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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

Baan/LN Tip of the Week: Product Families

Kathy Barthelt 0 64924 Article rating: No rating

In Baan IVC, plan items on the lowest plan level were automatically actual items (not product families). All plan items on higher plan levels were product families.

The relationship between a product family and items on lower plan levels was defined in a planning bill of material.

In Infor LN, every family item must be defined in the Item Base Data module. A family item can exist on any plan level. The relationship between a family item and items on lower plan levels is defined in aggregation relationships.

Aggregation relationships in Infor LN are much more flexible than the planning bills of material in Baan IV. For example, users can define aggregation relationships between items on the same plan level.

BPCS/LX Tip of the Week: Create the Master Schedule

Anthony Etzel 0 49272 Article rating: No rating

In the master schedule creation, you have the flexibility to enter a planning start date, or default to the facility planning start date. Infor LX uses the planning date to plan both orders with forecasts and customer orders as demand.You can create your master schedule from the Master Production Scheduling module (MPS).

No one cares how hard you work! How you can do more, while doing less – know your MO.

David Dickson 0 48248 Article rating: 5.0

Would you like me to tell you a dirty, little secret?

No one cares how hard you work. Sure, some people will notice if you seem to be working hard. Your spouse or companion might note that you seem tired, stressed, not as much fun, or just aren’t around much, but they care about the consequences, not how hard you work. Your boss might note happily that his staff seems busy, things are humming along, but you can be sure that when it is review time she gets no credit for “keeps staff very busy.” Nor will the boss give you extra points for being busy. It is about results.

People outside your personal life, beyond your coworkers, might notice that you are hard to contact, perhaps because you are so busy. But trust me, customers do not care why they can’t get hold of you, and they will not see it as a positive.

Infor and Crossroads RMC are proud to offer a joint webinar on Taking Your Shop Floor Paperless - August 28th, 2014.

Anthony Etzel 0 38910 Article rating: No rating

Taking Your Shop Floor Paperless - Webinar, August 28th, 2014.

During this webinar, you will learn about the Crossroads MES Shop Floor Solution which gives you the ability to do all the following and more:

  • Collect production data
  • Provide real time feedback to your workers and your management team
  • Integrate to machines on your shop floor to pull counts directly
  • Provide up-to-date electronic versions of shop floor paperwork at the work center
  • Monitor your production against your key performance indicators
     

Join us on Thursday, August 28th at 12:00 p.m. Eastern to learn more.

TO REGISTER:

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Baan/LN Tip of the Week: Company Calendar

Kathy Barthelt 0 63086 Article rating: No rating

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.

BPCS/LX Tip of the Week: SFC600 & SFC650

Anthony Etzel 0 53886 Article rating: No rating

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.

Crossroads RMC to Exhibit at Manufacturing Matchmaking 2014

Crossroads RMC 0 42076 Article rating: No rating
Crossroads RMC will exhibit at the inaugural Illinois Manufacturing Excellence Center (IMEC) Manufacturing Matchmaking Event 2014 on September 23, 2014. Manufacturers from across the state of Illinois will come together at this event to discuss ways to improve the productivity and competitiveness of Illinois' small and mid-sized manufacturing firms.

BPCS/LX Tip of the Week: What is the bubble number and how do I maintain it?

Anthony Etzel 0 49463 Article rating: No rating

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.

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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
/ Categories: Infor LN & Baan Tips

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

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:

  • Processing warehouse transactions. Single or in-batch
  • Completing / closing orders
  • Backflushing of production orders
  • Generate Order Planning
  • Cost calculation and warehouse revaluation


How this performance can be improved?

Resolution

In the Number Groups (tcmcs0151m000) session you can open the details of a specific Number Group (tcmcs0651m000) or start the session stand-alone.

In the Number Group, you define the Series with the related First Free Numbers. Per Serie in the First Free Number, you have the option to define the Cache Size.

This Cache size is defaulted on a value of 0 (zero). A cache size of zero means No Cache. How does the First Free Number caching works:

  • When the Cache Size is zero: With this setting a process requests a Free Number from the Serie and the first free number is issued to the process. But the first free number record is not updated yet. At the moment the requesting process is finished, without errors, it reports back that the number is used and the first free number record is updated. All the time that the process is working on the transactions the first free number record is locked. If another process is requesting a free number from the same series, it must wait (retries) until the record is updated and released by the previous process. This is the locking which is causing delays in the other processes.  
  • Setting the Cache Size to a higher value then zero activates the caching. When the Cache Size is set to 1 or higher, the requested free number is sent to the requesting process, the first free number is updated, with the number as defined in the Cache size, and the record is saved. It does not wait until the requesting process has reported back that is finished, with or without errors. In this way the record is immediately released and no locking will occur. If another process is requesting a free number, it does not need to wait until the free number record is released by the earlier process. If the process is ended with errors and therefor the number is not used, this number from the series is lost. This can result in gaps in the numbering. When the cache size is greater than 1, for example it is set to 5, the requesting process receives 5 free numbers. Even if it only needs less than 5. In this way the process only has to request for a new free number after it has used the first 5 numbers from the cache. This will also speedup the process in case of large batch transactions. For ‘warehouse integration users’, like for example Factory Track or WMS users we advise to set the cache size to 5.  

Note that financial documents are not based on number group series / first free numbers. Instead they are based on transaction type series, for which the caching functionality does not exist. Financial documents, like sales invoices, bank transactions, are thus not cached.

The caching is especially important to improve the performance of all logistical processes.

It is strongly recommended (mandatory) to set the Cache Size for all Number Groups to a minimum of 1.

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Kathy Barthelt

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