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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

April 25th 2018 -LUNCH & LEARN WEBINAR FOR Baan & LN

NAZDAQ's B2Win Suite: Giving You Maximum Control Over Your ERP Output

Kathy Barthelt 0 41739 Article rating: 5.0


Lunch & Learn Webinar for Baan & LN! 

- Giving You Maximum Control Over Your ERP Output -

NAZDAQ's B2Win Suite is the output management platform that every company needs in conjunction with its ERP system. This innovative product helps companies improve internal reporting and outbound communications.


Register today to learn how each core application is integrated into your system’s infrastructure to expand functionality, automation and improve business efficiency.

Here are a few features: 

  • Can be hosted on-premise or in cloud
  • Works with all Baan / Infor® LN versions and Mingle
  • Comes ready to work with various enterprise systems (ERP, CRM, SCM, etc.)
  • Connects with various multiple enterprise systems simultaneously (CRM, ERP, etc.)
  • Transform your ERP into different formats
  • Design completely custom formatting

 

Join us for 45 minutes: 


Watch Recorded Webinar

Crenlo and Crossroads RMC Go International

Crossroads RMC 0 18831 Article rating: No rating

Crenlo, A leading manufacturer of cab and enclosure products to protect people and electronics, has partnered with Crossroads RMC to deliver a shop floor (MES lite) solution to their facilities in the US and Brazil. Crenlo was looking for a way to ensure that each production run was complete and accurate, and their overall production efficiencies were measurable. Crossroads RMC developed a complete solution to deliver detailed proprietary work instructions to each workstation, configure production lines to fit the work to be completed, perform downtime tracking with alerts and provide web based pivot reports to view entire assemblies, compare actual to expected, view inspection failures and analyze trends week to week, month to month and year to year. This solution will be fully integrated with Crenlo’s Baan IV ERP system.

Nice-Pak Products Drives Purchasing Power With Crossroads

Crossroads RMC 0 37203 Article rating: No rating

Nice-Pak Products, a leading manufacturer in the wet wipes industry, has selected Crossroads RMC to evaluate the purchasing processes within their facilities in Indiana. During this evaluation, Crossroads RMC will determine the best path for streamlining purchasing operations and develop a standardized approach that can be shared within other locations of Nice-Pak utilizing Infor LX.

International Wire Selects Crossroads RMC For Their High Performance Conductor Division

Crossroads RMC 0 32487 Article rating: No rating

International Wire Group, Inc. headquartered in Camden, New York is the largest bare copper wire and copper wire products manufacturer in the United States. Crossroads has been selected to evaluate the manufacturing processes within the High Performance Conductor Division of International Wire, with locations in South Carolina and Georgia. During this evaluation, Crossroads will determine the best path for streamlining the shop floor which will include data collection and labor reporting. International currently utilizes Infor LX and will be evaluating Crossroads’ MES solution as part of this project.

BPCS/LX TIP OF THE WEEK: INVENTORY TRANSFERS

Anthony Etzel 0 52353 Article rating: No rating

Misplaced inventory… this happens all the time, but it CAN be avoided.

As part of an employee’s initial training, they should be taught the importance of proper inventory handling. This training should occur even if inventory handling is not their job! Employees need to know how the actions (or lack thereof) of one individual affects the rest of the company and the system used to run your business. Proper inventory management is the responsibility of ALL employees. 

Optimize Your Manufacturing Today!

Baan/LN Tip of the Week: Inventory Transfers

Kathy Barthelt 0 82931 Article rating: No rating

Misplaced inventory… this happens all the time, but it CAN be avoided.

As part of an employee’s initial training, they should be taught the importance of proper inventory handling. This training should occur even if inventory handling is not their job! Employees need to know how the actions (or lack thereof) of one individual affects the rest of the company and the system used to run your business. Proper inventory management is the responsibility of ALL employees. 

Optimize Your Manufacturing Today!

Tip of the Week: Finding the Cause of Waste

Crossroads RMC 0 62088 Article rating: No rating

If a particular machine in your shop breaks down a lot, and you are seeing lots of scrap on every job, maybe it is time to look at what is going on. Is there truly a problem with the machine? If so, get it fixed, or move production to another line. Maybe it is a problem with how the machine operator has been trained, or maybe it is due to poor quality materials that are being used as components on a given job. Until you dig in to find the root cause, you can’t fix the problem.  

Optimize Your Manufacturing Today!

Tip of the Week: Gain Efficiency & Save Money - Evaluate Your Production Lines

Anthony Etzel 0 49129 Article rating: 5.0

When is the last time you took a hard look at your production lines?

  • How are we moving product through our facility?
  • Do we have work instructions / drawings available where needed?
  • Do we have frequently used inventory available at the line?
  • Where are the bottlenecks?
  • Are processes automated, where possible?

Taking a hard look at your processes and procedures may reveal some interesting results. Don’t assume that everyone is doing things the same way. Some may be superstars, and others may need some mentoring. Some processes may be outdated and costing you time and money, while others are extremely efficient. One area of the business may benefit from how others operate. Take the time to review and analyze your findings. Your company may benefit greatly as a result.

Optimize Your Manufacturing Today!

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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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