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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

Anthony Etzel- Featured Speaker at inPower 2019

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Infor IDF is replacing green screens for inquiries and release LX 8.4 for file maintenance. This session will show you how to use IDF over your non-LX file. 
 

Many Companies have IDF and are not effectively using it. This session will cover:

  • Building a business object (Intergrator) 
    • How to create a logical expression
    • How to make a field a maintainable field with IDF
  • Views 
    • How to create custom views
    • How to navigate in IDF and create search subsets

Pushing Forward In the Face of Adversity. Soundview recently suffered a major loss when fire struck on January 30, 2019.

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Soundview Paper lost their main building when disaster struck. This building housed offices, their computer center and part of their manufacturing facility. The loss including hardware, networks, system data backups, etc. Crossroads RMC was contacted immediately to assist in the recovery of their BPCS V6 system. With limited backups and a full team effort, Crossroads RMC assisted in the acquisition of new hardware and are currently in the midst of helping to bring their system back to life. Soundview has secured support from various partners to make all this happen, and we are privileged to be part of the team. A lot of work has been done so far, but we have a long road ahead. Users will soon regain access by the end of this week,  and as required, Crossroads RMC will provide the necessary consulting support from our LX team to get Soundview back up and running. We are communicating with them daily, as we work thru this process.

BPCS/LX Tip of the Week: Facility Period Close

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The Facility Period Close process, as introduced in Infor LX 8.3.4, was designed to function interactively. 

The expectation was that clients with a continuous or 24-hour worldwide operation in multiple facilities would submit the Period End Close jobs for each facility as daily operations ceased or shifts ended for each facility. This process was designed to function interactively so that validations of users performing transactions that conflicted with period end processing, and resulting messages, were immediately sent to the period end user. 

This enhancement provides a batch mode for the Facility Period Close (INV930) process and allows the Update IIM Inventory from IWI (INV931) process to be submitted from the INV930B program. The enhancement also provides a batch mode for the INV931 process. For example, a user has a 24-hour operation in facilities around the world, but a centralized IT operation. With this enhancement the user can submit the individual facilities to be closed to a batch process that can be managed by a scheduler, automatically releasing each facility to be closed at a predetermined time.

Flexfab Expands Their Use of Crossroads RMC Data Collection for All LN Installations Globally

Data Collection News

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Flexfab Horizons International, Inc, a global leader in the manufacture of high performance silicone and other advanced polimer products, has made the decision to expand their use of Crossroads RMC’s Data Collection Solution, RMC3, to their China location. The initial implementations in Nottinghamshire, UK and the United States took place in 2018, and the China implementation is expected to be completed by Q2 of 2019. All installations focus on improvements in warehouse management in Infor LN. Applications implemented include Receiving, Inspections/Approvals, Putaway, Stock Transfers and Stock Inquiry.

Crossroads RMC partnered with Electrolux Corporation to Connect Baan IVc4 to Vertex 8.0 (O Series)

Vertex Q to Vertex O… the ABC’s of tying this to Baan IV

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Crossroads RMC partnered with Electrolux Corporation to Connect Baan IVc4 to Vertex 8.0 (O Series), and was able to successfully complete this project in under 3 months. This project was completed using Crossroads RMCconnector as a web service to read the Vertex tax data and pass the information back into Baan for further processing. Triggers were created to handle the following processes:

  • Sales Order Lines
  • Print/Reprint Order Acknowledgement
  • Print Sales Invoice (Both compose and final)
  • Purchase Order Lines
  • Purchase order Acknowledgement
  • Purchase Order invoice
  • Manual Finance Invoice (Compose, print and post)
  • Post Integration transactions
  • Finalize batch

Nazdaq has released Version 3.0 of B2Win Suite

Partner News

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New Release of B2Win Suite: Format customer reports, email documents to your suppliers and customers, and more! 

New features – B2Win Suite - You are no longer limited to the data that comes from your canned reports! You can now add new columns to your already existing reports in Excel, based on SQL commands that bring additional data from any database (ERP or other), based on values from the report.

Existing Nazdaq customers should contact us to learn how we can convert your software to the latest and greatest Nazdaq product suite!

For more information: watch our webinar:

Webinar Recording: 48:18

Crossroads is proud to work with Johnson Crushers International on their LN re-implementation to 10.6

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Johnson Crushers International (JCI), a global leader in engineering and manufacturing full lines of cone crushers, horizontal and incline vibrating screens and track-mounted, portable and stationary crushing and screening plants, has selected Crossroads RMC to help them re-implement Infor LN on 10.6.  JCI’s main objectives with this project are to support their continued growth, align and standardize their business processes, and enable a continuous improvement effort to drive additional value to the business. Go live is expected to occur in early Q1 of 2020.

Baan/LN Tip of the Week: Warehouse Material Movement / Problems With the Inventory Structure Table (whinr150)

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This has come up as an issue during various stages of warehouse material movements – transfers, outbounds, shipments. We have seen it right up to 10.4. The inventory structure table (whinr150) becomes a problem. The error points to that table, but users are lost as to how to fix it.

In the session Units by Unit Set many companies let the field Storage default to Yes. If the UOM is not intended to be used in inventory then that setting should be No. 

If an item is purchased in UOM different from the inventory unit and the setting is Yes then LN adds a record in that UOM to the inventory structure table. It is that record that causes problem later.

The session has an option to change the value of the storage field. Specific > Convert Use for Storage. This option works both ways and will correct all inventory in the UOM range. 

Should a user receive an error that references inventory structure table then the solution is to check that session to see if an odd UOM exists in it. If so use the Convert Use for Storage to correct the problem.

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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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