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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: Estimates Versus Actuals

Anthony Etzel 0 32754 Article rating: No rating

So, how many of you have updated the estimated cost of material and labor in your ERP system recently? ……Hmmmm. That’s what I thought.

Do you have any idea how accurate those numbers are? Are you making business decisions based on estimates that are completely inaccurate?

Consider switching from estimates to actuals. Furthermore, consider implementing an automated data collection system to make this easy. By collecting production and labor data real time, you can gain real insight into your business and you gain the ability to look at the profitability of individual jobs, projects and employees.

Optimize Your Manufacturing Today!

Baan/LN Tip of the Week: Estimates Versus Actuals

Kathy Barthelt 0 79947 Article rating: 5.0

So, how many of you have updated the estimated cost of material and labor in your ERP system recently? ……Hmmmm. That’s what I thought.

Do you have any idea how accurate those numbers are? Are you making business decisions based on estimates that are completely inaccurate?

Consider switching from estimates to actuals. Furthermore, consider implementing an automated data collection system to make this easy. By collecting production and labor data real time, you can gain real insight into your business and you gain the ability to look at the profitability of individual jobs, projects and employees.

Optimize Your Manufacturing Today!

Baan/LN Tip of the Week: 4 Benefits to Consider - Cross-Docking

Kathy Barthelt 0 78267 Article rating: No rating

Cross Docking is the practice of immediately processing completed goods to fulfill ‘demand’ requests with minimal handling. Cross Docking automatically combines and performs Baan / Infor LN steps to fill demand and shortages at the time items are available. Shortages are sorted and filled by the oldest demand date.

Benefits of Cross Docking include:

  • Direct and indirect labor savings resulting from operational efficiencies gains
  • Increased inventory accuracy, reliable on-hand inventory information and improved data entry
  • Increased productivity
  • Increased customer retention due to faster, more accurate fulfillment

Optimize Your Manufacturing Today!

BPCS/LX Tip of the Week: The 3 Secrets to Improving Your MO (Manufacturing Optimization)

Anthony Etzel 0 31083 Article rating: No rating
  1. Identify the key metrics. You need benchmark data so you know what realistic goals are, then track them and publish your performance along with a brief comment from time to time on how things are trending and how you compare with others, particularly your primary competitors. The best thing about this is that it is a system that develops a life of its own.
     
  2. Measure it. Automatically, people start to think about improving things. Then the fun part, stuff begins to improve by itself. Once in place, the system just hums along and the benefits appear, because it has motivated people to think about it, and figure out what they can do to make it better.
     
  3. Communicate it. Publish your numbers, and explain to people how what they do affects the company as a whole and its success/failure. Once they see the numbers, employees quite often start to modify their behavior for the better.

Optimize Your Manufacturing Today!

BPCS/LX Tip of the Week: Gain Efficiency & Save Money – Evaluate Your Production Lines

Anthony Etzel 0 35892 Article rating: No rating
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!

Baan/LN Tip of the Week: Gain Efficiency & Save Money – Evaluate Your Production Lines

Kathy Barthelt 0 73136 Article rating: No rating
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!

Baan/LN Tip of the Week: Operational Inefficiencies

Kathy Barthelt 0 78140 Article rating: No rating
Two big sources of inefficiencies in manufacturing are paper and spreadsheets. Think of how long it takes you to get paper based data into the hands of those who can do something valuable with the data.
 
  • Is the information captured correctly?
  • Can everyone access the information?
  • Is this an accurate representation of what’s going on across all operations?

Make your shop floor paperless and put systems in place that talk to one another and automatically pull and push data to and from your ERP so that you can look in one place for all the information you need to run your business effectively.

 

Optimize Your Manufacturing Today!

BPCS/LX Tip of the Week: Shop Order Status Codes

Anthony Etzel 0 32420 Article rating: 3.0

Shop Order status codes have been improved to provide a more comprehensive view of the life cycle of a shop order.

In addition to the previously existing ‘Shop Order Status Code’, the Production Status Code has been added. This code is designed to indicate progress and completion levels of each shop order.  Valid codes are:

‘blank’ - no completed items

25 - a partial quantity has been reported

35 - the quantity reported is equal to or greater than the order quantity

 

Optimize Your Manufacturing Today!

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Tips:  LX | BPCS | M3

Anthony Etzel
/ Categories: Infor LX & BPCS Tips

BPCS/LX Tip of the Week: Real Time Access to Your Data

Poor performance indicators make for poor outcomes.

Companies today continue to tolerate and accept how labor and production information is recorded, and the reliability on that information is questionable. In addition to collecting labor and production information, there are many other pieces of information manually recorded from the shop floor.

A critical element of information for productivity throughput would be to examine how much time the work center or machine was actually up and running. Downtime is another critical element of data that is usually manually recorded along with a reason identifying what caused production to stop. If this information is not provided on a timely and accurate basis, then what good is it anyway? Forms are filled out, data may or may not be keyed to a spreadsheet, the forms are sorted and filed, but is anybody really looking at the information that was recorded? Think about the amount of time it takes to manage the manual collection of information from your shop floor. 

What would real time access to data mean to your organization?
The benefits:

  1. Real Time Production Visibility
  2. Reduced Paperwork Load
  3. Downtime and Scrap Visibility
  4. WIP Inventory Visibility
  5. Improve Efficiency, Capacity Utilization

Optimize Your Manufacturing Today!

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Tips: LN | Baan

You can move monthly periods to a different parent period. For example, if you have a monthly calendar, you can create quarter periods and move months to the quarters.

  1. Select Financials > Global Ledger > Setup > Finance Enterprise Group > Maintenance.
  2. Open the finance enterprise group.
  3. Click the Calendar tab.
  4. Open the calendar for which you want to move periods.
  5. Click the Hierarchy tab.
  6. Select the periods to move.
  7. Select Actions > Move.
  8. Select the new parent period under which you want to move the periods.
  9. Click OK.

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