From a recent article published by M4B Marketing:

When analyzing your sales performance consider the following: 

• Pricing changes eg. price increases or discounting
• Competitors – competitors entering or exiting the market
• New product or service launch growing sales
• New product or service cannibalizing existing product or service sales
• Customers moving between products or services
• Changes in customer demand eg. increasing or decreasing
• The segments and distribution channels you operate in

When Hoffmaster finally flipped the switch on its ERP migration at the end of February, the IT director was nervous. Not only was the paper-goods supplier consolidating a manufacturing site on Infor ERP LX, but it was also replacing an old shop floor reporting system with a new one from Crossroads RMC. There was a lot that could go wrong for the IBM i shop.

"When we weighed all of our products, Crossroads RMC pretty much convinced us their product was plug and play and their integration back to LX was solid as a rock, and they were right..." the IT director says.

Click Here to Learn about Hoffmaster’s move to Infor LX and their implementation of the Crossroads MES solution.

Two big sources of inefficiencies in manufacturing are paper and spreadsheets. I know that you love ‘em, but they are the cause of more problems than you probably realize. Think of how long it takes you to get paper-based data into the hands of those who can do something valuable with the data.
 

• Is the information captured correctly?
• Can everyone access the information?
• Is this an accurate representation of what’s going on across all operations?

Make your shop floor paperless and put systems in place that talk to one another and automatically pull and push data to and from your ERP so that you can look in one place for all the information you need to run your business effectively.

• Is the information captured correctly?
• Can everyone access the information?
• Is this an accurate representation of what’s going on across all operations?

Make your shop floor paperless and put systems in place that talk to one another and automatically pull and push data to and from your ERP so that you can look in one place for all the information you need to run your business effectively.

I realize it was just Mother’s Day, but I don’t mean your mother.

I mean... MOM- Manufacturing Operations Management, a suite of manufacturing applications designed to improve efficiencies, without the investment in a costly system.

MOM provides manufacturers with the ability to extend their ERP system by offering specific applications that will streamline their operations at an affordable price.

MOM Suite of Manufacturing Applications:

• Manufacturing Execution System (MES)
• Time & Attendance
• Labor Reporting
• Data Collection
• Dashboards
• Scheduling
• Shipping & Receiving
• Supplier Barcoding

So, I ask again… how’s your MOM? Contact Crossroads RMC to learn more.

I realize it was just Mother’s Day, but I don’t mean your mother.

I mean... MOM- Manufacturing Operations Management, a suite of manufacturing applications designed to improve efficiencies, without the investment in a costly system.

MOM provides manufacturers with the ability to extend their ERP system by offering specific applications that will streamline their operations at an affordable price.

MOM Suite of Manufacturing Applications:

• Manufacturing Execution System (MES)
• Time & Attendance
• Labor Reporting
• Data Collection
• Dashboards
• Scheduling
• Shipping & Receiving
• Supplier Barcoding

So, I ask again… how’s your MOM? Contact Crossroads RMC to learn more.

Here are some issues that you might run into if you stay on an old porting set too long:

• Incompatibility because of operating system patches
• Printing issues because of out-of-date libraries
• Potential performance issues if binaries are not updated
• Updating third-party products may not be possible because of dependencies
• Limited support from Infor
• Issues with updating database software/patches because of dependencies (if the database is also running on the same server as the application)

Need help getting on a newer porting set? Let us know! We’d be happy to help.

If the item being received needs to be inspected prior to being available for use, there are two schools of thought.

The first is to receive the item to a QC hold location. The downside is the item will show up in on hand inventory.

A better method would be to do a PO receipt to inspection. Both Inv500 and Pur550 support this method. Now you have received the item without showing it in inventory. Only the PO quantity in inspection is updated. This method also allows you to create an Inspection Dispatch Report. After the QC process for the item is complete, then the transaction Receipt from Inspection to Stock is processed. That transaction then updates the PO quantity received field and the Item on hand field in inventory.