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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

Filtec Selects Crossroads RMC for Baan Data Collection

Kathy Barthelt 0 29168 Article rating: No rating

Filtec, a leading provider of in-line inspection solutions for the food, beverage, and pharmaceutical industries, has selected the Web Collect, formerly RMC3 data collection solution from Crossroads RMC for their Baan IV system. Filtec plans to implement Labor Reporting and Report Operations Complete as part of this project with the goal of eliminating manual data entry and gaining better visibility to gap time. The project is scheduled to go live in early November 2015.

BPCS/LX TIP OF THE DAY: MATERIAL REQUIREMENT DATES AND LEAD TIME OFFSETS IN MRP

Anthony Etzel 0 64187 Article rating: No rating

The system automatically performs offsets for requirements dates for components in the MPS/MRP calculations. It also performs offsets for calculation of material need dates at the time that shop orders are released.

To calculate the offset, the system takes the parent lead time from the Item Master and adjusts it by the bill of materials offset (plus or minus) for the component. This gives the lead time days for that specific component. The system starts with the due date of the parent and backs up and skips all non-workdays in the shop calendar.

Note that the offset calculation uses only calendar records that have a blank work center (the calendar record applies to all work centers). See the information for the Shop Calendar Maintenance program, SFC140, in your Shop Floor Control documentation for shop calendar details.

Baan/LN Tip of the Week: Data Sizing Moving to LN

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The Infor LN database must be created with the appropriate size. For example, if at least 150 GB is required for a year, create the database with the required size from the beginning. Do not let the size increase to the required size and cause additional fragmentation in the database and the NTFS volume.  Set the autogrowth to a minimum of 10 percent or 1 GB (for each extent) to avoid fragmentation on file system level. Never use the default extent size of 1 MB.

BPCS/LX Tip of the Week: Work Center & Machine Locations

Anthony Etzel 0 61564 Article rating: 3.0

For either file, you must specify a valid location code as defined in the Location Master File.

If the machine master locations are blank, then the work center locations are used. There are cases where you may want to do a combination between the two in defining the locations.

Let’s say the end item has one operation. The operation is at work center 510 and Machine A is in the work center. You have locations setup in both the Work center file and the Machine master File. You report 100 complete at the work center without specifying the machine.

In this case, the inventory will be processed based on the locations defined in the work center file. If the transaction included the machine number, then the locations in the machine file would be used.

Baan/LN Tip of the Week: SIC Planning for MRP/MPS Planned Items

Kathy Barthelt 0 68151 Article rating: 3.0

If you have a parts warehouse and prefer to use SIC for planning (re-order point) but need to use MRP/MPS planning for production, create a non-nettable warehouse for the parts warehouse and run the SIC plan against that warehouse.

When running the SIC plan, be sure to set the Order System to “MPS to MRP” for Baan IV and to “Planned to Planned” for Baan V and LN.

Using this method you keep the parts inventory out of the production planning and in the hands of the parts warehouse planner.

BPCS/LX Tip of the Week: Indirect Time Reporting

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In Infor LX, there are two ways to enter indirect labor. You can use either SFC600 or SFC650.

  • If you use SFC600 and enter a reason code for the indirect labor, the reason you entered is written to the Labor Ticket file.
  • If you use SFC650 and enter a reason code for the indirect, the reason code is not written to the labor Ticket file.

In either case, the reason code is not validated from the transaction file because there is no indirect transaction code. The indirect code that can be setup is machine downtime. If you need to validate and track indirect by reason and validate the reason code, then you may want to explore an MES solution that works with Infor LX.

Baan/LN Tip of the Week: Differences Between Constraint Planning in Baan IV and Enterprise Planning in LN

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In Baan IV, a distinction is made between the actual ERP system and a separate planning tool which contains the Constraint Planning package. This tool was intended to work with any ERP system, not just with Baan IV. The Enterprise Planning package is now considered to be a package like any other package in Infor LN.

Users of Baan IV could choose whether they wanted to plan their supply in one of the following ways:

  • By using the MPS and MRP modules in the Manufacturing package.
  • By using the RPD and RMP modules in the Constraint Planning package.

Users of Infor LN can only use the Enterprise Planning package. The distinction between the MPS items and MRP items has been abandoned. In Infor LN, all items can be planned by using a combination of master-based planning methods and order-based planning methods.

Baan/LN Tip of the Week: Setting Up New Employees in LN

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In LN, the People package is used to register the employee’s hours and expenses. To support the People package, the Employees - General (tccom0101m000) session only contains the general employee data.

The title of the Employees - General (tccom0101m000) session was changed to Employees – General (tccom0101m000).

From the Employees - General (tccom0101m000) session, users can start the following sessions to define the more specific employee data:

  • Employees - People (bpmdm0101m000).
  • Employees - Project (tppdm8101m000).
  • Employees - Service (tsmdm1140m000).
  • Skills by Employee (tcppl0120m000).
  • Employees by Team (tcppl0150m000).
  • Roles by Employee (tcppl0170m000).

After users define the employees, users can also start the listed sessions from the Employees Dashboard (bpmdm0101m100) session in People.

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Tips:  LX | BPCS | M3

Tips: LN | Baan

Kathy Barthelt

Infor LN & Baan Manufacturing Tip: Performance Problems in Generate Order Planning (cprrp1210m000)

When the Generate Order Planning (cprrp1210m000) session is run it can take minutes to days to finish the process.

The performance of this session depends on many settings, like the number of plan items, the number of orders, but it also depends on hardware and database setup.

Here are some guidelines on how performance can be improved.

  • Be sure you are always on the latest solutions with the planning sessions. We are constantly improving the software to gain more speed in the Enterprise Planning (EP) sessions.
  • The number of planned items is critical. Try to reduce the number of planned items. Is it necessary that all items be planned via EP? For shop floor stock the TPOP or SIC replenish systems are often more suitable.
  • When you use PCS, be sure to close the projects when they are finished. When a PCS project has status Closed, the customized items will not be planned.

It's better to run Remove Plan Items for closed Projects (cprpd1220m000). This session removes the item planning data for customized items of closed projects.

  • If you run EP with the option, Also Generate Item Master Plan and/or Online Update Item Master Plan, consider if you need an Item Master Plan for all plan items. An Item Master Plan is usually meant for global long-term planning. Again this is not very useful for shop floor stock. Reducing the number of master-planned items improves performance.
  • When you use Resource Master Plans; are all your resources really critical? If a work center is not critical do not create a Resource Master Plan for it.
  • When using Item Master Plans and/or Resource Master Plans, set in Scenarios (cprpd4100m000) the total scenario length as short as possible. For example, if your sales order horizon is 2 years, a scenario end date which is 3 years after the current date is sufficient. During the calculations of the Item Master Plan and the Resource Master, all periods defined in the scenario are checked and calculated. So if you have the end date of the scenario on 2038, EP will do the calculations (for every master-planned item) until 2038.

Defining a rolling scenario will keep your scenario length constant and you don’t have to worry that you run beyond your scenario's end date.

  • Updating the pegging relations has a serious impact on the EP performance. In EP Parameters (cprpd0100m000) you can set the Pegging Horizon in days. Keep this horizon as short as possible. The Update Signals by Item/Planner option also has some impact, but less than the pegging.
  • EP uses the so-called phase numbers to detect the lowest level in which an item is used within a BOM structure or in a supplying relation. If the phase numbers are not ‘up-to-date’, EP will correct the phase numbers during the planning. This takes time during the planning run. If there are loops in BOMs or in supplying relations, this recalculation has a big impact on the performance. Therefore you could run Compute Phase Numbers (cprpd6200m000) on a regular basis. For example once a month. Always run this session with the Generate Report option selected. If loops are detected these are reported. Be sure to solve all the reported errors.
  • When unexpected results occur, especially when the data is imported from external packages, always check the number of records in tables cprpd100 and cprpd120. The number of records should match! Remark: From 10.4 onwards the table cprpd120 has become obsolete so this point not applicable anymore.
  • The number of calendars also impacts planning performance. Then for every warehouse, work center, or BP, and so on, a different calendar is defined. Planning has to read all of these calendars from start to end. This can have a huge impact on performance.
    • If you link a calendar to a work center or warehouse, avoid defining a new calendar for every work center/warehouse. Try to link the same calendar to more than one department.
    • Define the start of the calendar close to the start date of the scenario. For example, the current date is 01-07-2014, the start date of the scenario is 365 days in the past. So a start date for your calendar could be 01-07-2012.
    • Define the end date of the calendar not too far in the future. Depending on the end date of the scenario you could use 5 years ahead.  For example, the current date is 01-07-2014, the end date of the scenario is 3 years in the future. So an end date for your calendar could be 01-07-2022. Do not define an end date past 19-01-2038, which is the last UTC date Infor LN can handle.

Also, the interaction with the database can have a big impact on performance. 
A commonly used way to improve the total run time of the EP run is to start the session in parallel processing. 
See also Knowledge Base Article 22881401 Performance, Tracing and tuning Guide, for more details.

These guidelines are just some hints, and a good starting point because performance is a complex issue.

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