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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

Infor LX & BPCS: Waste in Manufacturing

George Moroses 0 27384 Article rating: 5.0

What if you could eliminate waste and optimize your business for $5/day?

Crossroads MES (Manufacturing Execution System) captures all of your ERP production data and harnesses the power of that data to increase your team’s efficiency by providing the right information at the right time to the right people. 

Reducing waste enables manufacturers to save money and increase productivity.
Where is the waste happening in your processes? How often is your department spending time and resources on the following tasks?

Infor LX & BPCS Tip: Have you considered WebTop?

George Moroses 0 21553 Article rating: 5.0

WebTop release 4.8 is NOW AVAILABLE for Infor LX versions 8.3.5 and 8.4.x.

WebTop is a web interface based on green screen code automatically generated using a tool called 'WebTop Studio'. The process of generating the web interface is referred to as "Weblication".

Infor is focused on modernizing and web-enabling Infor LX and this release provides significant improvements to the web-based user experience.
Key features:

  • Grid decorators for advanced customization

Planning for Growth – What you need to do first to be successful

Infor LX | BPCS | Infor LN | Baan

Crossroads RMC 0 12680 Article rating: 5.0

As your business experiences growth or aims to do more with less, optimizing your resources becomes crucial. To achieve growth, it's essential to leverage your people, processes, and products effectively. You are the experts on your products, and we covered Reskilling and Upskilling Your Staff on June 21, so let's focus on the processes that drive your business forward.

  1. Analyze your ERP system and other software:...

Infor LN & Baan Tip: Cash Flow Functionality and Setup

Kathy Barthelt 0 53060 Article rating: 5.0

A cash flow statement provides a historical view of the movement of cash within a company. This statement offers an overview of both the origins and destinations of cash, aiding management in evaluating the company's ability to fulfill short-term financial obligations. To differentiate between various sources and uses of cash, reason codes can be utilized. When interacting with cash transactions in relevant sessions, users have the option to input or review the corresponding cash flow reason. The cash flow statement organizes cash transactions based on these reasons. LN software system maintains year-specific opening balances for cash flow transactions. Should the need arise, users can manually input opening balances in the Opening Balance Cash Flow (tfgld2118m000) session.

To set up the cash flow statement, use the following sequence of sessions:...

ERP & the Importance of Accuracy & Productivity

Infor LN & Baan

Kathy Barthelt 0 15874 Article rating: 5.0

If you don't think accuracy and productivity are important, you need to take a hard look at HOW you’re running your ERP system.

  • Have you eliminated large amounts of data entry?
  • Is your data error-free at month's end?
  • Do all of your systems talk to one another?

If the answer is no, Crossroads RMC can improve accuracy and productivity with system integration and/or automation.

Too expensive you say? Too time-consuming and way too much effort to make it happen? Not necessarily... 

Effective September 30, 2023, IBM® will end support of the IBM i operating system 7.3

AND Infor will no longer support LX and related products on IBM i 7.3 as of June 1, 2024

Crossroads RMC 0 13844 Article rating: 5.0

THE CLOCK is T I C K I N G ... 

MARK YOUR CALENDARS!
Effective September 30, 2023, IBM® will end support of the IBM i operating system 7.3  AND  in line with IBM’s support policy, Infor will no longer support LX and related products on IBM i 7.3 after May 31, 2024.

All Infor LX releases, patches, and related solutions will be...

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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.

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.

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Kathy Barthelt

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