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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

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

Kathy Barthelt 0 81556 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 Some processes may be outdated and costing you time and money, while others are extremely efficient.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!

BPCS/LX Tip of the Week: Cost of Goods Sold

Anthony Etzel 0 56075 Article rating: No rating

A major change in LX Release 8.3.5 is the ability to post Cost of Goods Sold Inventory transactions by Cost Bucket. 

This will enable reporting of Cost of Goods Sold on the P&L by Material, Labor and Overhead. 

Up to this point, companies that wished to report at this level had to develop a modification to analyze these transactions and re-book them. This new feature eliminates that need. 

Optimize Your Manufacturing Today!

Tip of the Week: What is Your M.O.?

Kathy Barthelt 0 86991 Article rating: No rating

I’m not talking “Modus Operandi,” which is a fancy way to say: “what’s your plan to get stuff done”.  I’m talking about Manufacturing Optimization. 

It is all about efficiency, and by that I mean doing more with less. Less labor, less time, less materials, while still delivering a high quality product on time.

The Three Secrets to Improving your MO

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
So if you publish gross profit numbers, explain to people how what they do affects the numbers. Employees tend to start to modify their behavior as a result, and look more critically at whether a given purchase is even necessary.

Optimize Your Manufacturing Today!

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

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

Kathy Barthelt 0 42547 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 19626 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 38338 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 33651 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 54039 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!

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Tips:  LX | BPCS | M3

Tips: LN | Baan

Kathy Barthelt

Infor LN & Baan Tips & Tricks for EXECUTIVES

FINANCE: Using Dimensions

You can independently define dimensions and use them to prepare analyses of ledger account transactions and balances. You can use up to 12

dimension types. You can define a name and an entire structure of dimension codes for each of these dimension types. There is no relationship between the dimension types.

For example, you can set up these dimensions:

  • Dimension Type 1 = Cost center
  • Dimension Type 2 = Item group
  • Dimension Type 3 = Business unit
  • Dimension Type 4 = Geographical area
  • Dimension Type 5 = Activities

You can separately define the dimension structure for each of these dimension types, in other words, you can set up a dimension structure for the cost centers, a structure for item groups, and so on.

You can define the number of dimension types that you use in the Group Company Parameters (tfgld0101s000) session. If you have several financial companies in a company group, the dimension types used apply to all the companies in the group.

You can name the dimension types and define linked objects in the Dimension Type Descriptions (tfgld0102m000) session. You can then define the dimension codes to be used in each company in the Dimensions (tfgld0510m000) session. You can also make multilevel dimension structures with totals and subtotals. You can build a dimension hierarchy of up to ten levels.

In the Dimensions (tfgld0510m000) session, you can define the dimensions for each dimension type, and link the dimensions to parent dimensions and child dimensions.

Dimensions are always used together with ledger accounts. For each ledger account, you can define which dimension type or types are linked to the ledger account in the Chart of Accounts (tfgld0508m000) session. For each dimension type, you must select whether the dimensions type is MandatoryOptional, or Not Used by the ledger account.

When you enter a transaction, you must first state the ledger account. Then you must enter a dimension for each Mandatory dimension type that is linked to the ledger account, and you can enter a dimension for each Optional dimension type.

For example, the sales revenues ledger account is linked to dimension type 2 (item group) and dimension type 4 (area). The dimension type 1 (cost center) and dimension type 3 (business unit) are not used for the ledger account. The freight costs ledger account is linked to only dimension type 1 (cost center). The other dimension types are not used for the ledger account.

For each dimension type, you can define one dimension with an empty dimension code. If the dimension type is Optional for a ledger account, LN posts transactions for which no dimension is specified to this dimension. In this way, differences between the ledger history and the dimension history can be avoided.

In the Cross Validation Rules (tfgld0151m000) session, you can define the ranges of allowed dimensions by ledger accounts. You cannot change the dimension range for a ledger account that occurs in an unfinalized batch.

You can create transactions for Financials from the integration with other LN packages. You can enter these transactions into ledger accounts and into dimensions. You can define the assignment to ledger accounts through the Mapping Scheme (tfgld4573m000) session.

You can use the dimensions to split the transactions on the customer and supplier control accounts by departments, persons responsible for the revenues, costs, properties, debts, and so on.

The dimensions also provide the basis for the cost allocation in the Cost Accounting module. In CAT, you can allocate the costs (and any revenues) within a dimension type from one dimension code to another and from one dimension type to another.

TECHNOLOGY: High Contrast Skin

The high contrast skin can be activated by users who experience low vision, color-blindness, or similar visual impairments.

If the high contrast skin is active, LN UI is colored so that all controls comply with the WCAG AA norms for accessibility.

Guideline 1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum)

The visual presentation of text and images of text has a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1. For level AA, these exceptions apply:

  • Large text: large-scale text and images of large-scale text have a contrast ratio of at least 3:1.
  • Incidental: the following text or images of text have no contrast requirement:
    • Text or images of text that are part of an inactive user interface component.
    • Text or images of text that are pure decoration.
    • Text or images of text that are not visible to anyone.
    • Text or images of text that are part of a picture that contains significant other visual content.
  • Logotypes: text that is part of a logo or brand name has no minimum contrast requirement.

OPERATIONS: Blocking Operations

Note: The Blocked Operations (tisfc0540m000) session displays the blocked operations.

Introduction

Sometimes a problem occurs that must be solved before an operation proceeds. Examples of such situations are:

  • The quality of an intermediate product must first be inspected.
  • A machine is in repair.
  • A supplier cannot deliver an essential component in time.
  • A customer is late with its payments.

In these situations the operation can get the operation status Blocked.

An operation can be blocked:

  • Manually.
  • Automatically by Quality.

Blocking reasons

Every blocked operation must have a blocking reason. The blocking reason of a blocked operation has two purposes:

  • To indicate why the operation is blocked.
  • To determine which actions you can no longer perform on the operation.

Types of blocking

The following actions can be blocked by means of a blocking reason:

  • Reporting a quantity completed.
  • Reporting a quantity rejected.
  • Reporting a quantity to be inspected.
  • Reporting an operation completed.

You normally carry out these actions in the Report Operations Completed (tisfc0130m000) session.

You can define blocking reasons in the Blocking Reasons (tisfc2100m000) session.

Manual blocking

Use the Report Operations Completed (tisfc0130m000) session to block an operation. When you block an operation, you must also enter a blocking reason. If Quality has already blocked the operation, you can only enter a blocking reason, which is more restrictive than the blocking reason of Quality.

Blocking by Quality Management

Quality uses the blocking reasons specified in the Quality Management Parameters (qmptc0100m000) session, to block operations. For details, see the Using QM for manufacturing operations topic.

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Kathy Barthelt

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