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

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Infor ERP Tips & News from the Experts

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

Baan/LN Tip of the Week: Month End Miscellaneous To-Do’s

Kathy Barthelt 0 91639 Article rating: No rating
  • Print Sales Order History Information - all invoices processed through sales
  • Check Inventory Valuation - this should tie out to your inventory accounts
  • Print Integration Information - see all postings from WIP to finished goods
  • Print G/L Transaction Information - print specific transaction types for any GL account
  • Print Lot Control Information - will show where serial numbers were used

Optimize Your Manufacturing Today!

5 Steps to Getting Everyone On Board With Change

Anthony Etzel 0 33311 Article rating: 4.0

In almost every project, in every industry, I found that the management team or the project team felt that change was necessary. However, talk is cheap when the rubber meets the road. Getting people to embrace change is very challenging.

In an attempt to help realize why change is sometimes necessary for a business to survive and thrive, here is my view on change, presented for your consideration:


C: ChaosLoss of control, no clear definition of what is about to happen. How will things change? For what reason(s) do they need to change? Yes, for a period of time, you may feel like the ground beneath you isn’t solid.

H: Hostility- Will you have more work? Will you lose your job? You will be stressed, which may lead to anger?

A: AloneWhy is this happening to you? Why do you feel like you are the only one who isn’t embracing the change?

N: Nightmare - Most people are afraid of the unknown, and dread uncertainty. They go to great lengths to stay where they are to avoid going down a new path. A new path is scary.

G: Grief

BPCS/LX Tip of the Week: Accurate Job Costing

Anthony Etzel 0 54150 Article rating: No rating

Standard costing is really a ‘best guess’ at labor costing -- these numbers are often inaccurate, incomplete or out of date.

Accurate job costing requires the capture of all tasks associated with a specific product or job, including direct and indirect labor in setup, production, and customer service.

Inaccuracies in the collection of time allocated to machinery and the use of materials can result in the inability to properly pass those charges through to the customer, reducing company profitability.

Basically, you can’t manage what you can’t measure -- and you can’t measure what you can’t track. So the inability to track time-to task ultimately inhibits maximum utilization of the workforce. Unproductive activities remain hidden from sight -- managers don’t have the information needed to understand where wasted time exists, and therefore cannot create an action plan to remove it.

Optimize Your Manufacturing Today!

Baan/LN Tip of the Week: Accurate Job Costing

Kathy Barthelt 0 83609 Article rating: No rating

Standard costing is really a ‘best guess’ at labor costing -- these numbers are often inaccurate, incomplete or out of date.

Accurate job costing requires the capture of all tasks associated with a specific product or job, including direct and indirect labor in setup, production and customer service.

Inaccuracies in the collection of time allocated to machinery and the use of materials can result in the inability to properly pass those charges through to the customer, reducing company profitability.

Basically, you can’t manage what you can’t measure -- and you can’t measure what you can’t track. So the inability to track time-to task ultimately inhibits maximum utilization of the workforce. Unproductive activities remain hidden from sight -- managers don’t have the information needed to understand where wasted time exists, and therefore cannot create an action plan to remove it.

Optimize Your Manufacturing Today!

Tip of the Week: Ways to Manage the Pain of Losing a Key Employee Before it Ever Happens

Anthony Etzel 0 59848 Article rating: No rating
  • Sit down with your IT team. Decide how the information will be captured and where it will be stored so that employees have access to it. What software tools need to be used to capture the information? How does it need to be organized? Create a repeatable process to make this easy for your staff.
     
  • Interview the person. Have them talk you through his/her job. What are the things they do every day? What are their biggest challenges? How do they overcome them? 
     
  • Have someone shadow the person for a week. Watch what they do and how they do it. Ask questions. Who does he/she interact with in their department? Outside of their department? Why?
     
  • Find out what tools he/she uses to perform their job? Are there spreadsheets?  Reports within your ERP / outside of your ERP? Separate stand-alone databases? Drawings? Websites? Why does he/she use them?
     
  • Video record how the person does their job. Is their technique critical to “doing it right” the first time and not ending up with a bunch of scrap that you can’t reuse?
     
  • Figure out if the person does anything special on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis that might not come up during the observation period or interview. 
     
  • Map how he/she uses your business system and how that impacts the rest of the company. Understand both the “what” and the “why”. Without this, new employees may end up figuring out what they need to do, but never understand why they need to do it.

Optimize Your Manufacturing Today!

Tip of the Week: Ways to Manage the Pain of Losing a Key Employee Before it Ever Happens

Kathy Barthelt 0 75422 Article rating: No rating
  • Sit down with your IT team. Decide how the information will be captured and where it will be stored so that employees have access to it. What software tools need to be used to capture the information? How does it need to be organized? Create a repeatable process to make this easy for your staff.
     
  • Interview the person. Have them talk you through his/her job. What are the things they do every day? What are their biggest challenges? How do they overcome them? 
     
  • Have someone shadow the person for a week. Watch what they do and how they do it. Ask questions. Who does he/she interact with in their department? Outside of their department? Why?
     
  • Find out what tools he/she uses to perform their job? Are there spreadsheets?  Reports within your ERP / outside of your ERP? Separate stand-alone databases? Drawings? Websites? Why does he/she use them?
     
  • Video record how the person does their job. Is their technique critical to “doing it right” the first time and not ending up with a bunch of scrap that you can’t reuse?
     
  • Figure out if the person does anything special on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis that might not come up during the observation period or interview. 
     
  • Map how he/she uses your business system and how that impacts the rest of the company. Understand both the “what” and the “why”. Without this, new employees may end up figuring out what they need to do, but never understand why they need to do it.

Optimize Your Manufacturing Today!

BPCS/LX Tip of the Week: How to Move From Good to Great - Manufacturing Optimization

Anthony Etzel 0 58509 Article rating: No rating
  • Are you tracking downtime? Is it done manually, or with some type of automation or application that gathers information in real-time, or is it based upon history?
  • If you are measuring team effectiveness by shift, you know there are significant differences between them. Have you figured out why?

One of our automotive customers was experiencing significant inefficiencies and difficulties with their receiving operations. After analyzing their operation, we discovered a disconnect between how they were tracking their incoming goods and what their ERP system thought was on hand.

This disconnect created time-consuming steps to process incoming material and determine where the material was needed. The manual process slowed production, caused additional staffing needs and hindered their ability to effectively get needed material to the assembly line. They chose to implement our data collection solution to automate the process.

Since implementing the solution, receiving and moving material was quicker, more accurate and efficient. This enabled the addition of another assembly line, increasing production volume – without adding staff.

Optimize Your Manufacturing Today!

Baan/LN Tip of the Week: How to Move From Good to Great - Manufacturing Optimization

Kathy Barthelt 0 71847 Article rating: No rating
  • Are you tracking downtime? Is it done manually, or with some type of automation or application that gathers information in real-time, or is it based upon history?
  • If you are measuring team effectiveness by shift, you know there are significant differences between them. Have you figured out why?

One of our automotive customers was experiencing significant inefficiencies and difficulties with their receiving operations. After analyzing their operation, we discovered a disconnect between how they were tracking their incoming goods and what their ERP system thought was on hand.

This disconnect created time-consuming steps to process incoming material and determine where the material was needed. The manual process slowed production, caused additional staffing needs and hindered their ability to effectively get needed material to the assembly line. They chose to implement our data collection solution to automate the process.

Since implementing the solution, receiving and moving material was quicker, more accurate and efficient. This enabled the addition of another assembly line, increasing production volume – without adding staff.

Optimize Your Manufacturing Today!

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Tips:  LX | BPCS | M3

Improves control over PO costing changes during invoice entry by replacing passive warnings with an intentional override action.

  • In ACP500D3 (Invoice Entry PO Costing), users previously could unintentionally accept changes by pressing ENTER, even when quantity to cost or amount to cost values had changed.

  • A new “F14 to Override” warning message replaces the old message:
    “Details have changed. Press enter again to accept data.”
    This ensures users acknowledge and confirm significant changes explicitly.

New System Parameter:

  • “Apply GRN Costing Tolerance for PO Costing” (optional):

    • Within tolerance: Displays the original message —
      “Details have changed. Press enter again to accept data.”

    • Outside tolerance: Triggers the new override requirement —
      “F14 to Override”

Benefits:

  • Enhances oversight and reduces unintentional cost acceptance.

  • Enables better control of PO costs when invoice details differ from expectations.

Last

Tips: LN | Baan

An ERP System Review is NOT a Report Card

It's a no-judgment-review - we promise!

report card C minusWe all remember our school days and the nervousness that we felt when it came time to get our grades. Even if we were doing well, we were still nervous. Sometimes we experienced that same nervousness when it came time for a performance review on our job. Nervousness…sometimes dread…knowing that our performance was not what we wanted it to be, or others expected it to be. 

Somehow I think the feelings that we felt in our past often find ways to creep into our present. I have seen this recently when I suggested an ERP system review to one of our customers. They immediately became flustered and thought about every possible problem that they knew existed within the software and how they were currently using it. I asked them to consider the purpose of the ERP system review.

An ERP Utilization Review will:

  • Document how your company is using your ERP system (or a particular aspect of the system) and to what extent the system meets the needs of the business.
  • Identify challenges encountered using the software.
  • Create opportunities for improving business processes and generating additional value.
  • Identify potential risks and areas that need improvement.


key hole to the futureSo, if the result of ERP system review is to establish a path forward for growth based on current status, then why doesn’t every company take advantage of it? I think for some, the answer lies in the feelings of nervousness and dread still stuck in the recesses of our brains.

An ERP system review or more specifically a utilization review is NOT a personal report card, or performance review showing how well a particular individual does his/hers/their job, nor is it an attack on the team that implemented the software. 

As they say, hindsight is 20/20. What we view now to be a less than ideal implementation methodology may have been absolutely appropriate at the time the software was originally deployed. The software has likely matured and the skillsets of the individuals responsible for the system have likely matured as well. In some cases, those resources are no longer with the company, leaving those that remain with no back story as to how and why implementation decisions were made.

Instead of viewing the ERP utilization review as a reason to find fault in previous decisions, think of it as discovering untapped potential – both of the ERP system and the people who use it. Viewing an ERP utilization review in this way puts a positive spin on it and allows us to challenge ourselves to identify opportunities for growth far greater than anything we imagined before. This means not only moving our businesses forward faster but also advancing the strength of the company as individuals and as a team.

What untapped potential lies within your company?

Consider a utilization review of your entire ERP system, or just a part of it like Finance, Technology, Materials Management, Order Processing, or Shop Floor Control. You just might be surprised at what greatness can be achieved… far greater than anyone could have imagined.  

Get a free phone consultation button

800.762.2077

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Kathy Barthelt

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