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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 LN & Baan Manufacturing Tip: All About Routings

Kathy Barthelt 0 65004 Article rating: 4.0

The planning data for the method of manufacturing is defined in Routing. A routing consists of operations, with each operation identifying the last to be carried out in a work center and/or on a certain machine defined for a specific site.

Routings can be as follows:

  • Standard Routing - A generic routing that can be attached to multiple items
  • Item specific - A routing that is applied to one item
  • Network routing - A routing containing sequentially ordered operations and parallel operations
  • Order quantity dependent routing - A routing that is defined for a specific quantity of items

You use the Routing module to record routings for manufactured items. You can define the following:

Infor LX & BPCS Manufacturing Tip: Backward Scheduling

George Moroses 0 26912 Article rating: 5.0

Operations are automatically backward scheduled at shop order release time. The backward scheduling algorithm starts with the shop order due date and schedules each operation based upon the standard move and queue times in the routings and the number of days the job is expected to run at standard. The system calculates and stores the operation scheduled start date. The dates may be modified by the shop order maintenance program. The number of days that a job is expected to run an operation is dependent upon the available capacity for that work center and the total hours scheduled for that operation.

The backward scheduling algorithm also considers...

Infor LX & BPCS Tip: What is IDF and how could it make my life easier?

George Moroses 0 28477 Article rating: 5.0

The Infor Development Framework (IDF) re-architects the way a user interacts with the application. IDF provides an efficient, task-oriented process to view application information that is contained within Infor LX. IDF enables users to configure their view of the application data without modifying the core application and its supportability.

The examples below describe how users can configure their display of data and maximize overall productivity:

  • Arrange application information into multiple groupings and sequences that make sense for the job.
  • Hide information that does not apply to a particular job or task.
  • Filter records to show only the information that applies to the job or task that the user is performing.
  • Customize the information for an individual user, for a group of users, or for all users.
     

Infor LN & Baan Tip: Deleting Records

Kathy Barthelt 0 66352 Article rating: 5.0

To improve performance and reduce database growth, deleting records is highly effective. The disadvantage of deleting records is that data is no longer available. Usually, however, not all records need to be saved. For example, line activities are stored by warehouse. Normally, you do not need to keep these records. Therefore, after closing a warehouse order, line activities can be removed. The User's Guide for ERP LN Archiving and the corresponding Baan IV/V Guides describe several sessions you can use to delete old data. Other data such as items and business partners can be reviewed once in a while, after which you can delete the data you no longer need. For every order and contract table, a session is available to archive and delete old orders. In these sessions, you can specify several characteristics to select the orders to be removed, such as date or status. Run these sessions on a regular basis.

Are ERP System Blockages Thwarting Your Progress?

Kathy Barthelt 0 26734 Article rating: 5.0

After a week of blocking the Suez Canal, the now-famous cargo ship, Ever Given has been freed from the 27,000 cubic meters of sand and mud that were surrounding the ship. Supply chains are flowing again. I for one am very glad to hear that the ship has been freed since coffee, toilet paper and a whole host of other items were being held up! In all seriousness, it was and is a crisis that will have ripple effects on the global economy.

As I often do, I started to relate this crisis to the world of ERP that we live in. Although we are not responsible for dealing with a situation like what happened in the Suez Canal, we all deal with problems in our jobs every day. Some of these problems are small, and some are not so small. Some problems are caused by human error, some by prevailing winds that blow us in a particular direction, and some by circumstances out of our control. It is what we do about the problems we encounter that make all the difference. We could bury our heads and hope the problems somehow go away on their own, or we can take action and do something to bring about the change necessary to get past the blockage.

I see “blockages” every day in working with my customers. Sometimes it is a lack of understanding of best practices in a given department, or a reliance on tribal knowledge that determines how and why something is done in the system, or inefficient manual processes destroying a company’s efficiency, or hundreds (or thousands) of customizations standing in the way of an upgrade, or employees labeling an ERP system as “no longer a fit” when their company is only using 10% of the available functionality in the system.

So, maybe today we could focus on what it would take to remove the “blockage” that we have in our way. What benefits could we realize if we worked together to bring about incremental change? Could we actually get that upgrade done? Could we start operating based on industry-leading best practices? Could we increase our market share? Could we decrease our costs and boost our revenue? All of this is possible.

Contact me today so that we can begin to work together to solve the problems that stand in the way of your progress.

solutions@crossroadsrmc.com or 800.762.2077

Infor LN & Baan Tip: Broadcast message to users

Kathy Barthelt 0 66570 Article rating: 5.0

Did you know that you can send a broadcast message to users on the system? This is especially useful if you need users to exit their sessions, or in the event of system maintenance.   

  • For Baan IV users, see KB 22869250
  • For LN users, see KB 1830758

Infor LX & BPCS Tip: Product interface list, SYS635D

George Moroses 0 28349 Article rating: 5.0

Did you know?  Product interface list, SYS635D

This program creates a report that contains all interface program call records that were created for the Infor LX programs specified in the range on this screen. The report contains a line for each record found. The line displays the following information:

  • The name of an Infor LX program that contains a user exit to an add-on program
  • The interface point in the Infor LX program, that is, an identifier of the point in the program code where the user exit is requested
  • The execution sequence number of the record, because more than one add-on program can exist that can run from the same interface point
  • The add-on program to call at the interface point. The Add-on Product Interface file, ZXI, stores the records.

Access: Menu SYS

Infor LX & BPCS Finance Tip of the Week: Invoice Level Inquiries – ACR300D7

George Moroses 0 31621 Article rating: 5.0

Use the Invoice Level Inquiries program, ACR300D7, to perform online customer account receivable inquiries and to perform write-off transactions on open invoices. The inquiries display customer master file and credit information, open and closed invoices, debits, credits, payments, and dunning statuses. Additional detail information is available, such as original prefix and document number, customer order number, customer purchase order number, reason codes, and currency.

You can view closed items for a period specified in Transaction History System Parameters, SYS824D-01.

Open items are aged in one of five user-defined aging periods as defined in Accounts Receivable Parameters, ACR820D-01.

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Tips:  LX | BPCS | M3

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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