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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: MPS vs. MRP

George Moroses 0 65056 Article rating: 5.0

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 demand that cannot be calculated from higher level demand in the product structure, and therefore must be either a forecast or an actual customer order (Finished Goods or Service parts sold to customers).
  • Dependent demand is derived from higher level demand in the product structure. Dependent demand includes components, raw materials, and sub-assemblies. (these are not normally Master Scheduled Items).
  • Service Parts may have both independent demand from forecast and/or customer orders, as well as dependent demand from higher level demand if that item is also used in other sub-assemblies or products.
  • Cumulative Lead Time is a concept used in Master Production Scheduling (MPS) that combines the “fixed” lead time, and the “variable” lead time needed to produce the product. It is the longest path through a given Bill-of-material. Based on the MPS setup options, Infor/ERP LX will calculate cumulative lead time (also called “the Critical Path”) for you (use the “indented BOM” display in BOM300 and find the item with the longest lead time “L/T”). Note: You may have to use Action 21, Line Detail, to see the “L/T” lead time for each item.

You’ve got a handle on your inventory requirements, right? Are you confident you can handle a rush order, or ten rush orders?

Baan & LN Add-Ons

Kathy Barthelt 0 35911 Article rating: 5.0

RMCbuild gives you the ability to report a component’s gross requirement, shortage, on-hand inventory, on-order inventory, allocated inventory, inspected inventory, production or work orders due to replenish component inventory, buyer or planner, and/or item group… and more.

RMCbuild takes all the surprise and guess work out of inventory planning. Give your employees the tools they need to do their job effectively.

Avalara isn't only tax calculation and returns filing....

Baan & Infor LN

Kathy Barthelt 0 40668 Article rating: 5.0

Did you know that in addition to tax calculation and returns filing, Avalara can also help with:

  • Business license and tax registration
  • Streamlined Sales Tax qualification
  • Nexus analysis and compliance
  • Tax document management including exemption certificates
  • Audit preparation

Contact us today! We partner closely with Avalara to provide you with solutions on ALL version of Baan and Infor LN!
 

Infor LN & Baan: Is Your House All In Order?

Kathy Barthelt 0 32232 Article rating: 5.0

Have you successfully closed all of the fiscal, tax and reporting periods for 2019 and closed the year? Sometimes this task hangs out there looming because either people don’t know what needs to be done, or there is a fear there are going to be problems.

Let Crossroads RMC’s expert finance consulting team help you through this.

Move into 2020 with ease! Contact Kathy Barthelt today to put together a plan for your close.
800.762.2077

Want a way to convert IBM i ® spool files into full-color, professional forms that are output as PDF documents?

Anthony Etzel 0 32688 Article rating: 5.0

Want a way to convert IBM i ® spool files into full-color, professional forms that are output as PDF documents?

Crossroads RMC and TL Ashford can help you get there!

TLAForms provide a reliable, feature-rich, cost-effective forms solution for IBM i, with no programming required!

Contact Anthony Etzel for more info: 1.630.955.1310, x125 or aetzel@crossroadsrmc.com

Join us in St. Louis for inPOWER 2020!

inPower 2020

George Moroses 0 31909 Article rating: 5.0

We can’t wait to see you this May at the PREMIER event for Infor LX & BPCS users! Join us for the conference and a special customer appreciation event!

Why attend?

  • Participate in exclusive training sessions
  • Attend user experience and industry presentations on topics relevant to your business
  • View new product demos to give you the tools needed to tackle issues we all share

Click here to register and please let us know that you will be attending!

What is the right balance of KPIs to make sure your production line is running at peak performance?

Analytics Dashboard

Crossroads RMC 0 33717 Article rating: 5.0

How can we make sure the production line is running at peak performance?

One very effective way is to put the right balance of production KPIs in place. Some of these are leading indicator KPIs that help provide insight into future performance and some are results KPIs that tell you how you have done. It is good to have both.

Check out this list of 21 examples of KPI indicators for 2020 to help improve manufacturing performance.

Analytics Dashboard for Infor LN & Baan
Analytics Dashboard for Infor LX, BPCS & Infor M3

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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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