Baan/LN Tip of the Week: Getting a Handle on Downtime

Kathy Barthelt / Tuesday, May 31, 2016 0 90126 Article rating: No rating

It is essential to capture a reason and duration for each downtime incident to enable the team to effectively prioritize and focus.

Start simple, and make sure every reason is clear (when compared with other reasons) and describes symptoms (as opposed to attempting to diagnose root causes). Remove reasons that aren’t regularly used and add reasons.

BPCS/LX Tip of the Week: What Should I Consider When Analyzing my Sales?

Anthony Etzel / Tuesday, May 24, 2016 0 54249 Article rating: No rating

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

Baan/LN Tip of the Week: What Should I Consider When Analyzing My Sales?

Kathy Barthelt / Tuesday, May 24, 2016 0 2765178 Article rating: No rating

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

Crossroads MES – The Shining Star of Hoffmaster’s Move to LX

Anthony Etzel / Monday, May 23, 2016 0 38539 Article rating: No rating

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.

Tip of the Week: Operational Inefficiencies

Anthony Etzel / Wednesday, May 18, 2016 0 58498 Article rating: No rating

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.

If you’re not doing this today, you might as well be burning money.

Baan/LN Tip of the Week: Operational Inefficiencies

Kathy Barthelt / Wednesday, May 18, 2016 0 55580 Article rating: No rating

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?

If you’re not doing this today, you might as well be burning money.

BPCS/LX Tip of the Week: How's Your MOM?

Anthony Etzel / Tuesday, May 10, 2016 0 68544 Article rating: No rating

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.

Baan/LN Tip of the Week: How's Your MOM?

Kathy Barthelt / Tuesday, May 10, 2016 0 85429 Article rating: No rating

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.

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Tips: LX | BPCS | M3

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Tips: LN | Baan

Crossroads RMC / Wednesday, March 2, 2022

/ Categories: Analytics Dashboard, Integrations & Enhancements, Support, Training & Workshops, Finance, Manufacturing, Operations, Technology

Manufacturing vs. Operations vs. Finance: Who WINS?

Infor LX | BPCS | Infor LN | Baan

Manufacturing Goals: develop high-quality products and services in response to the demands of the market, improve efficiency and maximize capacity utilization.

Operations Goals: utilize resources, labor, material, and equipment effectively in order to match supply and demand.

Finance Goals: analyze revenue growth opportunities, control costs, and maximize profitability.

So, who WINS?

Whose priorities take precedence when it comes down to it and what happens when the demands seem to compete? The answer to that question may be simpler than you think. Quite often, production, operations, and finance are operating based on their own sets of data which have been created within their respective group to serve the needs of the group alone. Finance likely does not have access to production or operations reports and production and operations hardly ever have access to financial reports. But why? What if all departments operated based on the same data, viewed in the same way? Would it not be easier to understand where the priorities should be and how the ship should be steered?

Dashboards provide real-time visualization of data through graphs, tables, and other visualization techniques. Through the use of dashboards, the complexity of large volumes of data gets stripped away and instead gets presented through manageable, digestible chunks of information so companies can focus their attention on the areas of the business that need it most. The dashboards then serve as a common ground for further dialogue and present information to everyone in a way that is mutually understandable.

Although the data represented in dashboards can be gathered through multiple reports and sometimes multiple reporting systems, consolidating the data into one unified source provides a highly effective tool to generate actionable insight.

Crossroads RMC's Analytics Dashboard provides a pre-built connection to Infor LX / BPCS and Infor LN / Baan and includes a full suite of ready-to-use, standard dashboards that can jump-start collaboration between your finance, operations, and production departments.