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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: Inventory Valuation

Kathy Barthelt 0 51356 Article rating: No rating

In Baan IV, inventory valuation is done by standard costs, unless you use projects. If you use projects, it is based on estimated or actual costs.

In Baan V and LN, you have the choice of LIFO, FIFO and MAUC (Moving Average).

Infor LX Webinar - Paperless Shop Floor

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Crossroads RMC 0 29003 Article rating: No rating

Eliminate paper
Tuesday, May 19, 2015 - 2:00PM - 3:00PM ET

 

Streamline workflow to and from the shop floor

Are you tired of dealing with mountains of shop paper? Do your workers need a single, electronic, real-time source for all production-related documentation? Join us as we discuss how you can increase accuracy, boost productivity, eliminate paper, and save money with a Manufacturing Execution System (Crossroads MES).

This webinar will highlight how to deliver a built-in workflow that streamlines the information flow to and from the shop floor. With a simple touch of the screen, MES collects and delivers the critical information you need to run your production operation. Fully integrated with your Infor LX system, MES can help manufacturers modernize and automate:

  • Supervisor/manager real-time shift review
  • Scheduling shop orders by shift or by day
  • Splitting orders
  • Capturing shop floor activity
  • Capturing indirect and downtime activities
  • Production reporting

[registration link removed]

* Webinar duration is 60 Minutes

BPCS/LX TIP OF THE WEEK: Remembered Keys

Anthony Etzel 0 1918 Article rating: No rating

Infor LX remembers certain key values, such as item number, salesperson,

or container, in your workstation memory as you process information in certain

programs. You can assign one of the following values to each field:

 

0  -Infor LX automatically retrieves this value from remember key memory. Infor LX updates this value on a continual basis.

 

1  -Infor LX automatically retrieves the value you specify in Display Remembered Keys, SYS080. It does not update the value from any other program.

 

2  -Infor LX does not retrieve or update remembered key fields. Use the Display Remembered Keys program, SYS080, to set up remembered keys.

Baan/LN Tip of the Week: Sales Order Acknowledgements

Kathy Barthelt 0 3109 Article rating: No rating

Sales Order Acknowledgements in Baan IV:
After a sales order is entered in Baan IV, users can print an order acknowledgement in Print Sales Order Acknowledgements/RMAs (tdsls4401m000), after which it can be sent to the customer.

Sales order acknowledgements in ERP LN:
In Infor LN, users can still use the Print Sales Order Acknowledgements/RMAs (tdsls4401m000) session to print order acknowledgements, however, the following functionality is added to this session:

  • In the Documents to Print field users can select whether to print order acknowledgments and/or return material authorizations.
  • With the Promotions check box users can indicate whether to print promotions on the order acknowledgement, if promotions apply to the order.
  • Users can control the printing of order acknowledgements based on the order amount and/or the delivery date.

These conditions only apply for order types that do not have the Print Sales Order Acknowledgements/RMAs (tdsls4401m000) linked as a mandatory activity to the order type in the Sales Order Type - Activities (tdsls0560m000) session.

BPCS/LX Tip of the Week: Operational Inefficiencies

Anthony Etzel 0 393 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. Are you capturing all of the information correctly? Timely? What about those spreadsheets? Can everyone access that information across your organization? Is that data married with all of the related data regarding your operations to give your executive and middle management the information they need when they need it?

Make your shop floor paperless and put in place systems 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: Use of Correction Period

Kathy Barthelt 0 173 Article rating: No rating

There can only be one correction period, and it must be the last period in the period table.

There can only be a correction period for Fiscal periods and not for Reporting or Tax. This period is used for the posting of the Automatic Balancing of Profit and Loss entries as well as any auditor adjusting entries that may be made outside the normal year. This allows you to print a trial balance and financial statements of period 1-12, for example, eliminating any of those adjusting entries.

If you have the Company Parameter (Balancing of Profit & Loss) set to Individual Accounts, then it is critical to have a 13th period to post those entries to. With this setting, the Automatic Balancing will zero out each individual P&L account in the last period. You want this to be period 13 and not period 12.

BPCS/LX Tip of the Week: Understanding What Goes On – Out on the Factory Floor

Anthony Etzel 0 346 Article rating: No rating

Ok… so you want to know the status of a specific shop order that was released two days ago.

What do you do?

It’s a sure bet that you have a manager, supervisor, or planner who can walk the floor and find the order at whatever work center it happens to be at. He/she can then answer “what operations have been completed and how many were completed?” All this requires leg work, and of course, a fair amount of time.

Now, if you have setup your BPCS master files properly, and you report transaction activity, you should be able to get those shop order statuses much faster using the SFC300 Shop Order Inquiry Screen.

At your fingertips you can see:

  • Release date & due date
  • How many hours remain in total and at each operation
  • The quantity required, what was finished and the remaining quantity
  • What components (materials) have been issued

Pretty basic information, right? Are you getting what you need to know? If not, then you may want to reexamine how your BPCS files are setup and what transactions along with their frequency are captured.

Baan/LN Tip of the Week: Default Order Frequency

Kathy Barthelt 0 178 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.

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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.

Last

Tips: LN | Baan

George Moroses

Infor LX & BPCS Tip: PowerLink

PowerLink is a Windows-based client for end-users within the Infor Development Framework (IDF). PowerLink allows exports/imports from/to the ERP database, but how much do you really know about it? Here is some helpful information about PowerLink.​

Why does PowerLink sometimes fail to export all records?
There's not a finite amount of records that PowerLink can export. However, PowerLink export was never intended to handle large volumes of data. It was designed as a quick snapshot of a fairly small subset and a simple view of the user's PowerLink card. 

What is the maximum amount of data that can be exported?
The maximum number of records is only limited by the system resource like memory, etc. When the system runs out of resources, an OutOfMemory error should occur. In previous testings, we have exported +1 million records, although the size of records differs greatly between business objects, the total size of the data could be an issue. For larger volumes of data, customers should investigate other tools such as the iSeries Access "Data Transfer from iSeries Server" feature to download directly to Excel.

How do I know if the size of the data is an issue?
1. When exporting to an external file (text, HTML) then importing to Excel: You can easily check the output (text, HTML) to see if the intermediate output has all the records. This can be done by visual inspection or through the use of column totals. Simply compare between the output and what you see in PowerLink. If the exported file has all the records, then the problem is definitely Excel.
2. When exporting to clipboard, then copy/paste to Excel: There is a clipboard export size limit that is controlled through client preferences. Check the exported data in the clipboard, and see if it contains all the records or only partial records due to the size limitation set in client preferences. If limited, change the client preferences using Customize from the Main browser > Preferences > Miscellaneous tab > Limit Clipboard Export, and try the export again. If the clipboard has all the records the problem is in Excel, which we don't have jurisdiction over.

Suggestions for improving the export process. 

  1. Reduce the number of columns seen in the view. This will serve to reduce the data being exported and may increase the number of records that can be exported. 
     
  2. Reduce the complexity of the view. If the view has one column that lives on a related object, then it has to build SQL behind the scenes to get that related record. If all of the columns come from a single business object, then the processing will be significantly faster.
     
  3. Export to HTML, which can be opened directly by Excel, Access, and many other programs. This reduces the processing of the export formatting because PowerLink needs only to put begin and end tags around each data element. This will also preserve column alignment when Excel or other programs open the file.
     
  4. Unless you are exporting a fairly small volume of data, export to a file, not clipboard. Clipboard is held in memory until the entire view is read, and records are written to the file as they are retrieved.
     

 Also see KB 1357068 for more information about testing your view.

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