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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: Negative Inventory

Kathy Barthelt 0 1101 Article rating: No rating

If Location Control is turned on in Baan IV, then inventory should never be negative.

If Location Control is not turned on in Baan IV, and the parameter “Negative Inventory Allowed” in INV Parameters is set to “NO”, then inventory should never be negative.

In Baan V and LN, the parameters in Inventory Handling Parameters determine whether you can have negative inventory. If these parameters are set to “NO”, then inventory should never be negative.

BPCS/LX Tip of the Week: Why define location fields in the work center file?

Anthony Etzel 0 568 Article rating: No rating

If you setup the “From” and “To” Location fields in the Work Center file, this will then determine the locations for material issue transactions and production reporting transactions.

The reporting of the transactions would happen through production reporting, JIT600, or using the Shop Floor labor posting, SFC600, or Shop Floor Posting from SFC650.

Remember, any location used in the work center file must first be set up in the location master file. Using an MES solution by-passes the need to key any of the data to ERP LX.

Baan/LN Tip of the Week: Negative Inventory

Kathy Barthelt 0 1143 Article rating: No rating

What should you do if you have negative inventory reflected in your system?

You should do a cycle count or inventory adjustment, but first, do a review of the inventory or location history to determine when this happened.

If a negative inventory is allowed, it most likely will be corrected upon receipt of the item. For example, assume that there is a PO that has not been received in Baan/LN, but the goods came in and got shipped out on a sales order. The inventory goes negative, but when the PO receipt is entered, the inventory would be corrected. In this case, no adjustment should be made.

A little due diligence will go a long way to ensure that you are only making an adjustment to your system when warranted.

BPCS/LX Tip of the Week: What is Lean Make to Order?

Anthony Etzel 0 261 Article rating: No rating

This is a simple way to go from the customer order to making the order and shipping the order. It involves a few simple steps:

  1. Receive and enter the customer order
  2. Automatic credit review
  3. Automatic release of the shop order tied to the customer order
  4. Issue material, report labor to the production order receipt
  5. Pick the order, ship the order, invoice the customer


With lean, you can skip processing the demand through MRP. You can go directly from the customer order to the shop order creation.

Baan/LN Tip of the Week: Optionally Include Tax Amounts In Order Balance

Kathy Barthelt 0 133 Article rating: No rating

In Baan IV, the order balance amount always includes the tax amount. Consequently, the tax amount must be recalculated every time an order line is modified in order to update the balance correctly. If the tax provider is activated, this requires an API call for every re-calculation of tax.

In Infor LN, users can select or clear the new Include Tax in Order Balance check box in the COM Parameters (tccom0000s000) session to indicate whether users want to include tax amounts in the order balance amount. This parameter has an effect on various sessions in Order Management.

BPCS/LX Tip of the Day: Inventory Transactions

Anthony Etzel 0 586 Article rating: No rating

Define Inventory transactions for issuing components to the shop and receiving finished items. See the Inventory help text for examples of transactions.

  • Transaction type I - Single Issue to Shop Order. Use this transaction type to issue one component at a time. Use this for high-value items that are marked as Must Single Issue on the Item Master file.
  • Transaction type M - Multiple Issue to Shop Order. Use this transaction type to issue all the components as listed in the Shop Order, in one transaction. Note that this transaction type does not issue Must Single Issue items.
  • Transaction type S - Receipt from shop. Use this transaction type to receive the finished item into stock and update the shop order accordingly. 

The Shop Order Lot/Location Allocation program is an alternative to using the above Inventory transactions. Use this when the item is finished, and you want to review exactly what was used to make it. You can review the components as allocated, make any changes, and finally accept the finished order.

Baan/LN Tip of the Day: Multi-Company Warehousing 10.4

Kathy Barthelt 0 435 Article rating: No rating

You can define internal trade relationships between enterprise units or individual warehouses of the same logistic company for the transfer of material, labor, or other costs between warehouses, and to generate invoices for these without using sales orders and purchase orders. For example, you can use this to transfer goods between warehouses in different countries.


You can define warehouse surcharges, which are added to the actual costs of the goods either when the goods are issued from a warehouse or when the goods are received.

BPCS/LX Tip of the Day: MRP/MPS Simulation in LX

Anthony Etzel 0 785 Article rating: No rating

The system allows you to manipulate and maintain a simulated MPS and MRP. You can copy the simulation from the existing first cut, or you can create a totally new schedule. You can also perform a simulation of the rough-cut capacity plan. This allows a quick visual inspection by inquiry or menu of needed work center

loads for the proposed MPS. After you choose a suitable MPS and rough-cut capacity, the system allows you to transfer the simulated MPS to the live Master Production Schedule.

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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.

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Tips: LN | Baan

Kathy Barthelt
/ Categories: Infor LN & Baan Tips

Infor LN & Baan Tip: Performance improvement by setting the First Free Number Cache (tcmcs0651m000)

Many transactions in all kinds of modules use order numbers or serial numbers. These order numbers are most often automatically generated. In the Number Groups (tcmcs0151m000) session you can define groups of order numbers used for dedicated areas. A Number Group is a group of the first free number series that you can assign to a specific use. All the numbers that Infor LN generates in the number groups that are dedicated to the same purpose are unique.

All the first free numbers are stored in the table tcmcs050.

As many different processes can request a free number from the number groups, we often see delays in the performance, due to locking on the first free number records. This locking issue can have a severe impact on the performance of huge batch-type transactions, but also on the performance perceived by individual users in many areas in LN.

For example:

  • Processing warehouse transactions. Single or in-batch
  • Completing / closing orders
  • Backflushing of production orders
  • Generate Order Planning
  • Cost calculation and warehouse revaluation


How this performance can be improved?

Resolution

In the Number Groups (tcmcs0151m000) session you can open the details of a specific Number Group (tcmcs0651m000) or start the session stand-alone.

In the Number Group, you define the Series with the related First Free Numbers. Per Serie in the First Free Number, you have the option to define the Cache Size.

This Cache size is defaulted on a value of 0 (zero). A cache size of zero means No Cache. How does the First Free Number caching works:

  • When the Cache Size is zero: With this setting a process requests a Free Number from the Serie and the first free number is issued to the process. But the first free number record is not updated yet. At the moment the requesting process is finished, without errors, it reports back that the number is used and the first free number record is updated. All the time that the process is working on the transactions the first free number record is locked. If another process is requesting a free number from the same series, it must wait (retries) until the record is updated and released by the previous process. This is the locking which is causing delays in the other processes.  
  • Setting the Cache Size to a higher value then zero activates the caching. When the Cache Size is set to 1 or higher, the requested free number is sent to the requesting process, the first free number is updated, with the number as defined in the Cache size, and the record is saved. It does not wait until the requesting process has reported back that is finished, with or without errors. In this way the record is immediately released and no locking will occur. If another process is requesting a free number, it does not need to wait until the free number record is released by the earlier process. If the process is ended with errors and therefor the number is not used, this number from the series is lost. This can result in gaps in the numbering. When the cache size is greater than 1, for example it is set to 5, the requesting process receives 5 free numbers. Even if it only needs less than 5. In this way the process only has to request for a new free number after it has used the first 5 numbers from the cache. This will also speedup the process in case of large batch transactions. For ‘warehouse integration users’, like for example Factory Track or WMS users we advise to set the cache size to 5.  

Note that financial documents are not based on number group series / first free numbers. Instead they are based on transaction type series, for which the caching functionality does not exist. Financial documents, like sales invoices, bank transactions, are thus not cached.

The caching is especially important to improve the performance of all logistical processes.

It is strongly recommended (mandatory) to set the Cache Size for all Number Groups to a minimum of 1.

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Kathy Barthelt

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