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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: Getting the Most Out of Your ERP System – The Roadmap

Anthony Etzel 0 50226 Article rating: No rating

I hate getting lost. I feel out of control and helpless. Thank God my dad taught me early on how to read a map. Maps give us direction, points of reference, and helps us navigate the obstacles in our way.  

Do you have roadmap for your ERP system, or are you lost? An ERP roadmap can give your staff direction. It should help you create a stronger workforce that is well prepared to meet the future needs of your business. Take a hard look at what your ERP is, or isn’t doing for you. Chances are, there is much that can be done, and all you need to do is start plotting out your map. 

Optimize Your Manufacturing Today!

Baan/LN Tip of the Week: Getting the Most Out of Your ERP System – The Roadmap

Kathy Barthelt 0 80917 Article rating: No rating

I hate getting lost. I feel out of control and helpless. Thank God my dad taught me early on how to read a map. Maps give us direction, points of reference, and helps us navigate the obstacles in our way.  

Do you have roadmap for your ERP system, or are you lost? An ERP roadmap can give your staff direction. It should help you create a stronger workforce that is well prepared to meet the future needs of your business. Take a hard look at what your ERP is, or isn’t doing for you. Chances are, there is much that can be done, and all you need to do is start plotting out your map. 

Optimize Your Manufacturing Today!

BPCS/LX Tip of the Week: 6 Powerful Steps to Win With Automation

Anthony Etzel 0 58902 Article rating: No rating
  1. Eliminate paper shop packet and distribution of the paperwork to the shop floor.     
  2. Eliminate manual (paper-based) recording activities and the need to key in the transactions.
  3. Easy electronic scheduling by sequence and changing job priorities.
  4. Evaluate differences using actual times compared to standards.
  5. Improve data accuracy and eliminate the need to chase and fix errors.
  6. Practice Real-Time data reporting to monitor efficiencies and identify problems as they occur.

Optimize Your Manufacturing Today!

Baan/LN Tip of the Week: 6 Powerful Steps to Win With Automation

Kathy Barthelt 0 80056 Article rating: No rating
  1. Eliminate paper shop packet and distribution of the paperwork to the shop floor.     
  2. Eliminate manual (paper-based) recording activities and the need to key in the transactions.
  3. Easy electronic scheduling by sequence and changing job priorities.
  4. Evaluate differences using actual times compared to standards.
  5. Improve data accuracy and eliminate the need to chase and fix errors.
  6. Practice Real-Time data reporting to monitor efficiencies and identify problems as they occur.

Optimize Your Manufacturing Today!

Crenlo Partners With Crossroads RMC to Achieve Operational Efficiency

Kathy Barthelt 0 30220 Article rating: No rating

Crenlo, a leading manufacturer of cab and enclosure products, has elected to expand their partnership with Crossroads RMC to achieve greater efficiency within their operations. Phase 1 of the implementation will include RMCship (FedEx/UPS integration with Baan), RMCbuild (analysis of current inventory for production needs), Paperless Pick Web Collect Data Collection for their service orders and remote warehouse, and the development of a web-based quality inspection application which will be integrated with their Baan ERP system. 

BPCS/LX Tip of the Week: Tip of the Week: Cross Docking

Anthony Etzel 0 55084 Article rating: No rating

Cross Docking can provide significant improvements in efficiency by looking for outstanding requirements for an item (production orders, sales orders, replenishment orders) and automatically assigning the incoming item to that requirement instead of putting the item away into inventory, only to retrieve it later. Consider implementing cross-docking at your facility. 

Optimize Your Manufacturing Today!

Baan/LN Tip of the Week: Cross Docking

Kathy Barthelt 0 75895 Article rating: No rating

Cross Docking can provide significant improvements in efficiency by looking for outstanding requirements for an item (production orders, sales orders, replenishment orders) and automatically assigning the incoming item to that requirement instead of putting the item away into inventory, only to retrieve it later. Consider implementing cross-docking at your facility. 

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.

Last

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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