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

Crossroads Connections

Infor ERP Tips & News from the Experts

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

Infor LX & BPCS Tip of the Week: Partial Search in Item Description List

Anthony Etzel 0 57581 Article rating: 5.0

Previously, if a user performed a partial search for an item by using a double byte language, no matches were found. Regardless of whether the MLS module is used, this enhancement allows a user to use a double byte language to perform partial or full item description searches. This enhancement resolves an issue with partial searches on screens where the Item Master Lookup (WINIIM) screen is used, such as Material Status Inquiry, INV300D-01, Item Master Selection INV100D1-01, Facility Planning Selection, MRP140D1-01, and Purchasing Inquiry, PUR300D1).

The user selects the F4 prompt from these screens to open the Item Description List. In the prompt window, the user specifies option 10 to perform a partial or full search on an item description.

What does OTTO do that finite scheduling doesn’t?

Anthony Etzel 0 31738 Article rating: 5.0

Finite scheduling identifies what constraints need to be overcome and it provides the best schedule given the constraints. But the objective is not only to overcome or remove the constraint but to prevent the constraint from even occurring. Only people can anticipate and overcome current constraints, and this requires time for analysis and people to apply their knowledge to the data. OTTO removes the non-value-added tasks of extracting and manipulating data and provides visibility to support people in solving near-term, complex problems. 

Crossroads RMC welcomes MBL (USA) Corporation

Anthony Etzel 0 31112 Article rating: 5.0

Crossroads RMC welcomes MBL (USA) Corporation as our newest Data Collection and Warehouse Management client.

MBL (USA) Corporation, with headquarters located in Ottawa, Illinois, manufactures all types of V-Belts, V-Ribbed Belts, Timing Belts, and Variable Speed Belts for both original equipment and service parts in the automotive, recreational, and industrial markets. In addition to supplying North, Central and South America markets, products are exported to countries worldwide. Their corporate parent is Mitsuboshi Belting LTD located in Japan.

MBL (USA) Corporation’s objective was to improve inventory visibility, eliminate paperwork, and use a bar code scanning solution to manage warehouse inventory and eliminate the manual process for inventory warehouse transactions.

Our discovery was able to highlight improvements to streamline the process in the warehouse and improve inventory visibility. Crossroads RMC is a reseller and support partner for TouchPath Warehouse Management which is integrated to MBL (USA) Corporation’s ERP/LX software. TouchPath Warehouse Management provides the insight into your inventory and the warehouse management tools to help you increase customer satisfaction and reduce costs.

We are proud to have MBL (USA) Corporation as our newest client and look forward to being a strategic partner and support their company growth and success.

Infor LX & BPCS Tip of the Week: Inventory Transfers for Outside Operations

Anthony Etzel 0 58500 Article rating: 5.0

This enhancement allows users who currently perform outside operation processing in shop floor programs to manage the transfer of components used in the outside operations to the vendor’s designated warehouse.

This enhancement provides modified and new INV511D screens and adds new logic to allow the user to identify all shop orders that have components linked to outside operations or to identify all the components linked to an outside operation on a shop order. The shop orders can be filtered by either a date range or by a specific vendor.

Inventory Transfers for Outside Operations enhances the management of external operations by providing screens that simplify the selection of the shop orders or items to transfer to a vendor.

Transfers to the vendor warehouse are performed in the Inventory Transfers, INV511D, screens.

Infor LX / BPCS Tip of the Week: Optional Authority to Maintain Reason Codes

Anthony Etzel 0 54605 Article rating: 5.0

This enhancement allows users to update Reason Code Maintenance, INV140D1, for Transaction Effects that they are not authorized to in any other programs. A new system parameter was added to Inventory Parameters, INV820D. The enhancement allows users who do not actually perform transactions in Infor LX to maintain the reason codes for the transactions.

Infor LN / Baan Tip of the Week: Deleting Records

Kathy Barthelt 0 81132 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 describes 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.

Explore your IDF programs

Anthony Etzel 0 33602 Article rating: 5.0

If you haven't already, you may want to start to explore your IDF programs. Currently they provide the replacement for the 300 series inquiry programs. In addition, navigation drill downs are far superior to any green screen presentation of the data.

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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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Kathy Barthelt

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