Baan uses the company calendar in the following modules to determine the start and end dates for planned orders:

• Master Production Scheduling
• Material Requirements Planning
• Capacity Requirements Planning (All three combined in a single planning module for Baan V and LN)
• Shop Floor Control

The calendar provides the valid working days, number of shifts per day and the number of hours in a day.

Baan allows for a single calendar for the whole company or for a calendar for each work center.

These programs are used to capture and post shop floor information. Labor reporting, machine time, etc. can be captured by either program. The key difference is that one will also capture the production receipt and backflush components. Based on your company information / transaction process, one of these programs will most likely be used daily to capture current shop floor data. You can use the shop packet labor ticket for the manual recording, and the keying of the data. Alternatively, you can incorporate an automated method like an MES solution to capture the data and streamline the process.

The bubble number is maintained at the component level for each component defined on the Bill of Material. It is an extra user-defined reference number that you can use to re-sequence the maintenance screen display or bills of material listings.

In Infor LX, the system displays the bubble number for the existing child items. Engineering drawings often use a bubble number at the component level on the drawing so that same bubble number can be used on the Bill of Material for a link of the component to the drawing. Alternatively, you may use it simply as a method to sequence the BOM.

Be careful of how you assign the number. It is a good idea to assign the number with a consecutive count by 10 leaving room to allow for component additions to the Bill of Material.

In LN, the People package is used to register the employee’s hours and expenses. To support the People package, the Employees - General (tccom0101m000) session only contains the general employee data.

The title of the Employees - General (tccom0101m000) session was changed to Employees – General (tccom0101m000).

From the Employees - General (tccom0101m000) session, users can start the following sessions to define the more specific employee data:

• Employees - People (bpmdm0101m000).
• Employees - Project (tppdm8101m000).
• Employees - Service (tsmdm1140m000).
• Skills by Employee (tcppl0120m000).
• Employees by Team (tcppl0150m000).
• Roles by Employee (tcppl0170m000).

After users define the employees, users can also start the listed sessions from the Employees Dashboard (bpmdm0101m100) session in People.

• Print Sales Order History Information
  • all invoices processed through sales
• Check Inventory Valuation
  • this should tie out to your inventory accounts
• Print Integration Information
  • see all postings from WIP to finished goods
• Print G/L Transaction Information
  • print specific transaction types for any GL account
• Print Lot Control Information
  • will show where serial numbers were used

If you setup the “From” and “To” Location fields in the Work Center file, this will determine the locations for material issue transactions and production reporting transactions.

The reporting of the transactions happen through production reporting, JIT600, or using the Shop Floor labor posting, SFC600, or Shop Floor Posting from SFC650.

Remember, any location used in the work center file must first be set up in the location master file. Using an MES solution by-passes the need to key any of the data to Infor LX.

I have been working with ERP in various roles for over 30 years, directly involved in over a hundred implementations, while my company has been involved with over 300 more. Of course, in many ways the systems we use today are completely different from what we used in the ‘80s – back then it was green screens, simple transaction entry forms, and cumbersome updates (at best) to link what one department did with all the other areas that needed access to that information. Then there were those planning programs that took all the information along with various parameters the users needed to set and told us what to do.

The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same