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Infor LX Tips, Infor LN Tips, BPCS Tips, Baan Tips, Infor M3 Tips & Infor ERP News

Crossroads Connections

Infor ERP Tips & News from the Experts

Infor LX | Infor LN | BPCS | Baan | Infor M3

FSB North America Streamlines Their Shipping on Infor LN with RMCship

Kathy Barthelt 0 24708 Article rating: 5.0

FSB North America, a leading producer of high quality electrified and mechanical locking devices, has selected the RMCship solution from Crossroads RMC to streamline their shipping process on Infor LN and the integration with FedEx® and UPS Worldship™. Using Web Collect formerly RMCship for shipping increases accuracy by eliminating manual steps, streamlines operations, and process steps, and improves customer satisfaction.

BPCS/LX Tip of the Week: Vendor Evaluation

Anthony Etzel 0 45049 Article rating: No rating

Want to ensure that you have the materials you need when you need them?Want to gain insight into your ability to fulfill current and future orders timely? 

Consider implementing a method of evaluating your suppliers. A good understanding of your suppliers’ capabilities and past performance allows you to better plan and deliver orders on time to your customers. 

Some ERP systems have built in features to track supplier performance data. Reports can also be written to gather the information you need.  By whatever means you can achieve it, getting those results could be eye opening and very meaningful to your business.

Baan/LN Tip of the Week: Vendor Evaluation

Kathy Barthelt 0 79158 Article rating: No rating

Want to ensure that you have the materials you need when you need them?

Want to gain insight into your ability to fulfill current and future orders timely? 

Consider implementing a method of evaluating your suppliers. A good understanding of your suppliers’ capabilities and past performance allows you to better plan and deliver orders on time to your customers. 

Some ERP systems have built in features to track supplier performance data. Reports can also be written to gather the information you need.  By whatever means you can achieve it, getting those results could be eye opening and very meaningful to your business.

BPCS/LX Tip of the Week: Transactions

Anthony Etzel 0 48676 Article rating: No rating

If you opt to summarize transactions, do so after a period of testing so that you can be certain that all models and aliases are working to your satisfaction. When you summarize, consider ‘Summary with Detail’ because this retains the detail transactions in GLH.

Baan/LN Tip of the Week: Creating Product Variants

Kathy Barthelt 0 74940 Article rating: No rating

If you specify a configurable item on the sales order line, you can configure or link a product variant.

An item is configurable if the Configurable check box is selected in the Item - General (tcibd0101s000) session.

Manufactured items with theDefault Supply Sourceset to Assembly in the Item - General (tcibd0101s000) session and Generic items, are always configurable.

Purchased items with the Purchase Schedule in Use check box selected in the Item - General (tcibd0101s000) session, can be configurable.

Crossroads RMC, in partnership with Infor, takes Yupo to LX 8.3.4

Crossroads RMC 0 28632 Article rating: 5.0

Yupo Corporation, a leader in synthetic paper, with products that are 100% recyclable, waterproof and tree-free, went live on Infor LX 8.3.4 on April 3, 2017. Yupo partnered with Crossroads RMC for this important technology upgrade. Included in the implementation were the Finance, Supply Chain, Manufacturing and Plant Maintenance (EAM) modules.

Crossroads RMC Takes Polar to LX 8.3.4

Crossroads RMC 0 31655 Article rating: No rating

Polar Beverages, the largest independent soft drink bottler in the United States, went live on Infor LX 8.3.4 on January 16, 2017. Polar partnered with Crossroads RMC for this important technology initiative. Included in the implementation were the Finance Supply Chain and Manufacturing modules. Phase 2 will include Adirondack Beverages, a subsidiary of Polar. This project will begin in Q3 2017.

BPCS/LX Tip of the Week: Handwritten Inventory Tickets

Anthony Etzel 0 47931 Article rating: No rating

Are you still using handwritten tickets for your inventory?  This method of inventory tracking is slow and prone to human error.

Putting a simple barcode system in place speeds up the process of tracking inventory movements, reduces the likelihood of mistakes, and creates a recorded history of the who/what/where that can provide valuable insight to those who make critical business decisions for your business.

Not sure where to start? Contact us and we’d be happy to help you take the first step.

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Tips:  LX | BPCS | M3

Tips: LN | Baan

Kathy Barthelt

Infor LN & Baan Manufacturing Tip: Performance Problems in Generate Order Planning (cprrp1210m000)

When the Generate Order Planning (cprrp1210m000) session is run it can take minutes to days to finish the process.

The performance of this session depends on many settings, like the number of plan items, the number of orders, but it also depends on hardware and database setup.

Here are some guidelines on how performance can be improved.

  • Be sure you are always on the latest solutions with the planning sessions. We are constantly improving the software to gain more speed in the Enterprise Planning (EP) sessions.
  • The number of planned items is critical. Try to reduce the number of planned items. Is it necessary that all items be planned via EP? For shop floor stock the TPOP or SIC replenish systems are often more suitable.
  • When you use PCS, be sure to close the projects when they are finished. When a PCS project has status Closed, the customized items will not be planned.

It's better to run Remove Plan Items for closed Projects (cprpd1220m000). This session removes the item planning data for customized items of closed projects.

  • If you run EP with the option, Also Generate Item Master Plan and/or Online Update Item Master Plan, consider if you need an Item Master Plan for all plan items. An Item Master Plan is usually meant for global long-term planning. Again this is not very useful for shop floor stock. Reducing the number of master-planned items improves performance.
  • When you use Resource Master Plans; are all your resources really critical? If a work center is not critical do not create a Resource Master Plan for it.
  • When using Item Master Plans and/or Resource Master Plans, set in Scenarios (cprpd4100m000) the total scenario length as short as possible. For example, if your sales order horizon is 2 years, a scenario end date which is 3 years after the current date is sufficient. During the calculations of the Item Master Plan and the Resource Master, all periods defined in the scenario are checked and calculated. So if you have the end date of the scenario on 2038, EP will do the calculations (for every master-planned item) until 2038.

Defining a rolling scenario will keep your scenario length constant and you don’t have to worry that you run beyond your scenario's end date.

  • Updating the pegging relations has a serious impact on the EP performance. In EP Parameters (cprpd0100m000) you can set the Pegging Horizon in days. Keep this horizon as short as possible. The Update Signals by Item/Planner option also has some impact, but less than the pegging.
  • EP uses the so-called phase numbers to detect the lowest level in which an item is used within a BOM structure or in a supplying relation. If the phase numbers are not ‘up-to-date’, EP will correct the phase numbers during the planning. This takes time during the planning run. If there are loops in BOMs or in supplying relations, this recalculation has a big impact on the performance. Therefore you could run Compute Phase Numbers (cprpd6200m000) on a regular basis. For example once a month. Always run this session with the Generate Report option selected. If loops are detected these are reported. Be sure to solve all the reported errors.
  • When unexpected results occur, especially when the data is imported from external packages, always check the number of records in tables cprpd100 and cprpd120. The number of records should match! Remark: From 10.4 onwards the table cprpd120 has become obsolete so this point not applicable anymore.
  • The number of calendars also impacts planning performance. Then for every warehouse, work center, or BP, and so on, a different calendar is defined. Planning has to read all of these calendars from start to end. This can have a huge impact on performance.
    • If you link a calendar to a work center or warehouse, avoid defining a new calendar for every work center/warehouse. Try to link the same calendar to more than one department.
    • Define the start of the calendar close to the start date of the scenario. For example, the current date is 01-07-2014, the start date of the scenario is 365 days in the past. So a start date for your calendar could be 01-07-2012.
    • Define the end date of the calendar not too far in the future. Depending on the end date of the scenario you could use 5 years ahead.  For example, the current date is 01-07-2014, the end date of the scenario is 3 years in the future. So an end date for your calendar could be 01-07-2022. Do not define an end date past 19-01-2038, which is the last UTC date Infor LN can handle.

Also, the interaction with the database can have a big impact on performance. 
A commonly used way to improve the total run time of the EP run is to start the session in parallel processing. 
See also Knowledge Base Article 22881401 Performance, Tracing and tuning Guide, for more details.

These guidelines are just some hints, and a good starting point because performance is a complex issue.

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Kathy Barthelt

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