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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: Optionally Include Tax Amounts In Order Balance

Kathy Barthelt 0 169046 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 Week: Top Down Shop Order Schedule

Anthony Etzel 0 76007 Article rating: No rating

In ERP LX, this function is called Backward Scheduling. This is a simple, easy way to create and release shop orders associated with the end item.

The result is a shop calendar with the associated order start dates. Setting up ERP LX properly with correct Queue Times, Setup and Run Times, along with Move Times, will result in accurate shop order start dates.

Baan/LN Tip of the Week: Back Dating Cycling Counting Orders

Kathy Barthelt 0 103994 Article rating: No rating

Cycle Count Orders cannot be directly “back dated” in Baan IV, Baan V or LN, however, there are some work-arounds.

In Baan IV you can do an inventory adjustment and back date. Just set all dates on the adjustment to the date you want and Baan will post the adjustment in that period.

In LN you can do a Cycle Count/ Adjustment and again back date and Baan will post to that period.

 

Unfortunately, there is no work-around for Baan V.

BPCS/LX Tip of the Day: Inventory Management

Anthony Etzel 0 74027 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 107131 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

Anthony Etzel 0 75447 Article rating: No rating

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 103823 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

Anthony Etzel 0 82299 Article rating: No rating

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.

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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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Kathy Barthelt

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