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Infor LX & BPCS: Why You Need MES

George Moroses 0 26606 Article rating: 5.0

You know your plant better than anyone, and most likely you'd admit that there is room for improvement. Perhaps too many defects are causing costly issues down the road, or maybe your production is behind and orders are shipping late? Do you know what needs to be improved? Do you know about the root causes of the problems that you’re experiencing? Is it fair to say, you don’t know what you don’t know … yet?

MES helps you dig into the problem and better yet, SOLVES the problem!

What Is MES and How Does It Work?

Many companies still enter data manually or share work instructions on paper. Most of them, however, know there’s a better way to organize the mass of activity happening on the plant floor. MES provides visibility to that activity as well as the underlying data and uses that data to improve how that activity is done and makes it repeatable. MES connects multiple sites, integrates with equipment, and raises the effectiveness of business applications all to better optimize operations.

The 3 Pillars of MES:

  1. Establishing a plan and staying on schedule...

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Staff Augmentation: Knowledgeable ERP Staff Quickly

Infor LX, BPCS, Infor M3, Infor LN & Baan

Crossroads RMC 0 14002 Article rating: 5.0

So... your staff is working on a critical project for your top customer, and in order to maintain customer satisfaction and complete the project on-time, you are faced with the immediate need for additional staff. You know that the recruitment process takes way too long, and that it's virtually impossible to find highly qualified employees that won't need lengthy training to bring them up to speed on your ERP system, let alone your business. 

What if... your ERP system is dragging and you know you are behind on installing updates that are likely to improve system performance, but your IT guy is working on something else of importance and can't perform the upgrade?

Either of these scenarios sound familiar? 

Staff Augmentation ensures that...

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Infor LN & Baan Tip: What Data Can Be Archived or Deleted?

Kathy Barthelt 0 52243 Article rating: 5.0

From time to time, your employees need access to information related to logistical and financial transactions that have occurred in the past. Before you archive or delete this information, you must understand the need for this information. Baan and LN contain standard archiving sessions in the major modules that tend to have a high volume of historical transactions. These sessions are designed to copy historical data to the archive company, and then delete the data from the operational company.

You have three options in archiving sessions...

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Infor LX & BPCS Tip: Can’t Select Orders for Pick Release or Pick Confirm?

George Moroses 0 19683 Article rating: 5.0

Orders that are on credit hold, customer hold, user hold, margin hold, credit card hold or pricing hold cannot be selected for Pick Release or Pick Confirm. The ORD952B, Orders Not Selected Report, can be requested at Pick Release or Pick Confirm to list any order that would normally qualify for selection, but has been excluded for other reasons, and to print that reason. ORD952B has been modified to validate the hold status of the original customer order, and to print a reference to the original customer order along with the reason.

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Infor LN & Baan Job Management

Baan IV, Baan V, Infor LN

Kathy Barthelt 0 16335 Article rating: 5.0

You can use job management to schedule jobs based on your organizational requirements. For example, you can schedule jobs at non-peak hours to improve the overall system performance in a heavily loaded environment. A job consists of one or more sessions or shell commands, or both, that run without user interaction. The sessions and shell commands in a job can be started while you are not logged on to the ERP system. You can schedule jobs to start processes periodically, at a defined interval, or immediately. Typically, you use job management for...

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Infor LX & BPCS Tip: Enterprise General Ledger (EGL)

George Moroses 0 27276 Article rating: 5.0

Enterprise General Ledger (EGL) provides audit attributes to track journal entry changes and approvals.

To implement this enhancement, you can request and apply MR 81026.

This enhancement provides audit attributes for the last maintained user, date, time, and approval user, and date, and time on the Financial Journal Entry and Financial Journal Entry Lines. This audit function provides visibility to who and when the journal was last maintained and to who and when the journal was approved.

The programs or areas impacted include:

  • Financial Event
  • Financial Journal Entry
  • Financial Journal Entry Line
  • Financial Journal Entry Detail Line
  • Post Multiple Events
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Kathy Barthelt
/ Categories: Infor LN & Baan Tips, Technology

Infor LN & Baan Tips & Tricks for TECHNOLOGY: Data Sharing Methods (Advantages and Disadvantages)

Depending on the multicompany scenario you choose, an implementation team must decide whether or not tables must be logically linked or if data must be synchronized in another way to achieve availability of data across various companies. 

There are 3 ways in which data may be shared among companies. Here are some advantages and disadvantages of each:

  1. Logical Table Linking - If two companies use the same physical data, the physical table exists, or is used, in only one company: the physical company. Each piece occurs only once: one instance of the same data. If the term logical table linking is used, users from multiple companies use a single physical instance of the data. If the company tables are on the same server, this can be accomplished by logical table linking. Access to specific data can be restricted, if required.

    • Advantages: Logical Table Linking takes place in real time; therefore, the moment a record is created or modified in one company, a record becomes available in all other linked companies as well. The setup and maintenance of logical table linking is easier than the setup and maintenance of data replication. Logical table linking is extremely reliable because this type of linking is independent of network connections and user interventions. 

    • Disadvantages: Table sharing implies that all attributes for a record are the same in all companies. Therefore, suppose you share the item table and, for a particular item in a company, the product class is XXX. In this case, in all other companies, the product class for this item must be XXX as well.

  2. Data Replication - In this situation, each company has exactly the same data, but each company has a unique copy of the data. The same piece of data exists in multiple (physical) places: multiple instances of the same data. The process to copy the data is called data replication.

    • Advantages: Rather than using table sharing by means of the logical linking of tables, you can replicate the content of tables between companies. The advantage is that, on company level, some (non-key) attributes of a record can differ by company. For example, if the bills of materials are replicated instead of shared, for each company, you can link a different warehouse to the bill of material. As a result, the bills of materials can be the same across all companies and only the warehouses differ. Using replication, you can also make only a subset of the records available in other companies. For example, if you replicate items between companies, in a sales company, for example, by means of the item group, you can only make end items available. In addition, you can replicate only a subset of items, for example, depending on the item group. Note that replication also requires that the referenced tables are replicated or shared.

    • Disadvantages: Replication is not in real time, and therefore, for processes that require real-time integrated data as the financial integration processes, replication is not an option. For replication, you also must take into account the sequence in which you replicate. First, you must replicate the child tables and then the parent tables, and therefore first the business partners and then the purchase contracts. During the replication process, the data must be frozen. This point is of particular importance if the replication process takes a lot of time.

  3. Manual Syncronization - If only a small number of records are the same between some companies, you can enter, maintain, and keep the records synchronized manually. Note that the more dynamic data is, the more difficult this process is. This solution is strictly procedural. Therefore, depending on the discipline of the users, the solution is error sensitive: data can be forgotten, updated too late, or typing errors may occur.

  • Advantages - The main advantage is the flexibility so that only the data that really must be shared can be kept synchronized. By manually keeping data synchronized, not all attributes of a record need to have the same value.

  • Disadvantages - The main disadvantage is that this method depends on user interaction. Therefore, the method depends on the user’s time - because the method is not a real time procedure and the user may forget to update the data - and users can make mistakes.

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Kathy Barthelt

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