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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: What are your production orders telling you?

Kathy Barthelt 0 29399 Article rating: 5.0

Measure what you want to improve.

Six simple words, but put together they convey a powerful concept that can transform manufacturing companies. It’s a basic concept that’s hard to argue with: Collect data, see where the data leads you, and make changes that have a positive impact on the data. Repeat often.

If your company is manufacturing a product, you’re more than likely creating manufacturing variances. These variances tell managers where the company is not performing to the standards that were created and agreed to by those responsible in the Engineering, Finance, or Production Departments. There is almost a 100% chance you are creating either favorable or unfavorable manufacturing variances and, quite frankly, none of the variances will ever be favorable because the company is either over-costing or under-costing the production parts.

The data is all there within your ERP system… or at least it should be… provided that you are not tracking production information outside of your ERP system in a spreadsheet.

Analyzing your production orders can help you track down:

Infor LN & Baan Tip: MPS planned vs. MRP planned

Kathy Barthelt 0 64896 Article rating: 3.8

What items should be MPS planned, and what items should be MRP planned…

Master Scheduled Items are those items that are finished goods, or service items, that receive their requirements either specifically from Independent demand, or both Dependent and Independent demand.

  • Independent Demand is...

Get Tax Compliance Right in 2021!

Webinar: February 9, 2021 1:00 PM CST / 2:00 PM EST

Crossroads RMC 0 28792 Article rating: 5.0

We brought in our partners at Avalara to make sure you are up-to-speed on recent sales and use tax changes and ready for those to come in 2021. We’ll cover:

  • The impact of COVID-19 in 2020 and its influence on 2021
  • Why understanding economic nexus and its triggers is more important now than ever
  • New tax obligations resulting from increased marketplace sales
  • The international market and changes to cross-border e-commerce compliance
  • Answers to your questions – live!

Date/Time: February 9, 2021 at 11 AM PST / 1 PM CST / 2 PM EST
Duration: 45 minutes
Cost: Free!

Don’t miss this in-depth review of the 2020 sales tax changes you need to know about in order to have a successful 2021.

Register Today>

What is manual tax compliance costing your business?

Crossroads RMC 0 25479 Article rating: 5.0

Why automate tax compliance?
The better question is: Why burden your business with something so complex and tedious when it can be solved with software in the cloud?

Decrease the high cost and drain on your business
Employee time and expertise are expensive

Without automation, your tax professionals are probably buried in endless tasks that could be offloaded. Every hour spent on tax management is an hour lost on other (more important) parts of your business.

Manual Vs. Automated Tax Management Calculator>

Contact Crossroads RMC to learn how the Avalara - AvaTax integration can benefit your company. 800.762.2077​

What are the biggest struggles manufacturers face with regard to tax compliance?

George Moroses 0 30085 Article rating: 5.0
  • Tracking thousands of SKU numbers that cross taxability rules or vary in taxability based on state
  • Getting the rates right and filing the reports correctly
  • Surviving an audit (which in this business is inevitable)
  • Keeping track of all the smaller jurisdictions and their special districts
  • Ensuring a seamless process that is audit-able
  • Figuring out what is taxable and what isn’t
  • Tracking use tax

As with other manufacturing processes, having a repeatable, consistent process with sales and use tax compliance means automation. Automating sales and use tax compliance with a solution that ensures that consistent, accurate process means a solution that delivers:...

Infor LX & BPCS: What are your production orders telling you?

George Moroses 0 29945 Article rating: 5.0

Measure what you want to improve.

Six simple words, but put together they convey a powerful concept that can transform manufacturing companies. It’s a basic concept that’s hard to argue with: Collect data, see where the data leads you, and make changes that have a positive impact on the data. Repeat often.

If your company is manufacturing a product, you’re more than likely creating manufacturing variances. These variances tell managers...

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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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