The best way is to have the approved alternate item appear on the Bill of Material just after the standard item with a zero required quantity. Now the alternate item will appear on the Shop Order. So, if the standard item is not available, the alternate item can be issued to the shop order.

When the shop order is closed out, one item will have an unfavorable variance while the other shows a favorable variance. This is an easy way to provide alternate items provided engineering approves and they are part of the Bill of Material.

If Location Control is turned on in Baan IV, then inventory should never be negative.

If Location Control is not turned on in Baan IV, and the parameter “Negative Inventory Allowed” in INV Parameters is set to “NO”, then inventory should never be negative.

In Baan V and LN, the parameters in Inventory Handling Parameters determine whether you can have negative inventory. If these parameters are set to “NO”, then inventory should never be negative.

When to use a user defined inventory transaction

ERP LX (BPCS) provides you with the flexibility to create inventory transactions without program modifications. The typical transaction types are defined with effects set on how the transaction will impact inventory balances.

Perhaps you want to process a customer return and don’t want to the inventory to be impacted. You can create a user define transaction effect to allow the customer receipt and not update the inventory balance.

Here are some issues that you might run into if you stay on an old porting set too long:

• Incompatibility because of operating system patches
• Printing issues because of out-of-date libraries
• Potential performance issues if binaries are not updated
• Updating third-party products may not be possible because of dependencies
• Limited support from Infor
• Issues with updating database software/patches because of dependencies (if the database is also running on the same server as the application)

Need help getting on a newer porting set? Let us know! We’d be happy to help.

Crossroads RMC is pleased to announce the availability of Crossroads MES, V11 for Windows 10. Any customers wishing to upgrade from a previous version to V11 can do so by contacting  support@crossroadsrmc.com. As previously announced, Crossroads MES  is also compatible with tablet PCs running Windows 8.1. Tablet PCs are becoming the clipboard replacement for supervisors and managers to monitor what’s happening on the shop floor.

The shop order release date is the date that the shop order is scheduled to be released for production.

If you want to use the backward schedule method, make sure the release date is blank and the due date is maintained.

If you maintain the quantity on the shop order and the due date is prior to the system date, the due date and the release date are the same.

In Baan IV, plan items exist within the context of a plan code. A plan code includes only items of the MPS Item item type. Planned orders are independent of a plan code. Users can compare plan codes by means of the Plan Code Performance Comparison (cprmp4504m000) session.

The scenario concept in Infor LN replaces the plan code concept in Baan IV.

In Infor LN, the basic data for plan items is the same for all scenarios. However, users maintain not only the master plan within a scenario, but the planned orders as well.

For example, for each scenario, Users can specify:

• Special demand for an item.
• The availability of resources (in the Scenario – Availabilities (cprpd4160m000) session).
• The sourcing strategies and supply strategies.

Users can compare scenarios by means of the Performance Indicators (cprao2201s000) session.

If the item being received needs to be inspected prior to being available for use, there are two schools of thought.

The first is to receive the item to a QC hold location. The downside is the item will show up in on hand inventory.

A better method would be to do a PO receipt to inspection. Both Inv500 and Pur550 support this method. Now you have received the item without showing it in inventory. Only the PO quantity in inspection is updated. This method also allows you to create an Inspection Dispatch Report. After the QC process for the item is complete, then the transaction Receipt from Inspection to Stock is processed. That transaction then updates the PO quantity received field and the Item on hand field in inventory.