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BPCS/LX Tip of the Week: Downtime Reasons

Anthony Etzel 0 78083 Article rating: No rating

Using SFC600 to enter downtime.

You are tracking downtime and using SFC600 to enter the downtime, but you don’t know where to go to setup downtime reasons. You can set up the downtime reason codes in the INV application by selecting the reason code maintenance program INV140D1.

Once you are in the reason code maintenance program, position to the transaction effect code “D”. Using the transaction effect code “D” you can now setup as many downtime reason codes as needed. The reason code field is alpha numeric, so be creative with your reason code assignments.

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Baan/LN Tip of the Week: Restricted User Access

Kathy Barthelt 0 72207 Article rating: No rating
Administrators are able to restrict access in Baan in several ways – including Companies, Packages, Modules, Sessions, and Tables – using the Authorization capabilities of the system.

In Baan IV, access can be given or denied on a user by user basis.

In Baan V and LN, the Authorization Management System can provide or deny access based upon roles to which users are assigned.

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BPCS/LX Tip of the Week: Work Center - Cells

Anthony Etzel 0 60247 Article rating: No rating
The LMP module (Lean Manufacturing Process) uses work centers but refers to them as production cells.

A cell is one or more work centers that produces an end item. So when a company decides to adopt the lean manufacturing philosophy, the concept of work centers takes on a new meaning.

In lean terms, the work center, or group of work centers, becomes a production cell. In other words, a mini-factory producing end items with similar characteristics.
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Baan/LN Tip of the Week: Closed, Final Closed, Provisional Close – What’s The Difference?

Kathy Barthelt 0 76278 Article rating: No rating

Fiscal, Reporting and Tax Periods can have status Open, Closed or Final Closed. If a period is Closed or Final Closed, you cannot post entries to those periods. If a period is Closed, you can re-set it to Open and post entries. If a period is Final Closed, you cannot post and you cannot set it back to Closed or Open.

A Provisional Close is run at year-end to bring the balances forward for the new year without having to close the previous year. A Provisional Close can be run as many times as you like. After a Final Close, a Provisional Close cannot be run.

The Provisional Close allows you to continue into the new year with all financial reporting and not have to rush with the Final Close until all adjusting entries are made and any final signoffs have been completed.

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Baan/LN Tip of the Week: Product Families

Kathy Barthelt 0 76103 Article rating: No rating

In Baan IVC, plan items on the lowest plan level were automatically actual items (not product families). All plan items on higher plan levels were product families.

The relationship between a product family and items on lower plan levels was defined in a planning bill of material.

In Infor LN, every family item must be defined in the Item Base Data module. A family item can exist on any plan level. The relationship between a family item and items on lower plan levels is defined in aggregation relationships.

Aggregation relationships in Infor LN are much more flexible than the planning bills of material in Baan IV. For example, users can define aggregation relationships between items on the same plan level.

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BPCS/LX Tip of the Week: Create the Master Schedule

Anthony Etzel 0 78485 Article rating: No rating

In the master schedule creation, you have the flexibility to enter a planning start date, or default to the facility planning start date. Infor LX uses the planning date to plan both orders with forecasts and customer orders as demand.You can create your master schedule from the Master Production Scheduling module (MPS).

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No one cares how hard you work! How you can do more, while doing less – know your MO. No one cares how hard you work! How you can do more, while doing less – know your MO.

No one cares how hard you work! How you can do more, while doing less – know your MO.

David Dickson 0 55830 Article rating: 5.0

Would you like me to tell you a dirty, little secret?

No one cares how hard you work. Sure, some people will notice if you seem to be working hard. Your spouse or companion might note that you seem tired, stressed, not as much fun, or just aren’t around much, but they care about the consequences, not how hard you work. Your boss might note happily that his staff seems busy, things are humming along, but you can be sure that when it is review time she gets no credit for “keeps staff very busy.” Nor will the boss give you extra points for being busy. It is about results.

People outside your personal life, beyond your coworkers, might notice that you are hard to contact, perhaps because you are so busy. But trust me, customers do not care why they can’t get hold of you, and they will not see it as a positive.

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Infor and Crossroads RMC are proud to offer a joint webinar on Taking Your Shop Floor Paperless - August 28th, 2014.

Anthony Etzel 0 45521 Article rating: No rating

Taking Your Shop Floor Paperless - Webinar, August 28th, 2014.

During this webinar, you will learn about the Crossroads MES Shop Floor Solution which gives you the ability to do all the following and more:

  • Collect production data
  • Provide real time feedback to your workers and your management team
  • Integrate to machines on your shop floor to pull counts directly
  • Provide up-to-date electronic versions of shop floor paperwork at the work center
  • Monitor your production against your key performance indicators
     

Join us on Thursday, August 28th at 12:00 p.m. Eastern to learn more.

TO REGISTER:

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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.

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Tips: LN | Baan

Kathy Barthelt
/ Categories: Infor LN & Baan Tips, Manufacturing

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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