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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 Tip of the Week: How do I restrict over-shipments to customers - LX 8.4?

George Moroses 0 1289 Article rating: 5.0

This enhancement prevents over-allocations and resulting overshipments to customers. Attempted over-shipments can present an error message to the user, or there is an option to automatically adjust the user’s request to the allowed quantity.

Since over-shipments result from over-allocations, Infor LX provides an optional validation during the four processes where a user can attempt to over-allocate. Note: Infor LX never over-allocates or over-ships; this always results from a user’s action. This enhancement provides three options regarding over-allocations and over-shipments:

  • Continue current process with warning message.
  • Show error message.
  • Automatically change allocation quantity to match quantity available for shipment.

If the over-ship quantity change is acceptable, internal procedures may require that the order quantity be revised so that pricing, promotions, credit checking, load planning, and other processes reflect the actual quantity.

The programs or areas impacted include:

  • ORD820D, Order Entry System Parameters
  • ORD720D2, Order Allocations
  • ORD725D, Order Entry Allocations
  • ORD570D5, Pick Confirm Inventory Confirmation
  • ORD700D2 / ORD700DA / ORD710B, Order Line Validation

Your Enterprise Resource Planning software lies at the heart of your business

Friedman | MAPICS | XA and more

George Moroses 0 28004 Article rating: 5.0

How your ERP is utilized is critical to operating a stable, well understood and effective business system. Knowing the current state of your system will enable you to make decisions to either better utilize your current ERP version or upgrade.

Crossroads RMC’s Utilization Review helps you flush out issues and areas for improvement. Our findings have resulted in minor procedural changes to a full reimplementation, or system upgrade.

If your business requirements and your resources have undergone a major change since your original implementation, it is time to take a look at your ERP system to see if it is being utilized properly. The Crossroads RMC Utilization Review is designed to work with your people to identify the best way to apply the powerful capabilities within the Manufacturing, Supply Chain and Financial modules within your ERP software to best suit the needs of your business, not only today, but in years to come.

Learn more>

Dashboard Displays Current Production Data and Increases Production by 10-20%

Crossroads RMC 0 34030 Article rating: 5.0

Did you know that you can improve the performance of your shop floor simply by displaying how your shop floor workers are doing? Studies show that a 10-20% increase in production can be achieved by simply displaying current production data to your workers via dashboards. 

Using the Crossroads RMC's Analytics Dashboard, you can display performance metrics in a grid, graph, chart, or any way that makes sense. Learn how

Learn more about Analytics Dashboard for Infor LN/Baan >

Learn more about Analytics Dashboard for Infor LX/BPCS/M3 >

Infor LN & Baan Integrations:

It's okay, you can admit it. You have spreadsheets and separate databases that you’re keeping on the side that may or may not be tied to Baan/LN.

Kathy Barthelt 0 31339 Article rating: 5.0

Do you wish they were integrated so that you didn’t have to manually go into each system to report on the data or look up information? Are you running into problems because you don’t have exposure to all of the data that is critical to running your business?

Crossroads RMC has a team of integration experts who can create the integration you’ve been dreaming about… AND we have developed RMCconnector to allow for quick and easy translation data from your front end system into a format accepted by your back end ERP. 

Contact us today to discuss how we can help you eliminate those spreadsheets and tie those “one-off” systems directly to your ERP system. 800.762.2077

Partner News: Avalara’s 2020 sales tax changes webinar is now available

George Moroses 0 29869 Article rating: 5.0

Now that 2020 has arrived, it's time to make sure you’re prepared for all of the changes that 2019 brought in the world of sales tax.

Avalara’s 2020 Sales Tax Changes Webinar is now available to arm you with knowledge on the biggest changes that have taken effect, plus give you a preview of the changes we anticipate this year. 

In this webinar you’ll hear Scott Peterson, Avalara’s VP of U.S. Tax Policy, cover:

  • The current state of sales and use tax in the U.S.
  • Which states have enacted economic nexus, and what’s expected to change in 2020
  • New requirements for marketplace sellers (Amazon, Etsy, etc.)
  • A look at cross-border ecommerce and what international sellers must know about sales tax 

Avalara 2020 Sales Tax Changes Webinar>

Infor LN & Baan Consulting News: So we put our hands up, like the ceiling can’t hold us…

Kathy Barthelt 0 32008 Article rating: 5.0

Crossroads RMC partnered with Hunter Douglas Architectural Ceilings and Walls to upgrade their LN system from LN 10.2 to LN 10.6. This upgrade was undertaken primarily as a result of unsupported hardware/operating system versions at Hunter Douglas. Despite an extremely tight deadline, Crossroads and Hunter Douglas partnered to complete this upgrade from start to finish in under 4 months. Phase 2 is planned to kick off in late Q1 of 2020, which will focus on specific areas of the business for process improvement and the implementation of Avalara’s Avatax software.

Learn about Crossroads RMC's Consulting Services

Infor LN & Baan Tip of the Week: Customer Defined Fields

Kathy Barthelt 0 81350 Article rating: 4.3

Customer Defined Fields (CDFs) can be added to tables, screens, reports and BODs and validation and calculation logic can be defined around those fields.

Use the CDF concept to store additional data in the standard Infor LN tables. The CDF definitions are stored separately from the table definitions in the Data Dictionary. For the end user, the CDFs behave in the same way as the standard fields, if defaulting, validations, etc. are built using the CDF logic of the table extension point. The session extension point also has features for the CDFs.

CDFs are configured per package combination. This implies that when moving your companies from one package combination to another, the CDF definitions must be present in the target package combination. Otherwise you lose the data in the CDFs.

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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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