Math News: Prime Numbers 5

1- The final number of terms of a polynomial of 4 terms is found by adding the
numbers in a row of Jaramillo’s triangle.
2- The triangle is symmetrical.
3- The product of the partial results is a perfect square and if the perfect square
is divided by the one before, the result is also a perfect square.
4- The central column of the triangle is made up of perfect squares.
5- Since the triangle is symmetrical, the ”centered” numbers multiplied together
are equal to the product of ALL the numbers of the row before.

Example:
3x4x4
4x6x6x4 -> 6x6 = 3x4x3
Just as 8x9x8 = 4x6x6x4

6- The square root of the product of the partial results is equal to the first number
of the row factorial.

3x4x6=36 and 361/2=6=3!
4x6x6x4=576 and 5761/2=24=4!

Many experiments can be conducted by dropping the diagonals so that a new triangle is obtained:
4
6 6
8 9 8
10 12 12 10
12 15 16 14 12 and so on.

This triangle is also symmetrical and the product of the entries in the rows is also a perfect square. It is interesting to see that the square root of the perfect square obtained is equal to
the number dropped minus one factorial:

41/2=2=(3-1)!

RISK MANAGEMENT DIAGRAM - EXAMPLE

Math News: Prime Numbers 4

Arranging the partial number of terms of a tetranomial raised to any power in the form above.

Commitment to SAP

SUPPORTING SAP
By
Jorge Jaramillo


Recommendations to Build a Sucessful SAP Support Model

#1 - Realize why support is difficult

Status quo support environments that do not foster motivation or empowerment of employees. This is directly relevant in view of the recent employee survey.

Basis must be effective and responsible to their customer.

Basis support staff must be known and stable.

Unreasonable service levels demanded by the business.

Flood of calls by business for a variety of reasons (training/ lack of involvement).


# 2 - Align Work with Support Capacity

Help define and manage the processes and competencies required for support:Meeting with end users to discuss problem definition to resolution.

Knowledge transfer to users.

Risk Management processes including security and authorization.

The process of requesting user ids and authorizations needs to be well known.

# 3 - Align business objectives, SAP objectives, and IT objectives

Process and data ownership is not fully understood by the business.

Governance agreements are key.

# 4 - Address staff management issues early

Define career paths for personal growth to attract and retain the best people.

Define SAP support team (including basis) responsibilities clearly. These should include:

1- Updated Job Descriptions
2- Detailed Documentation required for all projects
3- Understand who the customer is.

Design support processes for a seamless end user experience.

Define the right skills that correlate to support processes.

Management buy-in.

# 5 - Set achievable goals for the new support organization

A “Big Picture” has to be in place for the support organization to succeed.

Understand that setting up the support organization is only the first step.

Once in place, the support environment must be managed properly and optimized in order for business value to be realized.

# 6 - Be Flexible

Flexibility and agility to adapt to changing end user, business, and company requirements is critical for the support organization to drive value.

For long term success, let the support organization grow, evolve in unison with the business.

Build the complimentary organizations to help the support organization succeed

Acquiring, retaining, training, growing talent for support organization

Recognition that most support organizations are evolutionary

Successful support organizations are strategic to the Business - They should not be viewed as just a helpdeskSAP Support Failure Reasons

The following is a list of reasons why projects fail and how to avoid failure.

1. Projects fail due to improper communication; you must have a communicationplan - who is the customer, what to communicate and what method of communication.

2. Projects fail due to lack of change management control - control and communicate the impact of changes to project scope.

3. Projects fail due to lack of leadership (project manager) and sponsor support - the project manager builds and supports the team - the sponsors support the project.

4. Projects fail due to improper risk management - you must understand the risks to the project and just as importantly the risks to the business.

have a plan to deal with the risks.

To succeed as a project manager one must have leadership skills, oral and written communication skills, and people skills. These skills are developed in the real world.

The team must have a commitment and a willingness to get their hands dirty in doing the difficult stuff, like talking with users, getting to grips with risks and issues and impact.

It is true, no man is an island.

More practically, SAP projects fail because in large companies, SAP is seen to be another computer/system project and therefore not really worth the attention of top management.

Math News: Prime Numbers 3

Polynomials with 4 terms

Again, using the method of successive expansions of:
(A+B+C+D)e and setting the data on the basis of partial results:
(A+B+C+D)2=
(A+B)2+2(A+B)(C+D)+(C+D)2 Just counting the number of terms of each one of the expressions yields:
3 4 3

For other expansions, i.e. 3rd power the number of terms was:
4 6 6 4
For the 4th power the number of terms was:
5 8 9 8 5

Math News: Prime Numbers 2

Binomials

To find the final number of terms of a binomial (a polynomial of two terms such as: A+B) raised to any power “e” the answer is to simply add one to the exponent of the polynomial.

T=E+1 where T=Final Number of Terms
E=The Exponent.

This simple fact is taught to all students of Algebra very early in the study of polynomials.

What is not taught is the ”simple” expression to find the final number of terms of say
(A+B+C) raised to any power.

How many terms will (A+B+C)e have?

Trinomials

To find the final number of terms of a trinomial raised to any power “e”, many expansions of
(A+B+C)e were carried out.

The following data was obtained:

Exponent
Number of Terms
Difference
Sum of Number of Terms
Square Root
2 6
3 10 4 16 4
4 15 5 25 5
5 21 6 36 6
6 28 7 49 7
7 36 8 64 8
8 45 9 81 9
9 55 10 100 10
10 66 11 121 11

This arrangement, rectangular in form, has several interesting properties:
1- The sum of consecutive number of terms is a perfect square
2- The perfect squares are the squares of the difference of the two terms that were added

to obtain the square.

X+Y=A2
And
Y-X=A

Math News: Prime Numbers

Introduction

Every Algebra student learns about polynomials. These mathematical expressions are ones constructed using variables and constants along with the operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication and non-negative positive powers.
A simple example of a polynomial in X is:

3X2+4X+3

The number of terms of the polynomial above is three (3). Another definition of a polynomial is that is the sum of one or more non-zero terms. The number of terms is always a finite number.
Another example of a polynomial is:

A2+2AB+B2

This polynomial is the result of the expansion of the following expression:

(A+B)(A+B) or
(A+B)2

It can be observed that the number of terms of the polynomial A+B is 2.

When said polynomial is raised to the 2nd power and expanded, the final number of terms is 3.

It is logical then that one would be curious to know the final number of terms when raising A+B to the 3rd or 4th or nth powers.

What follows is a series of observations about polynomials, numbers and mathematics in general, made during my effort to answer the question “How many terms does a polynomial of any number of terms raised to any power have after it is completely expanded?”

Not all topics are thoroughly studied since there are infinite paths and forks in the paths that without a doubt would lead to interesting destinations, I have identified some of these with the label “Additional Research #”. I intend to come back to these points.

I am sure that much if not all of what follows has been known to others far more illustrious, but it is my sincere hope that it is at least entertaining and interesting to anyone that loves mathematics.

CASE STUDY 2: Purchasing and Logistics Cockpit

Create program to check all Purchasing and Logistics-related data requirements for large auto manufacturing plant. “Visual management”-compatible program required to easily evaluate the readiness status of all material for line-side adoption.

Initial Situation:

ERP system used by Purchasing and Logistics Department has numerous standard tools for use by responsible specialists to create, edit, view and monitor data related to the procurement and use of material for vehicle production. Each tool, however, only displays one small part of the information necessary to determine a material’s readiness for use in the vehicle.

Challenges and Goals:

1- Consolidate information from all ERP tools in one screen.
2- Provide easy “drill-down” capability to create any missing information.
3- Provide easy “drill-down” capability to edit existing data.
4- Automatically highlight missing data leading to production problems.
5- Automatically distribute responsibilities to each Purchasing
and Logistics specialist.

Approach:

1- Define complete data package before factory use of material
(from Purchasing and Logistics viewpoint).
2- Create a list of ERP system tools in use by the responsible specialists.
3- Form working group (composed of at least two “super-users” and consultant).
4- Layout the system using “Condition” diagrams.
5- Propose screen layouts containing each of the “procedure” boxes identified
in the condition diagram.
6- After agreement on output layout, program the application.
7- Document and train.

Benefits:

1- Increased user-friendliness of the system.
2- Improved specialist efficiency.
3- Improved monitoring.
4- Built in logic can detect potential problems before they impact production.

Considering that the average engineering change costs $50000 to implement and can affect hundreds or thousands of products, being able to detect production mistakes can save a company hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Good Advice

CASE STUDY 1 Prevention of Engineering Change Errors

Prevention of Engineering Change Errors :

A system to support efficient management decision making and project direction, and collects and summarizes all the related information was needed. Such system’s scope is the prevention of potential build problems by analyzing early BOM Data in relation to Vehicle Order data.

Corporate directives required the use of standard methods and systems whenever possible. One case in which the corporate system supports the automaker well, is in the Engineering Change Control process, specifically the “Bill of Materials” system and auxiliary utilities that produce reports that identify potential problems when adopting changes and their impact to the BOM explosion for parts ordering in the near and not so near future .

Initial Situation:

Daily report contains all the engineering changes that needed to be analyzed against the BOM explosion data to support correct parts ordering. Report ranged up to 3000 pages of information checked manually by the specialists.

Errors detected by the specialists listed/ presented to management for approval. Approved changes made manually to BOM information in corporate system via the regular user interface.

Challenges and Goals:

1- Eliminate paper report.
2- Distribute Engineering Changes automatically to the responsible specialists.
3- Automate cross-checking of BOM data with orders data to highlight potential problems.
4- Provide a user-friendly interface to allow users to monitor their responsibilities.
5- Provide reliable management monitoring of engineering changes processes.
6- Provide long term storage of daily BOM data.
7- Provide automatic notification to specialists/management if data not checked.

Approach:

Capture soft copy of daily printed report.
Create parser program to extract relevant data in structured format and store information in a set of database tables.
Write post-processor program to automatically distribute work to specialists three times daily.
Create user-friendly application to facilitate corrections to the BOM data and “close” any open Engineering Changes.

Benefits:

1-Cost reduction in the form of paper savings, cabinet storage and long term data retention off-site. One customer’s saving amounted to 0.5 hours per engineer, per day. The company employed 20 engineers at the time of this project.
2-Improved accuracy of data modifications.
3-Improved monitoring to capture all Engineering Change and guarantee on-time processing to prevent costly problems downstream.

Continuous Improvement

Personal and Professional Ethics

Be ready to learn throughout our your entire life.
Do not force others to adopt your views.
Live simply and share time, energy, and material resources with those who are in need.
Do not maintain anger.
Do not lose yourself in dispersion and in your surroundings.
Develop concentration and understanding.
Do not utter words that can create discord.
Make every effort to reconcile and resolve all conflicts, however small.
Do not say untruthful things for the sake of personal interest.
Do not say untruthful things to impress people.
Do not say words that cause diversion and hatred.
Do not spread news that you do not know to be certain.
Do not criticize or condemn things you are not sure of.
Always speak truthfully and constructively.
Celebrate what has already been accomplished.
Have the courage to speak out about situations of injustice.
Take a clear stand against oppression and injustice.
Do not engage in partisan conflicts.
Reject discrimination.
Do not live with a vocation that is harmful to humans.
Do not harm nature.
Select a vocation which helps you realize your ideal.
Possess nothing that should belong to others.
Do not take credit for the work of others.
Praise the good work of others.
Respect the property of others.
Exercise regularly.
To preserve the happiness of others, respect the rights and commitments of others.

Management Capabilities

MANAGEMENT EXPERIENCE:

· Managed the Process Control, Vehicle Scheduling and Engineering Change Assist Groups.
· Project management of SAP QM module implementation at Mercedes Benz U.S.I.
· Project management of production ramp-up management software, (START System).
· Project management of quality level management software, (SQMS System).
· Managed project to migrate legacy Engineering Change Control systems to SAP.
· Managed project to support Quality Level Determination for newly released parts.
· Managed project to exchange Quality Data with SAP systems in Germany.
· Managed project to enable the CAD/CAM data exchange process to be triggered from SAP
· Managed the deployment of several corporate systems.

· Supervised 18 Engineers and Specialists.
· Coordinated development of operating plans for use by MBUSI and suppliers.
· Coordinated development of systems to support scheduling.

· Managed the issue of monthly order volume and vehicle mix .

· Directed shipping (ocean and freight) activities related to certificates of origin.
· Led verification and reporting of production results .
· Led development, implementation and maintenance of integrated manufacturing systems. · Coordinated activities of contracted software and hardware vendors and consultants.
· Led activities to maintain state of the art vehicle information and tracking systems.
· Managed and coordinated IT proposals to address production modeling.

· Established strategy in case of emergencies·

Led research of applications of new technologies for lean process control.

SAMPLE SAP MACRO

D,MESS,COMPANY_X_DAILY_TASKS
R,TCODE,SM13
R,TCODE,SM21

R,TCODE,SMLG

R,TCODE,SM37

R,TCODE,SM66

R,TCODE,SM50

R,TCODE,ST22

R,TCODE,SM12

R,TCODE,SP12

R,TCODE,SM58

R,TCODE,SMQ1

R,TCODE,SMQ2

R,TCODE,AL08

R,TCODE,SCC4

D,MESS,DATABASE_CHECKS

R,TCODE,DB12

R,TCODE,DB02

R,TCODE,ST04

R,TCODE,DB13

D,MESS,NETWORK_AND_OPERATING_SYSTEM

R,TCODE,OS07

D,MESS,direct_applications_testing

SPID,WRK,7707

SPID,LIF,15106

SPID,MAT,AHU17864442

R,TCODE,MK03

SPID,DTB,ECN4960

R,TCODE,SE16

R,TCODE,MM03

R,TCODE,ZPURRE

SPID,LIF,15106

R,TCODE,ME31K

R,TCODE,ME33K

R,TCODE,Z101SACR

R,TCODE,ME33L

R,TCODE,ME03
R,TCODE,ZORGVL

R,TCODE,LPK1
*, Print/Fax RAN to VendorR,TCODE,ZFXVEN
*, Register Inbound DeliveryR,TCODE,BORGR
*, Post Goods Receipt against ASNR,TCODE,MB0A
*, Goods Issue to Cost Center* R,TCODE,ZICSTC
*, Cycle Counting (Adjustments)R,TCODE,ZCYCLE
*, Return to Vendor against P/S RANsR,TCODE,QM01
*, COMPANY_X SCRAP: COMPANY_X Scrap to Cost CenterR,WHILE,QM01
*, Payment via ERSR,TCODE,ZPAY

Problem Solving and Process Analysis (continued 2

LEGACY DATA MIGRATION BAPI

One of the ways in which "Legacy Data" can be migrated to SAP is using BAPIs. Here is a generic example of the structure of a BAPI that will migrate material master data including characteristic data.

Example of a Complex Environment's Complete Analysis Using Method _JJ1

Problem Solving and Process Analysis (continued)

Easy-Developement Project Checklist

<-Click on picture

SAP Macro Language for Automatic System and Load Testing

A Parser program reads input text files that will run SAP (or any other system) in
a hybrid batch, interactive mode that will support simultaneous testing of many

SAP applications on several workstations.

Examples of my Technical Projects

· Multiple linked spreadsheets with user specified logic.
· Statistical Analysis programs to monitor and control production processes.
· Mathematical algorithms and programs for surfacing applications.
· Coordinate Measuring Machine Data Collection.
· Annotation, 2D, 3D and Grouping Geometric Data Extraction.
· Annotation, 2D, 3D and Grouping Geometric Data Formatting and Parsing.
· CAD/CAM Data Packaging.
· CAD/CAM Data Extraction.
· Magnetic Media Data Retrieval and Archiving.
· Assembly Line Balancing.
· Material Master Creation Remote Functions.
· Real time Pull-down Menu functions.
· Engineering Change Control Management Reporting.
· Real time BOM Monitoring.
· Logistics Monitor.
· Scrap of “Just in Time” Materials.
· Document Posting Monitor.
· Mathematical tools for CAD/CAM Applications.
· Vendor/Supplier Quality Management Data Collection.
· Quality Data Transmission.
· Legacy System Data Migration.
· Mathematical Interpolation and Extrapolation.
· Delivery Methods Tool-kit.
· Quality Management Tool-kit.
· Scheduling Optimization.
· Material “On-hand” Reporting.
· Methods “Knowledge Engine”.
· Inventory Control Monitors.
· Production Control Monitors.
· Logistics Monitors.
· Purchasing Monitors.
· Plotter and Printing Management.
· Data Translation.
· Device Drivers.
· Macro Languages for Automatic Application Testing.
· Test Data Generators.
· Workflow.
· 8D Quality Systems.
· Data Diagnostics.
· Control Panels.
· User Data Management.
· Platform Communications and “Gateway” Management.
· Platform Code Porting.

Problem Solving and Process Analysis

Simple methodology that can be used to illustrate all the inputs, outputs, processes and procedures of a system supporting a business unit.

This methodology also identifies risks, frequency of use and the responsible specialists.

When a "big picture" of the responsibilities of a business unit is available, optimization is possible often with help from the business owners themselves!