Infor ERP Tips and Infor ERP News for Infor LX, BPCS, Infor ERP LX, Infor LN, Infor ERP LN, Baan, Infor M3, and Movex

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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 Day: Release Commissions/Rebates to Invoicing

Kathy Barthelt 0 3103 Article rating: No rating

In Baan IV, this session is called Release Commissions/Rebates to Invoicing (tdcms2201m000) and is used to set the status of the commissions/rebates to Reserved, or Closed. In Infor LN, this session is only used to set the status to  Closed. Users can reserve commissions/rebates in the Reservation and Approval of Reserved Commissions/Rebates (tdcms2202m000) session. In addition, the following fields are added to the Release Commissions/Rebates to Invoicing (tdcms2201m000) session:

▪ Commissions to Accounts Payable

▪ Rebates to Central Invoicing

BPCS/LX Tip of the Day: How Does LX Fit in With Just-In-Time?

Anthony Etzel 0 364 Article rating: No rating

For years, repetitive manufacturing industries have been applying many of the principles in Just-in-Time philosophy. They have established balanced production lines that depend on a steady flow of material to each work station. They schedule production in daily or weekly rates rather than in discrete shop order lots. They track finished inventory by work center rather than by job. They typically backflush stock balances (decrement stock balances upon completion of specific manufacturing steps rather than issued at the beginning of each production run).

 

Costing is typically based upon a daily rate or hourly rate rather than being associated with specific shop orders. 

 

Repetitive manufacturers use MRP II software adaptable to their environments

in the following key areas:


 Product definition

 Inventory tracking

 MRP/Master Scheduling

 Shop Floor Control

 Purchasing

 Costing

BPCS/LX Tip of the Day: What is Just-In-Time?

Anthony Etzel 0 313 Article rating: No rating

Just-in-Time (JIT) is a management philosophy that focuses on minimizing the resources necessary to add value to your products and to operate your factory in ways that eliminate waste. Resources are labor, materials, equipment, space, and time. Waste is anything that does not add value to your products. Moving work-in-process from place to place, stacking and sorting, investing capital in large work-in-process and raw material inventories, inspecting materials at your vendors' sites, and tying up warehouse space with finished goods are all activities that add cost, not value, to your products. 

JIT is a process that reduces lead time. JIT does not replace an MRP, an inventory program, a scheduling technique to bypass your Master Schedule, or a materials management project. JIT is the never-ending commitment of everyone, from top management to your workers on the floor, to maximize your effectiveness through continuous, incremental improvements.

Baan/LN Tip of the Day: Configuring Items

Kathy Barthelt 0 2237 Article rating: No rating

In 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.

 

The sessions for generating product variant structures for sales quotations and sales orders are moved from the Product Configuration module in Manufacturing to the Sales Control module in LN. The following new sessions are available in Sales Control:

▪ Generate (Budget) Structure for Sales Quotations (tdsls1201m100).

▪ Generate (Project) Structure for Sales Orders (tdsls4244m000)

BPCS/LX Tip of the Day: Shop Order Control

Anthony Etzel 0 443 Article rating: No rating

To create and maintain shop orders use SFC500 Shop Order Entry Maintenance. These orders use the standard bill of material (BOM) as the base list of components. You can also set up standard routings, which list the operations,

or work steps, involved in manufacturing.

 

To release shop orders, use the Shop Order Release program, SFC505. Infor ERP LX groups shop orders by user ID for batch processing. Use Shop Packet Print, SFC520, to print the shop orders that you select. SFC530 allows you to create multi-level shop orders to link shop orders together with a common end item parent. Linking multiple shop orders together for a final assembly product provides support for make-to-order and engineer-to-order manufacturing environments which need to schedule these multiple orders together or as a vertical slice in the production schedule.

 

You can make changes to shop orders after you print them. Use Shop Order Entry/Maintenance, SFC500, to update the shop orders. Changes are immediately visible on the inquiry screens for SFC300 and SFC350. To reprint the shop packet, use Reprint Shop Packet, SFC560.

Baan/LN Tip of the Day: Multi-Company Service

Kathy Barthelt 0 240 Article rating: No rating

Service departments and warehouses that contain spare parts and components used for service and maintenance belong to enterprise units. To perform separate financial accounting for the service departments and their warehouses, you can assign service departments and warehouses to enterprise units that are linked to different financial companies.

 

If material, labor, or other costs are transferred between service departments and warehouses, or from one service department to another (in the case of internal subcontracting for depot repair), LN can perform the invoicing between these departments and warehouses. In the Enterprise Modeling Management module, you can define internal trade relationships with invoicing between various entities.

 

You can also record and process service operations in a multi-logistic company environment.

BPCS/LX Tip of the Day: Material Requirement Dates and Lead Time Offsets in MRP

Anthony Etzel 0 322 Article rating: No rating

The system automatically performs offsets for requirements dates for components in the MPS/MRP calculations. It also performs offsets for calculation of material need dates at the time that shop orders are released.


To calculate the offset, the system takes the parent lead time from the Item 
Master and adjusts it by the bill of materials offset (plus or minus) for the component. This gives the lead time days for that specific component. The system starts with the due date of the parent and backs up and skips all non-work days in the shop calendar.


Note that the offset calculation uses only calendar records that have a blank 
work center (the calendar record applies to all work centers). See the information for the Shop Calendar Maintenance program SFC140, in your Shop Floor Control documentation for shop calendar details.

Baan/LN Tip of the Day: Multi-Company Taxation – LN

Kathy Barthelt 0 278 Article rating: No rating
Tax reporting is part of the financial accounting and is restricted to one country. Therefore, the LN tax handling in a multi-company structure is similar to the tax handling in a single company environment.

Tax handling in LN includes the following:

· Tax registration

For tax registration, you define the various tax details for each country in the Taxation module. In the General Ledger module of Financials, you specify the ledger accounts for the tax amounts separately for each financial company. LN can post the tax amounts calculated for a tax code to different ledger accounts in the individual financial companies, for example, in a single logistic, multi-financial company structure.
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Tips:  LX | BPCS | M3

Tips: LN | Baan

It’s NOT All About the Money, Money, Money… Motivating Employees in the New Year!

Have you ever thought about what really motivates your employees?

It’s not about the almighty dollar, you know. Ok, ok…..money doesn’t hurt, but money alone doesn’t keep most people in their jobs. You actually need to motivate your employees to keep them showing up, mentally, and physically. Employees that don’t feel motivated are probably underperforming, and that means you’re losing money.

Ask yourself these questions about your employees:

  • Are they happy…..YES….HAPPY! Do they enjoy coming to work every day?
  • Do they feel challenged, or do they feel demeaned?
  • Are they sinking, or are they swimming?
  • Do they have the right tools in their arsenal to battle the giants?
  • Where’s the reward?

Happiness - I’ve worked with manufacturers for almost 20 years now, and I’ve seen employees who are fulfilled and very happy in their jobs, and employees who count the seconds until they leave each day. Happiness is a choice, but certainly, you as an employer can have a big impact on how happy your employees are. Happiness can be found when employees feel that what they do has a purpose. Do they understand that the part that they are making is used in the production of sophisticated medical equipment that saves lives? Or protects families from getting hurt in a car accident? Having the end customer in mind gives purpose to their work. Having a purpose can make people happy.  

Challenge – Are your employees given any incentive for process improvement? You are not blessed with the perfect mind. All brilliant ideas do not come from you. The lowest man/woman on the totem pole may have the next best idea for your business. Encourage them to bring those ideas forward. Do they have a path for growth that is clearly defined? If you’re never looking for more from your employees, they probably won’t give it to you.

Sink or Swim - When an employee makes a mistake, do you reprimand or punish them? Instead, how about teaching them? Explain to them how things could be done differently next time and provide some guidance and reassurance that they can and will do better.  A pat on the back when they do it right the second time doesn’t hurt either.

Tools – Have you thought about what you need to provide for your employees to make them successful? Do they need training? Or maybe retraining? Would they benefit from being paired with a mentor? How about their physical tools? Is the machinery and software up to snuff? Are they being held back by outdated software and manual processes?

Reward – So, yes, you need to pay your employees fairly, but there are more rewards to be had. Increased responsibility is a great one (make sure you give them the title that goes with it). Designate an employee of the month and announce their great work to everyone in the company. Give employees an opportunity to attend a conference or a workshop which will benefit them and the company. Send a hard-working employee a handwritten note letting them know that you noticed their efforts.  Reward the little things and boost morale.

Sorry, I know this is a lot, but employee motivation is YOUR problem, or shall I say… your opportunity to make them happy and more productive. 

Here are 5 ways you can motivate your employees to give their best every day:

1. Train Your Employees

2. Give Your Employees the Right Tools

3. Automate Processes

4. Give Your Employees Real-Time Feedback

5. Provide Incentives to Do More

For more ideas, read this article from the Harvard Business Review https://hbr.org/2016/01/to-motivate-employees-do-3-things-well.
 

Can you do it? Of course, you can! You don’t have to do it all by yourself, however. Companies like Crossroads RMC can assist. We provide training services that can be completely tailored to your business. We also provide software solutions to help automate many of your manual processes, and dashboard solutions to provide real-time feedback on performance.

If you choose to do this, the benefits to your company will be amazing. You will have a happy, loyal, and prepared workforce, ready to come to work each day to make the company wildly successful. Something to think about as we start a new year.

I’m looking forward to working with you to make the new year great!
 

About the author:
 



Kathy Barthelt is the vice president of  Crossroads RMC, which helps optimize manufacturing systems. She cares deeply about bringing the human side into manufacturing. One can often find her writing and speaking about stress and shop floor workers, job skill, or employee motivation and production improvement. You can find even more insights from her past blog posts.

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