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

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Infor ERP Tips & News from the Experts

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

BPCS/LX Tip of the Week: Infor LX Compatibility With IBM i 7.3

Anthony Etzel 0 53390 Article rating: 5.0

IBM® has released its latest operating system for the IBM i. IBM i 7.3™ has many new features and enhancements that you may want to take advantage of.

Infor is pleased to announce the following Infor LX products are supported on this new version, effective June 12.

Supported products and versions

The following Infor products have been evaluated for compatibility with IBM i 7.3 and are supported on that version of the platform:

  • Infor LX 8.3 (all release levels)
  • Brazil Pack for Infor LX 8.3
  • Argentina Pack for Infor LX 8.3
  • Infor BPCS 8.2 (all release levels)

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Baan/LN Tip of the Week: LN Financials

Kathy Barthelt 0 73698 Article rating: No rating

Did you know that you can use user-definable dimensions to view financial information in detail from different angles?

With the parent-child structures, you can obtain financial information in the proper structure, regardless of the country or the financial system.

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Tip of the Week: What is Sales Tax Nexus?

Kathy Barthelt 0 103614 Article rating: No rating

Sales tax nexus is the connection between a seller and a state that requires the seller to collect and remit tax on sales made in that state. If you have nexus in California and Texas, for example, you must collect and remit sales tax in California and Texas.

Many states are expanding their nexus rules. Business activities like trade show attendance, drop shipping, employing remote workers, advertising, and housing inventory in other states can establish nexus. The rules vary by state and it can be challenging to keep up with all the places your business needs to register, collect, and remit sales tax.

Optimize Your Manufacturing Today!

Baan/LN Lunch & Learn Webinar: What Manufacturers Need to Know About Sales Tax Compliance

Kathy Barthelt 0 38431 Article rating: 5.0

Lunch & Learn Webinar for Baan/LN!
Is Your Company at Risk?
What Manufacturers Need to Know About Sales Tax Compliance

Crossroads RMC & Avalara on the Avatax and Infor LN Integration. 

Learn how Avalara delivers end-to-end cloud-based (real-time data) sales tax automation, including rate determination, return filing, remittance, and exemption certificate management!

Get the inside scoop on:

  • The sales tax landscape: why it is more complex than ever and what that means in mitigating risk.
  • The importance of exemption certificates (reseller certificates) in sales tax compliance—even if you think you don’t owe sales tax.
  • Economic Nexus Laws and how they could impact your business.
  • How Avatax for Infor LN seamlessly integrates to apply the proper sales tax every time to invoices, manages exemption certificates, files, and remits returns while providing “Accuracy Guaranteed" audit protection.

You Don't Want to Miss This Important Webinar!

BPCS/LX Tip of the Week: 3 Common ERP Mistakes & How to Avoid Them

Anthony Etzel 0 52357 Article rating: No rating

For many businesses, a high-powered ERP can streamline processes, increase efficiency, and strengthen the bottom line—at least in theory. In reality, some companies miss out on the opportunity to achieve greater ROI by overlooking a few fundamental truths about ERPs.

1. Implementation takes longer than usually anticipated.

2. Company buy-in and sufficient training can predict success.

3. Implementing the full range of features can make the difference between success and failure.

Can your ERP move with you into your next growth phase? Can it scale and flex as your business expands? Is your business making the most of your investment?

Read Full Article

Optimize Your Manufacturing Today!

Baan/LN Tip of the Week: 3 Common ERP Mistakes & How to Avoid Them

Kathy Barthelt 0 76032 Article rating: No rating

For many businesses, a high-powered ERP can streamline processes, increase efficiency, and strengthen the bottom line—at least in theory. In reality, some companies miss out on the opportunity to achieve greater ROI by overlooking a few fundamental truths about ERPs.

1. Implementation takes longer than usually anticipated.

2. Company buy-in and sufficient training can predict success.

3. Implementing the full range of features can make the difference between success and failure.

Can your ERP move with you into your next growth phase? Can it scale and flex as your business expands? Is your business making the most of your investment?

Read Full Article

Optimize Your Manufacturing Today!

BPCS/LX Tip of the Week: Notes Maintenance Enhancements

Anthony Etzel 0 54081 Article rating: No rating

The Notes Maintenance feature is made up note programs that are accessible from a central location. The Note Text Maintenance (SYS555), Note Type Maintenance (SYS553) and Multi Language Notes Maintenance (SYS556) programs are all available as menu options.

Instead of having to go into separate programs to maintain note settings, the user can set up print options, specify user documents and customize user security levels for specific notes.

The Notes Maintenance feature provides a way to create, revise, delete, and copy note text that are categorized by note types. The print options in Notes Maintenance permit a user to define documents for which the note is intended. This includes base LX documents and custom documents. 

Finally, the notes program provides a way to define notes by assigning document types. For example, a document type can be created named “Invoice.” A note can then be defined to print on all invoice programs without requiring individual entry.

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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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