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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

Does your Baan or Infor LN system still lack integration with UPS and FedEx?

Kathy Barthelt 0 10465 Article rating: 5.0

Efficiency is a recurring topic within the manufacturing sector, often highlighted in articles and discussions with manufacturers. According to a recent comprehensive report by The Manufacturer and IBM, a substantial 92% of manufacturers prioritize enhancing efficiency as their primary business imperative. By bolstering efficiency, manufacturers can effectively curtail costs, augment throughput, and thereby enhance their competitive edge.

A notable approach to enhance efficiency involves the elimination of redundant processes, particularly the manual input of data from systems like Baan and Infor LN to third-party logistics systems such as UPS or FedEx. These third-party systems...

Infor LN & Baan Tip: All About Invoicing Methods

Kathy Barthelt 0 16852 Article rating: 5.0

Invoicing Methods are a set of parameters that define the types of orders and order lines that can be collected on an invoice, the type of invoice to be generated and the costs to be aggregated on Project invoices and Service invoices.

If options to combine tax codes, departments, sales representatives' line of business area...

Infor LX & BPCS: Waste in Manufacturing

George Moroses 0 17008 Article rating: 5.0

What if you could eliminate waste and optimize your business for $5/day?

Crossroads MES (Manufacturing Execution System) captures all of your ERP production data and harnesses the power of that data to increase your team’s efficiency by providing the right information at the right time to the right people. 

Reducing waste enables manufacturers to save money and increase productivity.
Where is the waste happening in your processes? How often is your department spending time and resources on the following tasks?

Infor LX & BPCS Tip: Have you considered WebTop?

George Moroses 0 12227 Article rating: 5.0

WebTop release 4.8 is NOW AVAILABLE for Infor LX versions 8.3.5 and 8.4.x.

WebTop is a web interface based on green screen code automatically generated using a tool called 'WebTop Studio'. The process of generating the web interface is referred to as "Weblication".

Infor is focused on modernizing and web-enabling Infor LX and this release provides significant improvements to the web-based user experience.
Key features:

  • Grid decorators for advanced customization

Planning for Growth – What you need to do first to be successful

Infor LX | BPCS | Infor LN | Baan

Crossroads RMC 0 10642 Article rating: 5.0

As your business experiences growth or aims to do more with less, optimizing your resources becomes crucial. To achieve growth, it's essential to leverage your people, processes, and products effectively. You are the experts on your products, and we covered Reskilling and Upskilling Your Staff on June 21, so let's focus on the processes that drive your business forward.

  1. Analyze your ERP system and other software:...

Infor LN & Baan Tip: Cash Flow Functionality and Setup

Kathy Barthelt 0 14633 Article rating: 5.0

A cash flow statement provides a historical view of the movement of cash within a company. This statement offers an overview of both the origins and destinations of cash, aiding management in evaluating the company's ability to fulfill short-term financial obligations. To differentiate between various sources and uses of cash, reason codes can be utilized. When interacting with cash transactions in relevant sessions, users have the option to input or review the corresponding cash flow reason. The cash flow statement organizes cash transactions based on these reasons. LN software system maintains year-specific opening balances for cash flow transactions. Should the need arise, users can manually input opening balances in the Opening Balance Cash Flow (tfgld2118m000) session.

To set up the cash flow statement, use the following sequence of sessions:...

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Tips:  LX | BPCS | M3

TECHNOLOGY: Facility Security Ranges

Previously, a user could complete the Cost Transfer (CST920) process for any range of facilities regardless of their security settings established in SYS600. This enhancement verifies the user security settings set up in SYS600 before processing cost transfers for a range of facilities in CST920. If the user has authority for a facility range, but there are facilities within that range that are not authorized, the program skips those facilities and completes the cost transfer process.

FINANCE: Expiration Date for Quotes and RMAs

A Cancel-by-Date has been added to the Quote Header and RMA Header panels. This optional field can limit how long a quote or authorization to return items for credit is valid.  

For quotes, this enhancement provides an optional end date for the quote. For RMAs, it provides an optional date by which the customer must return the items to receive the credit listed on the RMA.

The Cancel-By-Date prints on the Order Acknowledgement and RMA Acknowledgement to inform the customer of this important limitation to the quote or return authorization. 

An Order Entry user cannot copy the quote to create a new order if the Cancel By Date has caused the quote to expire.

OPERATIONS: Default Split Salesperson to Customer Orders

Sales commissions are based on combinations of the Primary, Split, and Line-Level salesperson and the commission codes defined for the customer and item. You can now define the Split Salesperson in the same master files as the Primary Salesperson. While the Primary Salesperson is mandatory, the Split Salesperson is optional. It defaults during Order Create using the identical hierarchy as Primary Salesperson. Using Split Salesperson provides more flexibility in the calculation of sales commissions. The ability to define a default Split Salesperson improves the accuracy of sales commission qualification and calculation and reduces maintenance and adjustments necessitated by corrections.

Previously, a user could complete the Cost Transfer (CST920) process for any range of facilities regardless of their security settings established in SYS600. This enhancement verifies the user security settings set up in SYS600 before processing cost transfers for a range of facilities in CST920. If the user has authority for a facility range, but there are facilities within that range that are not authorized, the program skips those facilities and completes the cost transfer process.

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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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