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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 LX & BPCS: Why You Need MES

George Moroses 0 21703 Article rating: 5.0

You know your plant better than anyone, and most likely you'd admit that there is room for improvement. Perhaps too many defects are causing costly issues down the road, or maybe your production is behind and orders are shipping late? Do you know what needs to be improved? Do you know about the root causes of the problems that you’re experiencing? Is it fair to say, you don’t know what you don’t know … yet?

MES helps you dig into the problem and better yet, SOLVES the problem!

What Is MES and How Does It Work?

Many companies still enter data manually or share work instructions on paper. Most of them, however, know there’s a better way to organize the mass of activity happening on the plant floor. MES provides visibility to that activity as well as the underlying data and uses that data to improve how that activity is done and makes it repeatable. MES connects multiple sites, integrates with equipment, and raises the effectiveness of business applications all to better optimize operations.

The 3 Pillars of MES:

  1. Establishing a plan and staying on schedule...

Staff Augmentation: Knowledgeable ERP Staff Quickly

Infor LX, BPCS, Infor M3, Infor LN & Baan

Crossroads RMC 0 11946 Article rating: 5.0

So... your staff is working on a critical project for your top customer, and in order to maintain customer satisfaction and complete the project on-time, you are faced with the immediate need for additional staff. You know that the recruitment process takes way too long, and that it's virtually impossible to find highly qualified employees that won't need lengthy training to bring them up to speed on your ERP system, let alone your business. 

What if... your ERP system is dragging and you know you are behind on installing updates that are likely to improve system performance, but your IT guy is working on something else of importance and can't perform the upgrade?

Either of these scenarios sound familiar? 

Staff Augmentation ensures that...

Infor LN & Baan Tip: What Data Can Be Archived or Deleted?

Kathy Barthelt 0 16667 Article rating: 5.0

From time to time, your employees need access to information related to logistical and financial transactions that have occurred in the past. Before you archive or delete this information, you must understand the need for this information. Baan and LN contain standard archiving sessions in the major modules that tend to have a high volume of historical transactions. These sessions are designed to copy historical data to the archive company, and then delete the data from the operational company.

You have three options in archiving sessions...

Infor LX & BPCS Tip: Can’t Select Orders for Pick Release or Pick Confirm?

George Moroses 0 13315 Article rating: 5.0

Orders that are on credit hold, customer hold, user hold, margin hold, credit card hold or pricing hold cannot be selected for Pick Release or Pick Confirm. The ORD952B, Orders Not Selected Report, can be requested at Pick Release or Pick Confirm to list any order that would normally qualify for selection, but has been excluded for other reasons, and to print that reason. ORD952B has been modified to validate the hold status of the original customer order, and to print a reference to the original customer order along with the reason.

Infor LN & Baan Job Management

Baan IV, Baan V, Infor LN

Kathy Barthelt 0 12689 Article rating: 5.0

You can use job management to schedule jobs based on your organizational requirements. For example, you can schedule jobs at non-peak hours to improve the overall system performance in a heavily loaded environment. A job consists of one or more sessions or shell commands, or both, that run without user interaction. The sessions and shell commands in a job can be started while you are not logged on to the ERP system. You can schedule jobs to start processes periodically, at a defined interval, or immediately. Typically, you use job management for...

Infor LN & Baan Tip: Barcodes for Any Baan and Infor LN  Report – Did you know?

Kathy Barthelt 0 19863 Article rating: 5.0

Did you know that you can print 1D and 2D barcodes on any Baan or Infor LN report along with QR Codes?

Please refer to:

  • KB 22881483 for Baan
  • KB 22924522 for Infor LN


​Still, need help? Contact Crossroads RMC today and we’ll be glad to walk you through it or take care of it for you.

800.762.2077  |  solutions@crossroadsrmc.com

Update from Infor Community: inPOWER 2022 – When is it, What is it, Where is it, and Why attend?

George Moroses 0 17648 Article rating: 5.0

Join the LX User Group Board and Dave Rapacz, LX Product Manager, to learn more about the details of the first in-person event since 2019, inPower 2022.

July 12, 2022 11:00pm CT | 12:00pm ET 

They will discuss what to expect at inPower 2022 and the value to the attendees.

Register today via the community calendar...

Infor LX & BPCS Tip: Enterprise General Ledger (EGL)

George Moroses 0 18269 Article rating: 5.0

Enterprise General Ledger (EGL) provides audit attributes to track journal entry changes and approvals.

To implement this enhancement, you can request and apply MR 81026.

This enhancement provides audit attributes for the last maintained user, date, time, and approval user, and date, and time on the Financial Journal Entry and Financial Journal Entry Lines. This audit function provides visibility to who and when the journal was last maintained and to who and when the journal was approved.

The programs or areas impacted include:

  • Financial Event
  • Financial Journal Entry
  • Financial Journal Entry Line
  • Financial Journal Entry Detail Line
  • Post Multiple Events
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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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