Please Wait a Moment
X

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

An ERP System Review is NOT a Report Card

It's a no-judgment-review - we promise!

Kathy Barthelt 0 16371 Article rating: 5.0

report card C minusWe all remember our school days and the nervousness that we felt when it came time to get our grades. Even if we were doing well, we were still nervous. Sometimes we experienced that same nervousness when it came time for a performance review in our job. Nervousness…sometimes dread…knowing that our performance maybe was not what we wanted it to be, or others expected it to be. 

Somehow I think the feelings that we felt in our past often find ways to creep into our present. I have seen this recently when I suggested an ERP system review to one of our customers. They immediately became flustered and thought about every possible problem that they knew existed within the software and how they were currently using it.

An ERP system review or more specifically a Utilization Review is NOT a personal report card, or performance review showing how well a particular individual does his/hers/their job, nor is it an attack on the team that implemented the software. 

An ERP Utilization Review will:

Infor LN & Baan Finance Tip: Unallocated Payment

Kathy Barthelt 0 19704 Article rating: 5.0

How do I assign an unallocated payment to a purchase invoice when the document dates are not the same?

When trying to assign an unallocated payment, it is possible that the purchase invoice is not displayed in session Assign Unallocated / Advance Payments to Invoices (tfcmg2106s000), even though it is showing in the open entries. This can happen when the document date of the unallocated payment lies before the document date of the purchase invoice you want to assign it to. There are 2 ways to handle this...

Infor LX & BPCS Tip: What items should be M-P-S planned vs. M-R-P planned?

George Moroses 0 19273 Article rating: 5.0

Master Scheduled Items are those items that are finished goods, or service items, that receive their requirements either specifically from Independent demand, or both Dependent and Independent demand.

  • Independent Demand is demand that cannot be calculated from higher-level demand in the product structure, and therefore must be either a forecast or an actual customer order (Finished Goods or Service parts sold to customers).
  • Dependent demand.....

Infor LN & Baan Tip: Separate item codes for incoming & outgoing subassemblies

Kathy Barthelt 0 7524 Article rating: 5.0

You may be wondering if it's necessary to have separate item codes for incoming and outgoing subassemblies.

No, it is not necessary to have separate item codes for incoming and outgoing subassemblies, but it is recommended. In theory, you could have only one item code with the description subassembly and use the same item code for the outgoing subassembly and for the incoming subassembly. However, when monitoring inventory movements and financial integration transactions, it will be difficult to understand the process. Also, the costing logic is much clearer when different item codes for the incoming and outgoing subassemblies are used. Because of this, it is advised to use a different item code for the outgoing subassembly and a different item code for the incoming subassembly.

Infor LX & BPCS Tip: Changing an item to non-inventory

George Moroses 0 6109 Article rating: 5.0

When an attempt is made to change an item’s type to a non-inventory item from any other value, a new validation is performed to determine if the item has any inventory on hand and, if so, prevents changing the item’s type.

This enhancement available in LX 8.4 prevents LX from showing an on-hand inventory balance for a non-inventory item.

The programs or areas impacted include:

  • Facility/Planning Data Maintenance, MRP140D2
  • IDF Enterprise Item

To get this enhancement, request and apply MR 80120.

Top 10 Things (you might not know) About Crossroads RMC

Crossroads RMC 0 5989 Article rating: 5.0


10.  Crossroads RMC has been in business since 1984 & has been an  partner since 1991
 

 9. Crossroads RMC offers functional & technical training on all versions of Infor LX, BPCS, Infor LN, and Baan and will completely tailor the training to your specific needs. 🤝🏽

 8.  Our consultants have over 1,000 years of combined experience working with manufacturers just like you! 🤓

 7.

 6.

 5.

 4.

 3.

 2.

 1.

DATA: See it. Understand it. Discuss it.

Crossroads RMC 0 6823 Article rating: 5.0

We’ve all heard author and management consultant Peter Drucker’s famous quote “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”  

What’s the right way to manage “It” though? Is it enough to put the data in the hands of the responsible manager and wait for change to occur? Does the manager have a pulse on everything that went into those numbers?

Your numbers tell a story, but there is a lot of...

RSS
First45679111213Last

Theme picker

Tips:  LX | BPCS | M3

Determining whether to use Master Production Schedule (MPS) planning or Material Requirements Planning (MRP) planning for items in Infor LX and BPCS involves understanding the nature of the items and their demand characteristics.

Master Scheduled Items typically encompass finished goods or service items. These items receive their requirements either from Independent demand, Dependent demand, or a combination of both...

Advanced Remittance Processing, ARP, provides an automated approach to your cash application process. ARP works together with Accounts Receivable to save valuable time and resources by automatically applying incoming payments to open receivables during daily batch processing. You can easily and efficiently resolve unapplied remittances online.

Advanced Remittance Processing (ARP) is an automatic cash application process that allows you to perform the following functions:

12345679Last

Theme picker

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.

Previous Article Infor LN & Baan Tip of the Week: Limitations of Customer Defined Fields (CDFs)
Next Article Infor LN & Baan Tip: Broadcast message to users
Print
20530 Rate this article:
5.0
Kathy Barthelt

Kathy BartheltKathy Barthelt

Other posts by Kathy Barthelt

Theme picker

Contact author

x

Categories