Please Wait a Moment
X

Infor LX Tips, Infor LN Tips, BPCS Tips, Baan Tips, Infor M3 Tips & Infor ERP News

Resources Infor ERP Tips & News

Crossroads Connections

Infor ERP Tips & News from the Experts

Infor LX | Infor LN | BPCS | Baan | Infor M3

Subscribe to newsletter

OTTO - On-Time Ordering: Q&A with an MIS Manager from a metal fabrication manufacturer

George Moroses 0 429 Article rating: 5.0

OTTO  A Q&A with an MIS Manager from a metal fabrication manufacturer:

1. How difficult was it to initially install OTTO?

"We loaded OTTO on our AS/400 on a Friday morning and demonstrated OTTO's capabilities with our own data that afternoon. That really impressed me from an IS perspective because it was so easy to load and run."

2. Would you install it on a test system or on the production system?

"We installed on the production system in order to use live data. OTTO resides outside of the ERP system and builds its own databases so it is not detrimental to any other system."

3. How difficult was it to implement OTTO, was there a negative impact on daily operations?

"Some reports were being used on the first day of the evaluation. There was only positive impact on our operation. For example, shortages in our final assembly area were eliminated within 30 days of the demonstration."

4. Comments?

"I was greatly surprised OTTO fit so well with our operation. OTTO has worked well in our company (we substantially increased on time shipments at the same time our business was seeing a 3 fold increase), but each company has to judge for themselves how well OTTO fits in with their organization."

Contact us to learn how OTTO can help your company!

Read more

Analytics Dashboard News: What is a CFOs Biggest Concern?

Crossroads RMC 0 388 Article rating: 5.0

If you ask CFOs about their biggest concerns, most of them will tell you that increasing cash flow is a high priority.

In order to succeed at this, you have to keep an eye on your accounts receivable. Many companies, however, do not have the means or data to find out where they currently stand.

What if you could have that information at your fingertips?

Learn more about Analytics Dashboard for Infor LN/Baan >

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

Read more

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

Infor LX & BPCS

George Moroses 0 13451 Article rating: 5.0

How Infor LX & BPCS 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 to Infor LX.

If your business requirements and your resources have undergone 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 the LX/BPCS software to best suit the needs of your business, not only today, but in years to come.

Learn more>

Read more

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
Read more

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

Friedman | MAPICS | XA and more

George Moroses 0 28207 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>

Read more
First5455565759616263Last

Tips:  LX | BPCS | M3

Tips: LN | Baan

Kathy Barthelt
/ Categories: Infor LN & Baan Tips, Manufacturing

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.

Previous Article Infor LN & Baan Tip of the Week: Limitations of Customer Defined Fields (CDFs)
Next Article Infor LN & Baan Tip: Broadcast message to users
Print
68541 Rate this article:
5.0
Kathy Barthelt

Kathy BartheltKathy Barthelt

Other posts by Kathy Barthelt
Contact author

Contact author

x

Categories