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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

3rd Hoffmaster Site Goes Lives with Crossroads MES

Anthony Etzel 0 24944 Article rating: No rating

Hoffmaster, a leading manufacturer of disposable tabletop paper products, has gone live with Crossroads MES at their Oshkosh, WI plant. This is the 3rd Hoffmaster plant that has gone live with the Crossroads MES solution, and implementation of 80 more machines is planned at this facility for later this year. Engineering drawings and other production-related documents are now immediately available at each workstation running MES, thereby increasing efficiency and accuracy in their operations.

BPCS/LX Tip of the Week: Efficiency– The What & How

Anthony Etzel 0 45597 Article rating: No rating

Efficiency is something we all strive for in our personal lives and at work. How can manufacturers increase their efficiency? Take a hard look at the 4 key areas:

  1. Planning
  2. Bill of Material and Job Accuracy
  3. Inventory Planning
  4. Real Time Reporting / Processing 

Need help figuring out how to become more efficient in each of these areas? Contact us, we’d be happy to help.

Optimize Your Manufacturing Today!

Baan/LN Tip of the Week: Efficiency– The What & How

Kathy Barthelt 0 70320 Article rating: No rating

Efficiency is something we all strive for in our personal lives and at work. How can manufacturers increase their efficiency? Take a hard look at the 4 key areas:

  1. Planning
  2. Bill of Material and Job Accuracy
  3. Inventory Planning
  4. Real Time Reporting / Processing 

Need help figuring out how to become more efficient in each of these areas? Contact us, we’d be happy to help.

Optimize Your Manufacturing Today!

BPCS/LX Tip of the Week: Learn More About Infor’s LX Exit Points Functionality

Anthony Etzel 0 47482 Article rating: No rating

Exit Points is a new feature in Infor LX Version 8 that allows users to customize, without changing the original LX source code. Exit points provide a way for you to call an external program and pass a set of parameters to implement any needed custom logic. By using Exit Points, LX customers are able to modify the software, and still take advantage of new releases from Infor. Exit points are available in many LX programs. A complete list is available on the Infor support website.

Optimize Your Manufacturing Today!

Baan/LN Tip of the Week: Top 10 Survival Tips For Manufacturers

by Guy Morgan / IndustryWeek

Kathy Barthelt 0 70851 Article rating: No rating

Under intense cost pressures, quality is at risk at many manufacturers. These 10 tips can help you survive the competitive challenges ahead.

  1. Maintain your focus. Make a decision about the kind of company you are and stick with it. 
  2. Reinvent your products regularly. Suppliers who sharply differentiate their products fare the best. 
  3. Maximize your productivity and increase your speed through enhanced product and process design. Lean manufacturing focuses on production and its associated costs from a component's conception.

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

Anthony Etzel 0 38362 Article rating: No rating

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!

Baan/LN Tip of the Week: Real Time Access to Your Data

Kathy Barthelt 0 72860 Article rating: No rating

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!

BPCS/LX Tip of the Week: January - Time to Reflect and Plan

Anthony Etzel 0 44589 Article rating: No rating

Happy New Year! January is always a great time to reflect on the prior year – what went well, and what didn’t. It is also the obvious time to plan for the coming year – what do I want to accomplish and how can I best achieve my goals?

As the saying goes, “you can’t improve what you can’t measure”, so if you haven’t already, it is time to start putting processes, procedures and programs in place within your company to measure how well each department is doing against their objectives. Start to analyze your numbers and publish them internally. Where are you at currently? Where do you want to be? Seeing both sets of numbers pushes employees to hit those targets. Do this now, and you’ll be seeing positive results before you know it!  

Optimize Your Manufacturing Today!

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Tips:  LX | BPCS | M3

Improves control over PO costing changes during invoice entry by replacing passive warnings with an intentional override action.

  • In ACP500D3 (Invoice Entry PO Costing), users previously could unintentionally accept changes by pressing ENTER, even when quantity to cost or amount to cost values had changed.

  • A new “F14 to Override” warning message replaces the old message:
    “Details have changed. Press enter again to accept data.”
    This ensures users acknowledge and confirm significant changes explicitly.

New System Parameter:

  • “Apply GRN Costing Tolerance for PO Costing” (optional):

    • Within tolerance: Displays the original message —
      “Details have changed. Press enter again to accept data.”

    • Outside tolerance: Triggers the new override requirement —
      “F14 to Override”

Benefits:

  • Enhances oversight and reduces unintentional cost acceptance.

  • Enables better control of PO costs when invoice details differ from expectations.

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Tips: LN | Baan

Kathy Barthelt

Infor LN & Baan Tips & Tricks for EXECUTIVES

OPERATIONS: Update, Cancel or Remove Outbound Order Lines
When the originating order or order line of an outbound order line is canceled or changed, this affects the outbound order line and may affect the related outbound advice, shipments, or shipment lines.

For most order origins, warehousing order-type parameters determine whether these actions are allowed:

  • Update the outbound order line if the originating order is changed.
  • Cancel the originating order line and the outbound order line.
  • Delete the canceled outbound order line.

If updating is allowed, changes made to the originating order are updated to the outbound order line and the related outbound advice, and, if present, picking lists, are deleted.

If updating is not allowed, a message is displayed, and the input is blocked when you try to change the originating order line.

If canceling is allowed, the outbound order line is deleted or set to Canceled when the originating order line is canceled.

When a canceled outbound order line is deleted, if present, the related outbound advice and picking list are also deleted. Outbound order lines originating from manual order origins cannot be deleted when canceled.

To process an outbound order line that is not deleted but set to Canceled, the outbound order line must be set to Shipped. The status of the outbound order line determines whether all steps of the outbound and shipment procedures must be completed to process the outbound order line.

When a canceled outbound order line is set to Shipped, the shipped quantity is automatically set to 0. You can create a transfer order to return the not-shipped goods to inventory.

If canceling is not allowed, you cannot cancel the originating order line or the outbound order line. A message to that effect is displayed when you try to cancel the originating order line.

To prevent the goods from being shipped when canceling is not allowed, you must complete the outbound and shipment procedures. When confirming the shipment line, you must set the shipped quantities to 0 and create a transfer order to return the not-shipped goods to inventory.

FINANCE: Currency Differences Accounts
Currency differences can make the financial analysis and reconciliation more complex. These types of currency differences can occur:

  • Currency differences
    Currency result caused by fluctuations in the exchange rate, for example, if the rate differs between the invoice date and the payment date.

  • Exchange gain and loss
    Currency result caused by the use of different exchange rate types, for example, the Sales rate type and the Internal rate type, or if using the rate determiner you have changed the exchange rate for a transaction during the order handling procedure.

  • Translation gain and loss
    Currency result caused by the use of different currencies during the order handling procedure, for example, if the order currency or the payment currency differs from the invoice currency.

  • Destination gain and loss
    Currency result caused by different results when the transaction currency is converted to the various home currencies. Destination gain and loss can only occur in an independent currency system.

To support good reconciliation possibilities, currency differences and exchange gain and loss are posted to these accounts:

  • Exchange Gain and Loss
    For differences between related amounts (debit and credit postings) due to different exchange rate types or different currency rates.

  • Currency Translation
    For transactions in which the debit posting and the credit posting are made in different currencies.

  • Currency Differences contra account
    For currency differences on the invoice accrual account due to rate changes between the receipt date and the approval date of the invoice and calculated when you close a financial period.


TECHNOLOGY: Advantages of Data Replication
Instead of sharing tables through logical linking, you can replicate table content between companies. This approach allows certain non-key attributes of a record to vary by company. For example, if you replicate bills of materials rather than sharing them, each company can associate a different warehouse with the same bill of material. This way, the bills of materials are consistent across companies, while the warehouses can differ.

Replication also enables selective availability of records in other companies. For instance, when replicating items, you might limit which items are available in a sales company based on their item group, only including end items. You can further refine replication to specific subsets, such as particular item groups.

Keep in mind that replication requires any referenced tables to be either replicated or shared as well.

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Kathy Barthelt

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