Please Wait a Moment
X

Infor LX Tips, Infor LN Tips, BPCS Tips, Baan Tips, Infor M3 Tips & Infor ERP News

Crossroads Connections

Infor ERP Tips & News from the Experts

Infor LX | Infor LN | BPCS | Baan | Infor M3

BPCS/LX Tip of the Week: Uses for LX Bill of Material

Anthony Etzel 0 89120 Article rating: No rating
In Infor LX, based on how your items are set up and on how you structure the Bill of Material, the following are some usages of a bill of material by functioning area:

  • Engineering & QA – change control, product design and specifications
  • Manufacturing – build instructions , material pick lists
  • Accounting – product costing
  • Materials Inventory – material and inventory planning
  • Sales – customer order processing
  • Production Scheduling – item scheduling (also a component of an MES solution)

Baan/LN Tip of the Week: Optionally Include Tax Amounts In Order Balance

Kathy Barthelt 0 69917 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.

Why Your Operation Doesn’t Stand a Chance in Hell of Going From Good to Great (and What to do About it)

David Dickson 0 110455 Article rating: 5.0

You dream of building a manufacturing powerhouse.

An operation with loads of throughput, profit, and efficiency in every process to make your products the best quality you can make them.

You want to be as successful as the factories and companies they write about in books like  Good to Great, changing your operation, and even motivating and inspiring your teams to do so too.

But you know you haven’t got a chance in hell of seeing that kind of success unless you can truly change and make significant differences over the long haul.

Of course, the big question is How? 

BPCS/LX Tip of the Week: Indirect Labor Reporting

Anthony Etzel 0 79467 Article rating: No rating
In the Shop Floor Control Module, you have the ability to key in both direct labor and indirect labor. However you want to establish specific types (reasons) for the indirect labor. The SFC600 labor entry program shows a reason code field, but it is designed for reject quantity and machine downtime reasons, not indirect labor reasons.

There is a way around this. With an MES solution you have the ability to setup and report indirect time against a specific reason code.

Baan/LN Tip of the Week: Configuring Items in Infor LN

Kathy Barthelt 0 86438 Article rating: No rating

In Infor LN, the configuration of a generic item not always results into a customized item. Configured items can now be customized items as well as standard items. If users configure items without PCS projects, standard items are generated instead of customized items.

Baan/LN Tip of the Week: Optionally Include Tax Amounts In Order Balance

Kathy Barthelt 0 75920 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: Shop Order Status

Anthony Etzel 0 82208 Article rating: No rating

You can see the status of the Shop Order when using SFC300 Shop Order Inquiry. You want to be sure that your shop orders are at the correct status in order to report against them.

The following are the shop order status codes:

04 = The Shop order has been entered.

05 = The Shop order has been released and printed.

14 = The Shop order has been released, but not printed. If a shop order is at this status, you have released it and it is not printed due to a system failure, or the order has been put on hold.

XX = The Shop order is closed.

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

Anthony Etzel 0 83940 Article rating: 4.0
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.
First118119120121123125126127Last

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.

Previous Article Infor LN & Baan Tip of the Week: Limitations of Customer Defined Fields (CDFs)
Next Article Infor LN & Baan Tip: Broadcast message to users
Print
66209 Rate this article:
5.0
Kathy Barthelt

Kathy BartheltKathy Barthelt

Other posts by Kathy Barthelt

Contact author

x

Categories