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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 Day: Inventory Management

Anthony Etzel 0 73212 Article rating: No rating

Establishing the Quantity On-Hand and the Quantity Available.

LX maintains buckets for information associated with the following inventory transactions for each item:

  • Opening Balance
  • Issues
  • Receipts
  • Adjustments
  • Allocations for the Customer
  • Allocations for Manufacturing


The on hand quantity does not include any allocations. To arrive at the on hand quantity, start with the opening balance, less any issues, plus any receipts, then add or subtract any adjustments. Available inventory is the on-hand less any allocations.

 

 

Baan/LN Tip of the Day: Chart of Accounts

Kathy Barthelt 0 106301 Article rating: No rating

Zero sublevel accounts are posting level accounts. All others are parent accounts. Once the balances have been updated in the child ledger accounts, the parents are automatically updated.

Inquiries and reports can be printed or displayed either by child accounts or by parent accounts. On line drill-down is possible from either child or parent.

BPCS/LX Tip of the Day: Cycle Counting Part 2

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Understanding: The Cycle Count Alternative

The best way to cycle count is to count the same number of items each day and at the same time each day. The goal is to count your “A” items 4 times a year. The “A” items should be those item that are about 80% of the total inventory value and 20% of the total items. Consider creating your own cycle count schedule then instead of using the cycle count transaction, use the inventory adjustment transaction. The item balance is changed at the time the transaction is keyed. The transaction list can be used for the reconciliation process.

Baan/LN Tip of the Day: Company Calendar

Kathy Barthelt 0 102994 Article rating: 5.0

Baan uses the company calendar in the following modules to determine the start and end dates for planned orders:

  • Master Production Scheduling
  • Material Requirements Planning
  • Capacity Requirements Planning
    (All three combined in a single planning module for Baan V and LN)
  • Shop Floor Control

The calendar provides the valid working days, number of shifts per day and the number of hours in a day.

Baan allows for a single calendar for the whole company or for a calendar for each work center.

BPCS/LX Tip of the Week: Cycle Counting Part 1

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Understanding: The Cycle Count Transaction

If you rely on BPCS to provide you with a cycle count list, the number of items could vary from day to day from a few items to count, to several. So the person doing the cycle counting may spend a few minutes to a few hours counting items. After the cycle count is complete, the balances are not changed until the reconciliation is complete. This process could take some time before the balances are changed.

The cycle count transaction process is similar to the physical inventory transaction process.

Baan/LN Tip of the Week: GRINYA

Kathy Barthelt 0 108920 Article rating: 3.0
GRINYA is one of the more complex issues in ERP Finance. GRINYA is the tracking via ledger account of the value of items received on a purchase order that have not been matched to a supplier invoice.

Baan solutions for Baan IV and V were incomplete. To take full advantage of the current GRINYA reconciliation process, check Infor solution #107147, which contains the GRINYA user manual and a link to download the software for your version of Baan. For ERP LN, look at Document Code U8942C US.

It is called User Guide for Reconciliation and Analysis. If you are not running the latest GRINYA solutions, patching will require a good amount of time in filling the Interim tables this solution runs from. Infor has posted several procedural write ups, so check the Support Site and read up before tackling this for the first time.

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

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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.
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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

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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