Earlier this year, Ridewell Corporation inked a deal with Infor to move their BPCS 4.05 CD system to Infor LX. As part of that deal, Crossroads RMC’s MES software was selected to provide shop floor automation. 

For the ERP upgrade, Infor reached out to Crossroads RMC to provide support for both Finance and Data Conversion due to our positive track record with 4.05 CD to LX migrations. Crossroads RMC has extensive migration experience and developed a methodology for converting legacy 4.05 CD GL into CEA. 

The process Crossroads RMC developed makes it cleaner, more manageable, and easy to embrace from the client perspective. Infor also engaged Crossroads RMC to provide technical support to manage the data conversion, utilizing the Infor utilities and converting Ridewell’s 4.05 CD data to standard LX.

Attributes are the fields you define in your System i file.

You can begin by building your attribute list in Integrator by synchronizing the object with the host. This process reads the file definition from the System i and builds your list of attributes. The synchronize process will automatically run and read the definitions for the first occurrence of this file name within the library list. You can repeat this process manually multiple times if you change the file definition on the host by using the ‘Synchronize with Host’ option. However, the synchronization process will not recognize changed field names.

Non on key field attributes: The integrator requires a unique key for each object. If the host file already has a key, the synchronization process will automatically identify fields as part of the key as well as add a sequence number to multiple key parts. If the file does not have a unique key, you must either create a keyed logical file or identify the key manually. Key fields are the default sort order for all list views for an object.

“Our priorities change daily. It’s important to manage the priorities instead of having someone here in the office constantly expediting. We don’t want to run MRP every day, that would just introduce nervousness, all plans and priorities are likely to change and the flood of recommendations would be unmanageable. We run MRP once a week and rely on OTTO to track the constantly shifting priorities day-to-day.”  
Production & Inventory Control Manager, Top U.S. Crane Manufacturer

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Standard Analytics Dashboard Views: 

• Sales Bookings (ECH)
• Accounts Receivable (RAR)
• Accounts Payable (APH)
• Planned Orders (KFP)
• Purchasing (HPH)
• Shop Order Material (FMA)
• Shop Order Operations (FOD)
• CEA
• Order Booking (ECS)
• Labor History (FLT)
• Sales History (SIH)
• Material Status (IIM/ILI)

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If you’re not able to see everything that happens on your shop floor in real-time, you’re at a HUGE competitive disadvantage! Your competitors are running MES. 

Crossroads MES software provides:

• A user-friendly interface and an easy exchange of information between the shop floor users and your ERP database. 
• Planners the ability to schedule work to a specific machine or work area. In addition, it allows for work to be re-sequenced and split for better flexibility in scheduling shop floor activities.
• Factory workers with the ability to receive the work schedule electronically as well as interacting with it by reporting transactional activity.
• The ability to electronically display Drawing, Process Instructions, and Quality Instructions so you can eliminate, or minimize, the need for some of the paper on the shop floor.
• The ability to pass shop floor transactional activity to dashboard displays as well as the ERP system. 

Click here to learn more about Crossroads MES 

or Contact Anthony Etzel today to learn more.

In a scenario where performing job A depends on the result of job B, it is hard to decide at what time job A must be scheduled, and how long job B runs. To handle dependent jobs, you can now create a job group. Use the Job Groups (ttaad5140m000) session to create a job group. A job group has a name, with the same characteristics as a job name, and a description. The Status and User of the job group are handled automatically.

After creating the job group, the jobs are added to the group, approximately in the order the jobs must be performed. The first job in the group (with the lowest Group Number) determines the handling of the whole job group, such as execution date and whether the job group is being repeated. If the job group is not repeating, the job group and all non-repeating jobs in the job group are deleted when the job group has run.

The dependencies of the jobs in the job group are also determined. A job in the job group can only depend on a job in the same job group with a lower job number.

You can use the specific options in the Job Groups (ttaad5140m000 andttams5640m000) sessions to change the status of the job group. The job group statuses have the same meaning as the status of the jobs and the same status changes are allowed.

Note: Job groups are only handled by the BSE service Job Scheduler Service.

A/P Payment Update in LX 8.3.4. ACP660B creates a file using a layout required by the bank; the file informs the bank to pay invoices. These conditions must be met to create the file:

• FIM is an installed product in SYS821  ­
• The user is authorized to FIM in SYS600 ­
• The company is active in FIMCOMIT in SYS105  ­
• The payment type is in BONPAYTP (SYS105)

The database in LX 8.4 has undergone a significant change from previous versions. The database has been created using SQL DDL language instead of the old DDS language. The newer format allows for LX to take better advantage of advances in IBM database technologies as they move forward. Additionally, LX will be better able to make changes to tables (aka files) in the future without causing very large MR explosions to replace all programs that use a specific table. To ease the impact of this significant change, the LX tables (aka physical files) have new names that are the same as the previous version file names but with a “P” at the end, for example IIM is now IIMP. The old file names now belong to SQL views that looks just like the tables. This change made it easier to upgrade all the LX programs without changing every reference to every file. Many of the logical files remain although some have been replaced by SQL indexes to improve performance.