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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

Infor LN & Baan: Customizing Shipping Labels for All Customers

Kathy Barthelt 0 1092 Article rating: 5.0

Are you striving to create shipping labels that cater to all your customers' needs? Do you require specific details on your shipping labels for particular items or product lines?

According to recent research, the global barcode label printer market was valued at $2.6 billion in 2022 and is estimated to reach $4.3 billion by 2032, exhibiting a CAGR of 5.2% from 2023 to 2032.

Crossroads RMC's RMClabel software automates the printing of customer-specific and item-specific labels...

​Infor LN & Baan Tip: Determining What Data to Archive or Delete

Kathy Barthelt 0 1272 Article rating: 5.0

Ensuring access to historical logistical and financial transaction information for your employees is crucial. However, before proceeding with archiving or deletion, it's essential to evaluate the necessity of retaining this data. Baan and Infor LN (ERP LN) offer standard archiving sessions within major modules that typically handle a significant volume of historical transactions. These sessions are designed to transfer historical data to an archive company before deleting it from the operational company.

When it comes to archiving sessions, you have three primary options:

Infor LX & BPCS Tip: MPS Planned vs. MRP Planned

George Moroses 0 803 Article rating: 5.0

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...

Unlocking the Full Potential of Your LX/BPCS Investment - Embrace the Cloud for Enhanced Connectivity

George Moroses 0 520 Article rating: 5.0

At Crossroads RMC, we understand that our clients are fiercely loyal to Infor LX/BPCS because of its breadth of capabilities, reliability, and efficiency. Simply put, it stands as an indispensable tool for your business operations.

Thanks to our new partnership with Aleran Software, we’ve made it easy and affordable to extend your LX/BPCS investment with a suite of modern, cloud-based sales tools, including:

  • Aleran Software Mini DemoCustomer/Dealer Portal Capabilities: Empower your customers and dealers with intuitive portal access.
  • Streamlined CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote): Simplify complex configurations and pricing processes.
  • Efficient Sales Order Management: Centralize all cart activities, quoting, and sales orders for seamless operations.
  • Sales-Focused PIM (Product Information Management): Store vital sales-driving information for enhanced decision-making.
  • Flexible Buying Sites: Offer unlimited buying sites tailored to customer or dealer preferences, complete with customizable price points.
  • Integrated Catalog and Tech Manual Buying: Facilitate integrated buying directly from existing catalogs and technical manuals.
     

With a modern, cloud-based deployment, Crossroads RMC can help you remove the risk and eliminate the headaches that come from traditional cost-prohibitive builds and months-long integrations. We can help you put your customers at the center of a multi-channel sales strategy with curated sales experiences, personalized promotions, and out-of-the-box fully configurable tools and features.  

Contact us today at 800.762.2077 to jumpstart your path to enhanced connectivity and sales efficiency.

We're excited to unveil our revamped BPCS/LX Technical Staff Augmentation Services

George Moroses 0 1208 Article rating: 5.0

We're excited to share some updates about our BPCS/LX Technical Staff Augmentation Services. At Crossroads, we're refining our staff augmentation structures to better cater to specific job descriptions. This enhanced offering is designed to provide our clients with the opportunity to seamlessly maintain product-level support (BPCS/LX – RPG) and development assistance. What sets this program apart is its ability to offer significant cost savings compared to traditional time and material arrangements. We aim to make staff augmentation more accessible and customizable to meet varying budgetary needs.

As part of this agreement, Crossroads will allocate a dedicated BPCS/LX technical resource for a set number of hours per week. The exact hours will be mutually agreed upon during the sourcing requirements discussions, ensuring that the support arrangement aligns perfectly with your needs.

Key Features of the Technical Staff Augmentation Service:

  • Flexible Hours: Tailored to your specific needs, we'll collaborate with you to determine a fixed number of hours per week that best aligns with your requirements.

  • Duration Options: Choose from flexible prepaid agreement durations of 3, 6, 9, or 12 months.

  • Remote Accessibility: Our technical services are primarily remote, but onsite assistance can also be discussed and arranged during the project kickoff phase, ensuring comprehensive support regardless of location.

  • Expertise Spectrum: Our dedicated BPCS/LX technical resources boast a comprehensive skill set, including proficiency in RPG, thorough documentation practices, design capabilities, familiarity with IBMi system foundations, job scheduling expertise, SQL proficiency, CL development capabilities, and more.

  • Scope Clarification: While our agreement primarily focuses on technical support and development assistance, application support falls outside the defined scope and can be considered separately upon request.

This innovative approach to technical staff augmentation is designed to streamline your operations, enhance system reliability, and empower your team to maximize the full potential of your BPCS/LX environment. Let's embark on this journey together, customizing technical staff augmentation solutions that precisely align with your business objectives and budgetary constraints.

Request a phone consultation or Learn

Introducing VJES (Visual Job Execution Software)

Kathy Barthelt 0 1294 Article rating: 5.0

You would be hard-pressed to completely miss the stories in the news recently about quality issues in manufacturing. The crux of the issue has been a complete focus on production and a lack of focus on quality. Yes, it is a wonderful thing to get the goods out the door, but when you’re sacrificing quality, what good is it really?

There are specifications for production for a reason. Engineering exists for a reason. If products are not built according to exact design specifications, scrap is likely to go up, rework goes up, customer returns and/or service requests go up, and customer satisfaction and overall customer confidence in your product plummets.

Is all of that worth it to get the good out the door in the shortest amount of time possible?

Every manufacturer relies on a few core measurements to manage their operations. Measurements like efficiency, productivity, capacity, labor and equipment utilization are used by manufacturers across the globe to benchmark performance and assess the effectiveness of processes.

Quality needs to be part of that mix. Because measurements like efficiency and productivity don’t necessarily mean high quality, incorporating ways to ensure quality from the start can help to eliminate waste and rework.

Manufacturing quality is achieved through quality control using documented, repeatable, and measurable processes.

What if you could incorporate quality control in every operation, at every work center to not only ensure high-quality finished goods but also simultaneously train high-quality operators?

Introducing Crossroads’ ERP independent solution, VJES (Visual Job Execution Software)...

Infor LN & Baan Tip: Performance improvement by setting the First Free Number Cache (tcmcs0651m000)

Kathy Barthelt 0 2018 Article rating: 5.0

Many transactions in all kinds of modules use order numbers or serial numbers. These order numbers are most often automatically generated. In the Number Groups (tcmcs0151m000) session you can define groups of order numbers used for dedicated areas. A Number Group is a group of the first free number series that you can assign to a specific use. All the numbers that Infor LN generates in the number groups that are dedicated to the same purpose are unique.

All the first free numbers are stored in the table tcmcs050.

As many different processes can request a free number from the number groups, we often see delays in the performance, due to locking on the first free number records. This locking issue can have a severe impact on the performance of huge batch-type transactions, but also on the performance perceived by individual users in many areas in LN.

For example:

Infor LX & BPCS Tip: Automated Approach to Your Cash Application Process with ARP

George Moroses 0 2089 Article rating: 5.0

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:

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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:

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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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Kathy Barthelt

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