.
Firming type 3:
u2022     Order proposals that move into the planning time fence are not firmed automatically. The date of new order proposals, created within the planning time fence is rescheduled out to the end of the planning time fence.
Firming type 4:
u2022     Within the planning time fence, no order proposals are created automatically by the system, that is, the system does not solve the shortage.
Hope it will be Helpful.
Regards,
Vijay.

Firming in MC94

Hi,
MC94 -> Settings -> Firming
Can explain what is firming ? How to use firming?
Thanks.

Hi,
Firming is nothing but the usual term Fixing, or confirming.
For details of Firming Type and usage just go through the link.
[Firming Type |http://help.sap.com/saphelp_47x200/helpdata/en/f4/7d30b644af11d182b40000e829fbfe/frameset.htm]
Thanks
Krishna.

Deletion of Unfirmed PRs

All,
Pls clarify the below.
Recently we closed a Plant. So planning to remove all the open PRs for that Plant? is it enough
to set the indicator " closed " in the PR or do we need to delete the PR items ?? which is best practice ?
What is "firmed PR" ? How is this indicator set for a PR ?
This "firmed PR" indicator is not available in PR document. This is only available in MD04 - additional data for MRP element.
Is this correct ?
Is there a way to remove old requisitions suggested by MRP that were never firmed?
By MRP run can we delete the old PRs ? what are all the selection parameters for MRP run?
Do we need to go for LSMW to set the indicator " Closed " in the PR for a big volume or by any other means ?
Thanks

Hi
If PRs are not firmed and if the requirement for that material is zero MRP will delete the unfirmed PR. Firming will be done automatically for manual PR or If you edit MRP PR in ME52n. (there will be tick mark in quantities/dates tab - Fixed indicator)
Fixed indicator is nothing but firming indicator in MD04
Purchase Requisition is Fixed
Firms the purchase requisition or delivery schedule line of a scheduling agreement, and determines that it cannot be automatically changed by the materials planning and control system.
Use
The indicator is set automatically if you make manual changes to a purchase requisition that was generated by materials planning and control.
For closing you need tick closed tick mark. For that you need to do LSMW or BDC.
Regards
Antony

List of companies that use oracle database

Hello everyone,
I am studying Oracle DBA and I have to do a 6 month internship in the summer in order to finish my studies and get the degree. The question is: is there a way to find what companies/firms use oracle in the US?
Thanks in advance..

Dude company data is its real asset no body will allow you to make their valueable asset as testing Lab material. just get training from good professional take exam and do a lot of practices. This will make you a little champ in 2-3 years. Expert not before 7 years. So you should be consistent and patient in learning and earning.
Regards,
Abbasi

Use same fonts in style guide as logo?

We recently had a logo designed by an outside firm. They used Corisande for the logo. I'm not a fan of this font. In the style guide they prepared, they suggested using Palatino with it in marketing collateral. I'm not overly fond of the work they firm did, but maybe it's just me. I was not involved in the process.
My questions are this:
When creating a style guide, should you use the same font as the logo? My non-designers supervisors seem to think so.
If not, should the font coordinate with the logo?
What are your favorite serif and sans-serif font for marketing materials?

> When creating a style guide, should you use the same font as the logo? My non-designers supervisors seem to think so.
No, do not use the same font as the logo for headings or body text. You want the logo to be distinct and memorable, not submerged in the rest of the company's look. It has to be *compatible* with, and part of, that look, but not submerged in it.
> If not, should the font coordinate with the logo?
Yes. Although I can't imagine why they thought Palatino would go well with Corisande. That's crazy talk.
> What are your favorite serif and sans-serif font for marketing materials?
You haven't told us what your firm does, or what your brand is about. You don't want to choose typefaces because they are generic or popular. You want typefaces that help reinforce the image your are trying to project.
All the above are reasons why the style guide is normally created by an outside branding firm, often at the same time as the logo.

Infinity Problems

I was quite excited to get the new Infinity service last Friday but I've had nothing but reliability problems and now have a total loss of service. When the installation engineer o ld me to expect it to fluctuate for the first week, I didn't expect this.
When first connected, I was consistently seeing 33Mbps downstream and 6.8Mbps upstream. Previously,
I had ADSL2+ with typically between 11 - 14Mbps (down) and 1.2 - 1.6Mbps (Up) on any given day.
Everything appeared to work well on both my wired and wireless devices for the first day, and I ran regular speed tests 10 times each hour to see what kind of mean performance I was getting. Strange thing was that I noticed performance was dropping mostly from 10pm onwards where the max downstream would be 16Mbps until about 8am when it would go back up to 25Mbps+. The upstream performance was also degraded.
By Sunday around midday I was seeing regular loss of connectivity with my Draytek router reporting that "the server was not responding". By this morning I had a total loss of service.
I reported this to the customer service people who told me a fault was logged because they could see a line fault and that someone would respond within 2 days. Over an hour later, I thought I'd check to see what was going on and was promptly told not to call back again within two days as they would only generate another fault call. Confusingly the girl also told me not to cal back within a week!!!!
It's obvious there's a problem as the BT Modem's DSL light is off and only blinks briefly when I try to instigate a connection.
I know this isn't a business service, but I was supposed to be working from home to day too, so no luck there.
I've always had a a small amount of noise on the line and BT have come out three times in the last 6 years to attend but I've never had it like this before.
Has anyone else noticed a similar problem with their infinity service so short after installation?
Did the BT installer just not terminate the wires on the back of the face-plate properly or could it be another problem?

So I lost half a days pay, but it looks as if my Infinity service is finally working.
At last, an engineer appeared that actually understood and could articulate how the Infinity service works and who could troubleshoot properly and in a logical and iterative manner. Before he started, I explained what I'd observed through my trending of the last 7weeks, and that despite repeated remote and locally run line tests by BT, I was told that there was nothing significantly wrong. And that when I disputed this, it was largely dismissed. I also told him the history of noise related issues over the last six years and although I thought I'd only called BT out three times, I recalled that those three times were regarding noise on the voice circuit and that BT had attended site to attend with ADSL and phone issues at least 8 times since I'd moved in, and that the last time the engineer ran a new length of copper from the eaves of my house to the data point on the ground floor.
He plugged in the usual diagnostic equipment and this time explained to me that he could see huge numbers of CRC errors, similar to the one's I'd been seeing using my IP monitoring software. It was a relief that someone actually agreed with me that this was happening! He also left it plugged in for more than a few minutes so he got a better idea of what was happening.
He also showed me that as a result my bandwidth availability was fluctuating, and explained that the auto-profiling would attempt to stabilise the service. I asked if anyone monitored for the number of instances of this type of event and he said that it's only likely that someone would look at this kind of information if it appeared that many events were affecting their infrastructure but they were largley not interested in the last mile or tail circuit. They would just wait until customers complained of poor performance.
He also accepted my rationale that my equipment had nothing to do with the problem as the Infinity modem's DSL light was either dead of occasionally flashing. I told him I'd changed the RJ11 cable for another BT provided cable and my own Belkin shielded version. But for the sake of troublshooting properly he checked with his own cable - and it made no difference.
He knew from his monitoring equipment that the problem lay between the physical cable from my house to the termination point in the green box, since his tests at the switch-end showed a fully operational service.
I felt I could trust this bloke and the information he was showing me, so I asked him to hear me out on what I thought the root cause could be based on all the issues I've had over the last 6 years. In my view, it was a no brainer that the cabling must be at fault, and that even though part of the last section of copper had been replaced, there must be another physical fault somewhere.
I told him the only last night, I made a few calls and each time they felt as if the recipient at the other end was in an echoey room. And considering I had invested in the latest Siemens crystal clear handsets I was surpised so I plugged in one of my ancient analogue handset and found the same problem.
Of course, but how could there be a problem considering the last three calls I made to BT over the last week, they confirmed the line was perfect with no real traceable noise issues???? And the previous engineers who visited also concurred with this. At that point the engineer really showed his knowledge of troubleshooting and explained that the remote test that are performed to check for noise are quite crude and although they may look for voltage drops they are nothing short of a rudimentary continuity test. So I asked him if he should perform some more robust check on each physical section and he agreed it would be the best thing to do, and off he went to the pole outside my house.
So what was the cause? It turned out that the termination of the copper pair at the telegraph pole outside my house was the culprit. To put it simply, the very old corroded/oxidised cable was extremely fragile and a visual inspection would miss what a firm tug would reveal. So a strip down and re-termination was all that was required.
When I asked him why after several repeated complaints to BT over the years about noise did no one ever check the physical connections, he admitted that most engineers would just look to see that the physical connections were present and that there were no obvious breaks. They would also do a basic line check but perhaps not a more thorough examination. He concluded that it was possible that this had always been an issue just getting worse over time and apologised that no one ever checked properly.
I thanked him for being honest and didn't blame him but did tell him I would try again to complain to Customer Services to see what they were willing to do about re-imbursements.
I always did wonder why my ADSL2 service was never as good as several of my neighbours' in my estate,and when I challenged my previous ISPs, they told me I should be grateful for what I had considering my distance from their core switch. So now I know.
It was down to the noise issue that I first raised 6 years ago, that was caused by a physical cabling issue.
If only the score of engineers who came out over the last 6 years were as thorough, knowledgeable and willing to talk about their troubleshooting process as the bloke who came today.
Fingers crossed, this service will now work.
I'm now seeing typical latency figures of between 3 and 60ms to random sites in the UK, which between excellent and very good. I've only seen three instances of the connection being dropped since 11am when the engineer left today, which is 20 times less than my previous typical day and 200 times less than my worst day.
I think there's a long way to go before BT can offer a truly customer oriented service from many angles:
1) Train technicians to a higher standard, start with the basics of troubleshooting faults in a logical and thorough manner. 6 years is a long time to resolve a physical line problem.
2) Train technicians to be more customer oriented
3) Customer service could do what they are paid to do and respond to me, even just once would be nice and please stop trying to deflect or avoid the subject of re-imbursements where BT are clearly at fault.
4) Improve your automated problem management by using your auto-generated MI in a smarter and more proactive way. If you've got the intelligence to throttle back or re-profile a service in an attempt to make a poor situation slightly more stable at the expense of the end-user experience i.e. slower but still error-prone service, how about putting together the evidence that a customer has repeatedly complained about poor service and the fault trending data you can see, so how about assigining an engineer to get to the root cause of the problem, as your customers will be much happier with your service. In this case, I wouldn't have been chasing you up for 6 years with a plethora of repeat problems. It could have saved a huge amount of money on the score of engineer callouts I've had.
5) How about keeping together all the records of faults a user has, so when a customer really has had a rough time Customer service and the customer can both look at the same information and agree what the best course of action is, instead of expecting the customer to keep a log of all conversations, emails etc and asking them to recall events each time. Even keeping a track of the reason for the call would be useful, since I'm frequently frustrated by BT not knowing that I'm chasing up on an issue I've raised before as the have no log of previous calls!
I'm still dissatisfied about the level of customer service and when I get some time I'll try and speak to them again about my re-imbursement.

HT4623 what is the latest firm for iphone 3gs

I want to upgrade the firm on my iphone 3gs. What it the latest firm upgrade for this phone? Am i will be able to get all those cool feature with the latest upgrade

Not all features are available but you can update to IOS 6.1.3 for your iPhone 3GS.

HT4061 how do i find out what firm ware my device is

how do i know what firm ware my i pad is using

You can see what version of iOS that you have on it via Settings > General > About > Version - the current up-to-date version is 6.1.3 for the iPad 2

What does a website design/seo firm look like?

HI to all,
I am a website designer and partime seo / sem in Australia.
Currently I am working from home and thinking of moving into
an office soon.
I was just wondering if anyone can give me feedback on where
you work from.
Do you work from home?
Do you work from an office?
Advantage / dissadvanges from one or the other.
If business seems to be going well from home should I spend
the extra $ to move into an office and hopefuly improve on the
business image.
Also I have hnever been into website designers or seo office,
what's there? Chairs, Desk & Computers, or is it set up like a
retail store?
Do your customers come to visit you? or do you visit them?
Any comments or feedback is greatly appreciated.
Mal

On Thu, 9 Aug 2007 19:38:08 -0400, "P@tty Ayers ~ACE"
<[email protected]> wrote:
>
>"Win Day" <[email protected]> wrote
in message
>news:[email protected]...
>> On Thu, 9 Aug 2007 11:24:08 -0400, "P@tty Ayers
~ACE"
>> <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>"Win Day"
<[email protected]> wrote in message
>>>news:[email protected]...
>>>
>>>> I'm a consultant, not a manufacturer. For
the most part, consultants
>>>> go to their clients.
>>>
>>>And I'm neither of those. But of course, no web
developers/designers are
>>>manufacturers. :-)
>>>
>>
>> Do you create a product or provide a service?
>>
>> If you feel that you are creating a product, then
you are a
>> manufacturer. A custom manufacturer, perhaps, but a
manufacturer.
>>
>> My business model is such that I provide a service.
The end result is
>> a website, or an addition to or improvement of a
website. But I
>> market myself as a consultant.
>
>For the record, the word "manufacture" definitely doesn't
mean "someone who
>creates a product"; it has a much more specific
definition: "The process of
>making wares by hand or by machinery especially when
carried on
>systematically with division of labor" [Merriam-Webster].
It doesn't make
>sense to apply the term to web design. Just keeping the
verbiage straight
>here. :-)
>
We're going to have to disagree on the definition of
manufacture.
There are more meanings to the word. In its simplest form, it
merely
means to make.
Dictionary.com:
2. the making or producing of anything; generation
5. to work up (material) into form for use
American Heritage Dictionary:
1. a. To make or process (a raw material) into a finished
product,
especially by means of a large-scale industrial operation.
2. To create, produce, or turn out in a mechanical manner
Online Etymology Dictionary:
something made by hand
WordNet:
1. the organized action of making of goods and services for
sale
Kenerman English Multilingual Dictionary:
to make, originally by hand but now usually by machinery and
in large
quantities
My point is that there ARE firms who are absolutely mass
producing
websites. These are the folks who offer the "one from column
A, one
from column B" sites, sometimes Flash and sometimes HTML.
Minimal
labour, minimal customization - and these sites are most
definitely
marketed and priced as commodities.
It all comes down to what the business does and how it is
marketed. Do
you make and sell a product: a website? Or do you sell a
service?
My company sells a service. From all appearances, yours sells
websites.
Not sure how we got on this track from what the office looks
like.
Win
Win Day, Wild Rose Websites
http://www.wildrosewebsites.com
[email protected]
Skype winifredday

What the function of product allocation firming

hi gurus,
a question about prodcut allocation. in mc94, what's the function in setting - firming: the switch-on, swich-off and unfirm period?
is there anyone has some idea on that.
thanks a lot.

Hi Daniel Zhou,
Firming is nothing but the usual term Fixing, or confirming. Firming defines whether the system is to create the new procurement proposals for material shortage within the planning time fence and how these procurement proposals are to be scheduled. No automatic change made to procrument proposal which are Firm during MRP run.
For details of Firming Type and usage just go through the link.
[Firming Type|http://help.sap.com/saphelp_47x200/helpdata/en/f4/7d30b644af11d182b40000e829fbfe/frameset.htm]
Hope clear to you.
Regards,
R.Brahmankar
Reward if useful

What Adobe software is recommended for a law firm?

I have PC's but have considered switching to Mac. I We have discussed going paperless and would like to have some way to sign and edit pdf documents. We use the MyCase cloud based case management system. I would like recogmendations for other attorneys who ahve already made some of these changes and what works and what didn't.
Thanks,
Stacy E. Pepper
www.pepperodom.com

Hi stacypepper,
You may want to check out this blog: Acrobat for Legal Professionals | The Acrolaw Blog is a resource for lawyers, law firms, paralegals, legal IT pros and ...
It seems Acrobat Pro is becoming de rigueur in law firms for signing and certifying legal documents.
Best,
Sara

What are the ways to Copy Firm Planned Order from one ASCP Plan to another?

We run two EDD Plans with very similar options, but with different plan horizons.
To have the suggestions synchronized, we need to copy the "Firm Planned Orders" from one plan to another.
We tried inserting the records in MSC_ST_SUPPLIES with Order type 5 and firm planned type 1 with appropriate plan id, but Planning ODS Load is not considering those inserted records.
We don't want to insert directly into MSC_SUPPLIES.
Any inputs is appreciated.
Thanks
Sundar

You can also call a custom DTSX package in SSIS via the datamanager.
there are at least 5 ways of transfering data in BPC between apps.
1. Through the front end (excel etc) via evdre/evsnds
2. Through Script logic using *Dest App
3. Using BPC's standard export dtsx package via DM
4. Using SSIS using BPC's custom SSIS tasks
5. Through Script logic using stored procs.
i am sure people will come up with more.
remember if you use ssis and move data into any table but the wb, you need to process the cube afterwards.

Colour Management - who does what - Some thoughts now the smoke is clearing

First up, thanks very much to everyone who contributed their ideas and expertise to my recent query here, when I was seeking help for a problem with colour management issues when printing a magazine I edit. I have a ton of suggestions to work through and study but the smoke is slowly clearing and it raises some interesting points which I think are worth recounting.
First of all, I have been editing short run magazines now for 25 years, at first part time and later on a professional contract basis. I am not a trained graphic designer nor a trained printer. I did start out training as a graphic designer, many years ago but gave it up for a career in IT (as a networking specialist). That was full time until 10 years ago, although I did some freelance writing and editing in my spare time.
And yes, I did start originally with scissors and cut and paste, and moved on through black and white with spot colour and Pagemaker software to full colour and InDesign today. One thing which may be different about my experience to most of yours is that I am a PC user and always have been. All my editing and graphics work has always been done on a PC - Pagemaker was our DTP package of choice for a long time and we supplemented this with Corel-Draw (which has a range of graphics handling options). All my software is legal and I always register it and keep it up to date. I have used the same graphic designer for quite a few years now and whenever we upgrade our software he goes and gets trained on the latest release.
Around 10 years ago I was offered the chance to edit a specialist short run magazine (not the current one). This was a chance I took and gave up the day job and became a full time freelance. Editing is not my main or only source of income. I am also a freelance writer and photographer and heritage consultant and I have a specialist image library.   I sell my own sell my work - articles and pictures - to the national and local press. I also write books (non fiction) on commission. The magazine editing is really an extension of my interest in historic landscapes. I have never had any complaints, or problems, with the freelance work, photos and archived images I sell. Clients include national newspapers here in the UK, national magazine groups and my books are available in national bookstore chains. I supply my work digitally, naturally, and it includes photos I have taken myself and items which I have scanned into my library of historical images and store on line. No reported colour management issues there.
I have always enjoyed a good relationship with my publishers and printers because I seek to be as professional as possible, which means delivering my stuff on time, to the required standard so that minimum intervention is required from them. This does assume that I have a clear brief from them on what they need from me.
Recently this approach has not been enough to avoid colour management issues with the short run magazine I currently edit. I have been wondering when and where things went astray and date it back to the upgrade to InDesign two years ago. However it may have its roots in my earlier decision to use PCs not Macs for my work.
Until 4 years ago I had used the same printers for magazine editing for many years. They were a well respected firm specialising in short run magazines. They were not far from where I live and work and if there was a problem I would go over and discuss it with them. They were happy, and competent, to handle Pagemaker files generated on a PC and convert my rgb images to cmyk if there was any concern about the colour balance. On a few occasions I paid them to scan a photo for me. However 4 years ago the owner decided to retire and shut up shop. I needed to find a new printers and it had to be someone who specialised in short run magazines and could meet the budget of the charity I edit for. Also someone who could handle copy generated using Pagemaker running on a PC. I chose a printers I had used briefly in the past where I knew some of the staff and was promised PC based Pagemaker would not be a problem. I even got this in writing. I started to send them proofs generated using Pagemaker v7 on my PC.
I soon found that although they had agreed they could handle Pagemaker on a PC in fact they had only a few PC based clients and were using a single ageing PC running Pagemaker to proof their work. In fact nearly all their jobs were Quark based. I was also told we had to supply CMYK images although not given any further requirement so I now did the conversions from rgb to CMYK using my PhotoPaint software. (There are quite a few settings in Corel for the conversion but there was no guidance by the printer on which to use so to be honest it did not occur to me that it might be a problem).
Now of course I understand that the drive to get customers to supply CMYK images was a Quark driven requirement back in the late 1990s. I did not and do not use Quark so knew nothing for this. I did have some early colour problems and font incompatibilities with the new printers and was pressured by their senior Graphic Designer (who designed for their own contract clients) to upgrade to InDesign and provide them with a .pdf, which I was assured would solve all my problems. The .pdf would be the same as the final printed magazine because "it would not require any further intervention by the printers".
I expect you are collectively throwing up your hands in horror at this point, but I think he was speaking genuinely. The creation of a .pdf using InDesign, is widely promoted as the ultimate answer to all printing issues.   I have encountered it recently with a lot of printers' salesmen and my friend, who edits a learned journal, has just been told the same thing by her printers, to get her to upgrade to ID. Incidentally she also uses a PC.
So we upgraded our design process in house to InDesign and our graphic designer went on a course, two courses in fact. When we came to produce our first .pdf using ID, the printers' Senior Graphic designer came on the phone and talked our designer through the ID Export function. I think he may at that time have told him to create a preset profile with MPC and the defaults, but to be honest I don't recall. We were never sent anything in writing about what settings we needed to match theirs. I continued to have intermittant colour management problems but put this down to my photos. Things came to head with the most recent issue where the colours were badly out on the cover, supplied by a press agency and taken by a professional photographer. The printers seemed to have little or no idea about possible causes.
Initially I thought that part of the underlying cause must lie in some mismatch between what I was sending the printers and what they expected to receive so I asked them to specify what I should send. All they said was use Profile preset as MPC setting and accept the defaults which accompany it.
So I came on here looking for a solution. A lot of people were keen to offer their own experience which I really appreciate. However the messages could be conflicting. Some of you suggested it was the underlying cover photo which was at fault, some that it was my monitor which needed better calibration.
Many of you here said that part of the problem, if not the whole problem, was the way I was generating my CMYKs for the printer and I should use Photoshop to do this. You also mentioned a number of possible colour management settings which I should try.
At times the advice seemed to change tack. There were suggestions that the colour management issues I had were nothing to do with the printers, that it was up to me not them. Quite a lot of you said I needed to be better informed about Colour Management issues. I agree, but I had never had any previously (maybe good luck, maybe good support from my previous printer) so I was not even aware that I needed to be better informed. Some of you mildly chastised me for not finding out more and doing more to manage my own colour management with the switch to ID. To which I can only say if I had needed to train up, I would have done. I did not realise I needed to. Nor was my designer aware of the issues as colour management was not really covered on his ID courses which were about typesetting and design.
Some of you even seemed to hint that unless I was prepared to use an expensive high end printer or effectively retrain as a print specialist or get my graphic designer to do so, then I probably shouldn't be in the magazine editing game at all. OK maybe that is a bit harsh but you get the drift.
The fact is that printing is much more accessible these days to all sorts of people and in particular to people with PCs. My brother lives in a large village in an isolated area and produces a village magazine which has been a great success. It is in black and white with spot colour but he would like to move to an all colour issue. He is a bit nervous of the colour management issues as he has no experience of graphic design and is his own designer using a low end entry level design package. He too uses a PC. The printers reps all tell him the same thing they tell me, that all he needs to supply is a .pdf using InDesign.
Somewhere I feel a black hole has developed, maybe back in the 1990s with Quark 4.11. A lot of printers standardised on that, and set up a work flow and prepress dependent on CMYK images as provided by the clients. They assumed the the clients would doing their own colour management. This approach also assumes everyone is using Quark on a Mac with the full range of Adobe software. When it became possible to generate .pdfs using InDesign, this was held out to users as the Holy Grail of magazine printing, even though their workflows and prepress were still based on Quark 4.11 principles. Any underlying colour management issues the clients now have to tackle themselves.
So now we have the situation in which I find myself, having to learn from scratch a good deal about colour management issues so that I can tell the printers what is needed for my magazine. Meanwhile all the printing salesmen, the ones I encounter anyway, are still busy pushing the InDesign to .pdf as the "be all and end all" solution. Some re-education is needed for all parties I think.

I am glad to see that the sun is peeping through the clouds.
I apologise for my Aussie-style straight talk earlier, but as I said before it was not directed personally at you but in the direction of others whom you epitomize, repeating a conversation I have had many times over the last 10 years or so where respectable, well-meaning photographers, designers and other contributors refuse to accept that colour management is being thrust upon them.
It is a simple fact of life, there is this 'new' thing that has butted into the very root of our trades and changed the most basic principles of printing and photography. We expect that this kind of thing does not happen but the industry we now work in is not the same one we trained in twenty years ago.
Many printers are still struggling with the same conflict, so many tradespeople cannot accept this change.
This is exacerbated by the fact that colour management is so complicated to learn and implement and confounded by the fact that the default settings and a clumsy workflow often yield acceptable results with incorrect, generic settings, hence the old 'use InDesign and make a PDF and it will be ok' route.
When the chain of colour management includes the photographer, the photographer's client, the designer, the other designer maybe, the prepress person, and the platemaker, and a single incorrect click by any one of those can kill the CM it is not surprising that in the end when someone is looking back to see where it fell over they usually never find out.....   They will meet someone who says ' I never touched it, I simply opened the file and scaled it and closed it'. And that person will be a reputable photographer or designer (and CLIENT) who has no idea they just broke it. So what do we do? We go with the generic setting that seems to yield adequate results therefore avoiding the confrontation.
You need to understand the situation of the printer who took his business through the 'early' days of colour management, we had all kinds of very reputable sources supplying incorrect files, we did not have the expertise yet to be able to address the entire workflow, it would have meant training photographers and designers all through the best design houses and national institutions, because they blamed the printer. Only in the last few years have I seen these people coming around to the fact that they bear responsibility for implementing their own cm and maintaining it through their own work.
Sadly, many high end sources are still not there, and I mean HIGH end! Probably the ones that don't even visit this forum because they want to keep blaming the printer... They tend to live with the poor quality reproductions and just pull up the worst ones and fiddle with those and try to avoid the 'elephant in the room'.
I am sorry to say that it was not practical for a printer to reject mismanaged files for fear of losing clients who would happily accept less than perfect results in order to avoid the painful truth that was being told to them. The best thing we could do was to gently make those clients aware that their workflow was imperfect and hope to show them how we could help... Many print shops do not have someone knowledgeable enough or patient enough to do this, or the boss does not understand the issue either and tries to work around it to keep his jobs flowing in the expectation that all those experts in the chain will eventually tame the thing.
The many experts on this holy forum are waaaaayyyy ahead of the printing industry in general and photographers and designers in general in their understanding of colour management workflow. I have seen first hand how reputable local industry people and trainers alike are spreading misinformation and bad techniques, when I discovered these forums back in about 2002 I found that they opened up a whole new galaxy of knowledge and facts that actually worked and made sense, unlike what I had been told locally.... This forum taught me what the Adobe text books did not, the Tech' teachers did not, local 'experts' did not!
I tell all interested people to join these forums and learn to discriminate between the good and bad information.

Firming the Schedule Lines in Sch.Agreement

Hi , I have done the following to firm the schedule lines in Scheduling agreement.
1. Firm Zone as 30 days
2.Tradeoff zone days as 60 days
3.Binding MRP indicator as NULL(Lines not changeable within Zones)
4.In OMIN , Firm Schedule lines enabled for the MRP group
When i run the MRP, schedule lines are getting created with Firm Indicator (*) for the requirements lying within these zones. After transmitting the schedule lines to vendor , if i change the requirement again, the schedule lines within Firm Zone are getting adjusted as per the new requirment. I dont know whats the purpose behind maintaining these Firm Zone and Trade off Zone.
Pointers are much appreciated.
Thanks and regards,
Milton Isaac

Hi,
Rolling delivery schedules issued under scheduling agreements are divided into different time zones indicating the degree to which lines of the schedule are binding.
Firm zone (zone 1) (go-ahead for production).
The schedule lines within this zone count as firm and thus as fully binding. If you cancel a schedule line that falls within the firm zone, the vendor is entitled to charge you with both production costs and the costs of procuring input materials incurred by him as a result of the cancellation.
Trade-off zone (zone 2) (go-ahead for procurement of input materials)
This is the "semi-firm" zone, giving the vendor the go-ahead to procure necessary input materials for the manufacture of the item ordered. If you cancel a schedule line within this semi-firm zone, the vendor is only entitled to charge you the material costs. Schedule lines falling within this time zone are thus less binding that those falling within the firm zone.

What is firming

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