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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

Tip of the Week: Tips to Attain Greater Inventory Accuracy

Kathy Barthelt 0 72904 Article rating: No rating
  1. Record data regarding your inventory as soon as the items arrive at your door/receiving dock. With information, you can make decisions. Without it, you waste money, time and effort.
  2. Leverage data collection, label generation and RFID solutions to make your life easier.
  3. Set inventory accuracy goals for the business and for employees.
  4. Train your employees so they know what is expected of them, and how to best perform their job and therefore how best to maintain accurate inventory counts.
  5. Count the inventory – and do it regularly. Find a method that works best for your employees, and for your business.

BPCS/LX Tip of the Week: Changing the Master Schedule

Anthony Etzel 0 52847 Article rating: No rating

You can change your master schedule by specifying the type of master schedule update to perform. You can run a Net Change or Regenerative Schedule.

You also have the ability to clear the lower level requirements out of the Planned and Firm-Planned Order file.

Baan/LN Tip of the Week: Switching to a Difference Series

Kathy Barthelt 0 72963 Article rating: No rating

In general, you can enter a different series in the order field if you have an available series. To add a new series, find the appropriate group in the First Free Number session, and add a new series and first free number (usually 1).

In Baan IV, go to the Maintain First Free Numbers Session (under Common, Tables, Maintain Logistics Tables, Maintenance 1). Groups are easily identified (e.g., Purchase Order, Sales Order, etc.).

In Baan V, go to the First Free Number Session (under Common Data, Tables, Logistics). There are number groups (e.g., 570 may be for Purchase Orders, 650 may be for Sales Orders, etc.).

In LN, go to the First Free Number Session (tcmcs0150m000 – it is in different places in the menu under different Feature Packs). There are number groups (e.g., 210 may be for Purchase Orders, 310 may be for Sales Orders, etc.).

Hoffmaster Clintonville Plant Goes Live with Crossroads MES & LX

Anthony Etzel 0 33474 Article rating: No rating

On March 1, 2016, Hoffmaster’s Clintonville plant went live with Crossroads MES and LX. The goal of the project was to convert from another ERP to LX and replace a green screen MES system that required the manual recording of production and labor activity keyed from shop floor terminals.

Hoffmaster achieved their goal by completing a successful data conversion and detailed prototyping of LX and Crossroads. The project team remarked that the Crossroads MES implementation was by far the easiest part of the project. One of the critical requirements of the chosen MES solution was to verify UPC and UCC label formats that called for in-line labeling of product packages and cases. Crossroads MES satisfied that requirement, and also provided an interface to finished goods inventory via the scanning of LPN numbers when reporting production.

The Clintonville plant is a leading manufacturer of disposable tabletop products.

BPCS/LX Tip of the Week: Actual Costs for Manufactured Items

Anthony Etzel 0 54339 Article rating: 5.0

In LX, the actual costs that can be set up fall into three categories: Material, Labor, and Overhead. If your LX database is set up properly with the LX cost accounting, you should be able to identify:

  • How much the item should cost
  • How to track the cost of work underway
  • How much the item actually did cost
  • Why the job cost varied from the expected cost
     

Capturing the data to track activity with associated costs can be time-consuming. With an MES solution, the information you need for costing is tracked instantly.

Baan/LN Tip of the Week:GRINYA Reconciliation – What Could Go Wrong?

Kathy Barthelt 0 79397 Article rating: No rating

One common GRINYA issue would be incorrectly entered Integration Setups.

Check the Baan or LN manual for recommended Integration setups. If such a mistake were to occur, it is important to know for what period of time the Integration was in error.

To ensure, it’s recommended that the Integrations Setup tables should be audited either through Baan/LN or Database Auditing. Corrections can be quickly calculated when an exact timeframe can be determined.

Morrison Brothers Goes Live With Crossroads MES in Record Time!

Crossroads RMC 0 32950 Article rating: No rating

On February 18, 2016, the Maquoketa plant of Morrison Brothers went live with the Crossroads MES solution. The goal was to remove all the shop floor paperwork and eliminate the manual recording of production and labor. The company achieved this goal in just 96 days from project kick-off to go live. Included in the go-live was the ability to deliver drawings electronically to the Crossroads MES workstations. This was a critical component of the implementation as it ensured that each workstation would always be operating off the latest revision of the engineering documents.

A rollout of the Crossroads MES solution is planned for Morrison’s Dubuque plants later this year. 

Morrison Brothers is a major producer of petroleum marketing equipment in the United States and abroad.

Baan/LN Tip of the Week: Old Porting Set

Kathy Barthelt 0 75233 Article rating: No rating

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.

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Tips:  LX | BPCS | M3

Tips: LN | Baan

Kathy Barthelt

Infor LN & Baan Tips & Tricks for EXECUTIVES

TECHNOLOGY & FINANCE: Archiving Finalized Transactions

To support correct archiving in a multicompany structure, the following rules apply:

  • Each company must have its own archive company. Companies cannot share an archive company.
  • The structure of archive companies must be an exact copy of the live environment.
  • A company must keep the same archive company until the end of its lifetime. Once data has been archived, you cannot change the archive company.

If extra archiving capacity is required, it is recommended that you set up a second archiving environment, which must also be an exact copy of the live environment. Define the companies of the second archive environment as the archive companies of the companies of the first archive environment. If necessary, a third and more archiving environments can be set up. You must then archive the data from each archive company to its archive company in the second archiving environment, and so on.

When you archive the data, LN builds an array with all the companies of the group and the archive company linked to each company. If any of the companies in the group does not have an archive company, LN reports an error and aborts the archiving process.

Batches and batch lines are only archived and/or deleted if you perform archiving and deletion in the company in which they exist. This is always the source company. Any intercompany documents and related finalized transactions that belong to the batch are not archived and/or deleted until the target company is archived.

If the batch has been deleted from the live environment, such intercompany documents and transactions will then temporarily exist without a batch in the live environment until the target company’s transactions are archived. Therefore, it is recommended to archive all the companies of a group within a short time.

Finalization runs are also archived. A finalization run can only be deleted from the live environment if all the attached batches have also been deleted.

Financial documents are archived and/or deleted if you perform archiving and deletion in the company in which they exist. For each document, LN searches whether a related intercompany document exists.

If the document’s transaction type indicates that the document numbering does not have to be in a fixed sequence, the document is not deleted from the live environment, to avoid duplicate document numbers.

A finalized transaction is not deleted from the live environment if the fiscal year of the transaction does not equal the fiscal year of the batch and the fiscal year of the transaction cannot yet be archived. If the Archive option is selected, the related batch, batch line, and document are copied to the archive company and retained in the live environment.

If a transaction is still referenced by open sales orders or purchase orders, it is marked as Deleted but not actually deleted. The related batch, batch line, and document are copied to the archive company and retained in the live environment. They are deleted when the referenced open transactions are closed and archived, for example, when you run the Archive/Delete Fully Paid Purchase Invoices (tfacp2250m000) session

If the transaction’s ledger account is a matchable account, any related matching data is also archived.

During the archiving process, the originating company of the finalized transaction is replaced with the originating company’s archive company. In this way, the archive environment will not contain references to the live environment.

During archiving, intercompany document relations are also copied to the archive environment. In the archive environment, these relations are updated in such a way, that each document in the relation refers to the environment in which the document actually exists. In the live environment, the document relation is retained until all related finalized transactions are deleted. For invoice-related transactions, this only occurs during the removal of fully-paid invoices. The document relation is also updated in the live environment, in order to refer to the archived document if all related finalized transactions have been removed from the live environment.

After the normal archiving process, an additional archiving step is performed in which all transactions and documents in the live company that arise from intercompany postings, are archived. During this step, intercompany relations are archived and/or deleted as described earlier.

Batches, batch lines, and documents that have the Deleted status are deleted from the live environment, unless the document’s transaction type indicates that the document numbering does not have to be in a fixed sequence. Such documents are not deleted from the live environment, to avoid duplicate document numbers.

OPERATIONS: Simulated Purchase Prices (ticpr1170m000)

Use this session to define simulated purchase prices for purchased items per site.

Field Information:

  • Cost Calculation Code - price calculation code
  • Item

The raw materials, subassemblies, finished products, and tools that can be purchased, stored, manufactured, and sold.

An item can also represent a set of items handled as one kit, or which exist in multiple product variants.

You can also define nonphysical items, which are not retained in inventory but can be used to post costs or to invoice services to customers. The examples of nonphysical items:

  • Cost items (for example, electricity)
  • Service items
  • Subcontracting services
  • List items (menus/options)
     
  • ​Site - The site for which the purchase price is simulated.
  • Purchase Currency - The currency of the simulated purchase price.
  • Simulated Price - Purchase price

The simulated purchase price and currency are recorded twice.

  • Simulated Price Multi Currency - The purchase price in multiple currencies.

The simulated purchase price and currency are recorded twice. The amount in this field is related to the price of the supplier.

  • Unit - Purchase price unit
  • Cost Component - The cost component that must be of the type Material Costs.

Note: The cost component specified in this field does not become part of the standard cost detail structure if it is part of the cost component scheme of the selected item. If calculations are performed with a calculation code not used for actualization (simulations only), the simulated purchase price is mapped to the cost component defined in the records for this session.

  • Latest Price - The purchase price that is displayed on the most recent invoice received for the selected purchased item.

  • Average Price - The average purchase price which is based on cumulative purchases or on the current inventory, as specified in the Method of Calculating Average Purchase Price field of the Purchase Order Parameters (tdpur0100m400) session.

Previous Article Infor LN & Baan Tips & Tricks for TECHNOLOGY: Table Sharing with a Multi-Company Setup - Using a Master Data Company
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Kathy Barthelt

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