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.

The system supports four levels of inventory. You can view summaries of stock at each level through the Material Status Inquiry program or through reports.

Below are the four levels:

▪  Item

▪  Item + warehouse

▪  Item + warehouse + location

▪  Item + warehouse + location + lot

The lot number level and/or container of inventory can cross multiple warehouses and locations. For example, item + lot or item + lot + container. Locations exist within warehouses. There is no limit on the number of warehouses, locations, or lots that you can assign to an item.

Four fields in the Item/Warehouse record (IIW file) affect the disposition of the

pallet status.

1.  Goods Receiving Code: You define these codes in Goods Receiving Maintenance (WHM130). The codes control whether or not the stock passes through inspection, what percentage, or quantity of a delivery to inspect, and the number of quarantine days, if any.

2.  Inspection Zone/Inspection Location: Either the Inspection Zone or the Inspection Location must be entered on the Item/Warehouse Master Maintenance screen WHM150D2-01.

Infor LX remembers certain key values, such as item number, salesperson,

or container, in your workstation memory as you process information in certain

programs. You can assign one of the following values to each field:

0  -Infor LX automatically retrieves this value from remember key memory. Infor LX updates this value on a continual basis.

1  -Infor LX automatically retrieves the value you specify in Display Remembered Keys, SYS080. It does not update the value from any other program.

2  -Infor LX does not retrieve or update remembered key fields. Use the Display Remembered Keys program, SYS080, to set up remembered keys.

Two big sources of inefficiencies in manufacturing are paper and spreadsheets. I know that you love ‘em, but they are the cause of more problems than you probably realize. Think of how long it takes you to get paper based data into the hands of those who can do something valuable with the data. Are you capturing all of the information correctly? Timely? What about those spreadsheets? Can everyone access that information across your organization? Is that data married with all of the related data regarding your operations to give your executive and middle management the information they need when they need it?

Make your shop floor paperless and put in place systems that talk to one another and automatically pull and push data to and from your ERP so that you can look in one place for all the information you need to run your business effectively.

If you’re not doing this today, you might as well be burning money.

Ok… so you want to know the status of a specific shop order that was released two days ago.

What do you do?

It’s a sure bet that you have a manager, supervisor, or planner who can walk the floor and find the order at whatever work center it happens to be at. He/she can then answer “what operations have been completed and how many were completed?” All this requires leg work, and of course, a fair amount of time.

Now, if you have setup your BPCS master files properly, and you report transaction activity, you should be able to get those shop order statuses much faster using the SFC300 Shop Order Inquiry Screen.

At your fingertips you can see:

• Release date & due date
• How many hours remain in total and at each operation
• The quantity required, what was finished and the remaining quantity
• What components (materials) have been issued

Pretty basic information, right? Are you getting what you need to know? If not, then you may want to reexamine how your BPCS files are setup and what transactions along with their frequency are captured.

In Infor LX, there are two ways to enter indirect labor. You can use either SFC600 or SFC650.
 

1. If you use SFC600 and enter a reason code for the indirect labor, the reason you entered is written to the Labor Ticket file.
2. If you use SFC650 and enter a reason code for the indirect, the reason code is not written to the labor Ticket file.

In either case, the reason code is not validated from the transaction file because there is no indirect transaction code. The indirect code that can be setup is machine downtime. If you need to validate and track indirect by reason and validate the reason code, then you may want to explore an MES solution that works with Infor LX.