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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

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.

Baan/LN Tip of the Week: Default Order Frequency

Kathy Barthelt 0 1943 Article rating: No rating

In Baan IV, requirements for an MPS item with the order method lot-for-lot result in daily planned MPS orders.

For example, if a plan period contains 10 working days and the net requirements for an item in that period is 2000 pieces, an MPS planning run generates one planned MPS order of 200 pieces for each working day in the plan period.

In Infor LN, requirements for a planned item with the order method lot-for-lot result in one planned order per plan period.

For example, if a plan period contains 10 working days and the net requirements for an item in that period is 2000 pieces, a master planning run will generate a single planned order of 2000 pieces for the first working day in that plan period. To influence the order quantity of the planned orders, enter appropriate values in the Maximum Order Quantity field and the Order Interval field in the Items – Ordering (tcibd2500m000) session or choose a fixed order quantity.

BPCS/LX Tip of the Day: Cost Accounting – LX

Anthony Etzel 0 868 Article rating: No rating

The challenge in cost accounting is tracking your manufacturing to the levels needed for useful management information. You need feedback for corrective action; but, you need to minimize the cost of collection. Some parts of your operation require specific job-cost tracking while the Just-in-Time areas require

costing in terms of cost per process hour or day. Apply overhead in different ways to different processes and products. Segregate costs into enough detail

to provide management with an accurate picture of the contents of your product. Material, material overhead, labor, fixed overhead, variable overhead, outside processing, outside processing overhead, and so forth all have to be considered.

 

LX meets your cost accounting needs with the following functionality:

▪ Four sets of costs: actual, standard, frozen standard, and simulated

▪ Nine user-defined elements per set

▪ Full and partial cost roll-up and simulation

▪ Cumulative in-process cost tracking

▪ Cost summaries by item

▪ Cost definition tied to work centers or material type

▪ Process hour costing

Baan/LN Tip of the Day: Vendor Rating

Kathy Barthelt 0 1416 Article rating: No rating

In LN, a supplier's reliability is no longer based only on correct deliveries. The vendor rating functionality of LN is based on various objective criteria and subjective criteria that can be used to calculate the vendor’s rating.

 

The set up procedure for analyzing suppliers has changed completely compared to Baan IV.  To execute the vendor rating process, users must update the vendor ratings in the Update Vendor Rating (tdpur8850m000) session.

If users update the vendor ratings, the following stages exist in the update vendor rating procedure:


1. Calculate actual weightings

2. Calculate ratings for objective criteria

3. Calculate ratings for subjective criteria

4. Update overall vendor rating

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Tips:  LX | BPCS | M3

David Dickson

If ERP is plumbing for the Enterprise - How do we unplug it and keep it from making a huge mess?

I have been working with ERP in various roles for over 30 years, directly involved in over a hundred implementations, while my company has been involved with over 300 more. Of course, in many ways the systems we use today are completely different from what we used in the ‘80s – back then it was green screens, simple transaction entry forms, and cumbersome updates (at best) to link what one department did with all the other areas that needed access to that information. Then there were those planning programs that took all the information along with various parameters the users needed to set and told us what to do.

The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same

What has surely changed is how we use these systems. Back when I started we used them because we could process more transactions more accurately and faster with a computer, than with the otherwise necessary roomful of clerks. Those clerks, schedulers, and various other clerical employees were the first generation of jobs computers rendered obsolete. Strangely, I do not remember anyone bemoaning those lost jobs. I will let others speculate on the reasons for that.

Individual companies could and did debate the decision about how much they automated. Yes, in retrospect, it is pretty clear that choosing not to automate was to accept a long, slow death for the business, but it is not that long ago when there were still lots of manufacturing managers and business owners who did not use, or like, computers.

Competition Changes Everything

Today a business system is just another piece of necessary infrastructures like an office, a phone, a lawyer, a bank account, and an accountant. The system remains the transaction processing backbone for the organization, but the way in which we use the information that flows from those transactions has changed drastically in this interconnected world. Back in the heady days when ERP was new, the focus was all internal, inside the four walls. Today that seems quaint – the Internet connects all systems and much of the unique incremental benefits (or competitive advantage, if you prefer) come from two deceptively simple concepts – how you connect with the rest of the world from your business systems, and how you monitor your business’s performance in real-time and adapt to what you learn.

I still remember a kickoff meeting twenty years ago for what was then a pretty large ERP implementation at an automotive supplier. Two comments struck me – the first was public. “I like to think of our business as a boat, and we have been steering it by looking out the back. This project will at least let us see out the sides.” The other was in a private meeting when we were discussing change management, and how they would deal with the resistance that would surely come. This same manager said simply, “I guess we will have to fire someone for it, and then the rest will get religion.”

Not terribly ambitious goals, but I give him credit for honesty.

Things have certainly changed a lot in terms of our expectations for the systems, and our approach to implementation, but despite these systems have become an integral and necessary part of the infrastructure of every business, they remain infuriatingly complex and the benefits we expect are often difficult to achieve.

Illusive Benefits = Bad Form

That should not be the case. My goal is to be your guide and share my insights and other good ideas, found across the web, as to how to make business system selection easier and how to get the most benefit from those systems. Because in spite of all the marketing folderol, it seems pretty clear that your friendly software vendor and expert implementation consultants are not going to do that for you. Not because they are stupid or evil people, of course, quite the contrary. They just cannot and will not make the decisions for us that need to be made.

Systems should work for us. Choosing and implementing a system should not be a high-risk proposition for a business, or the individuals doing the work.

The common elements made simple, efficient, and effortless with returns.

My entire career has been dedicated to those goals.

What do you consider yourself to be?

  • internal expert?
  • someone beginning the search and implementation process?
  • an executive looking for a competitive advantage?
  • an industry insider?
  • or someone who finds this amusing for some reason?

All of the above? There is a better way to choose and use software and as someone who could fit into any and all of the categories listed (yes, I really do find business software entertaining in some weird way), I have some ideas I’d love to share with you, so feel free to ask questions.

About the author:

David Dickson is an itinerant generalist; his path to partner and CFO of Crossroads RMC has had its twists and turns. His first twist occurred when an employer needed a business system and picked him because he had three semesters of computer programming in engineering school -- an “expert” born. Somewhere along the line he helped to build and sell a company, which he bought back a couple of years later. Add in another acquisition, a merger, and about 30 years in manufacturing systems in various roles, and you might get a sense from where his real expertise might arise.

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Tips: LN | Baan

Companies can decide to involve a subcontractor and subcontract part of their activities. The subcontractor carries out the work and returns the products to your company.

In Infor LN, subcontracting is considered as purchasing labor from a third party. Therefore, if a manufacturer wants to subcontract work, he must generate a purchase order to start the subcontracting process. These are the types of subcontracting:

  • Subcontracting with material flow
    • Operation subcontracting: For operation subcontracting, a part of the production process (one or more operations) is subcontracted.
    • Item subcontracting: For item subcontracting, an item's entire production process is subcontracted. Therefore, it is always used with material flow support.
  • Subcontracting without material flow: The simplest form of subcontracting is to generate a subcontracting purchase order to record the operations outsourced to a subcontractor. The subcontracting purchase order only represents the administrative handling of the subcontracting process. When the subcontracted item is received back from the subcontractor, you must close the subcontracting purchase order, which initiates the production process.
  • Unplanned subcontracting: Unplanned subcontracting is applicable when you subcontract after generating a production order. For unplanned subcontracting, a purchase order is generated from the production order and the material supply lines are populated by Shop Floor Control.
  • Service subcontracting: For service subcontracting, work on an item to be maintained or repaired is subcontracted. This work entails the entire repair process, or only a part of it. Service subcontracting can be used with or without material flow support.

To start the subcontracting process, a purchase order is required.

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