www.infor.com

Material Logistics

Infor XA

www.infor.com

The Environment

The needs of today’s manufacturers and distributors are varied, but trends have emerged which show a

need to better manage the supply chain. Increasingly, businesses are seeing the need to become

geographically disperse to better handle the demands of their customers. Multi-site and even multi-

company enterprises have become the new norm. The challenges of managing multiple sites can be

further complicated when multiple currencies and languages are involved.

Material Logistics allows your organization to better manage your supply chain, giving you visibility

across the enterprise in an unprecedented fashion. Material Logistics provides real-time visibility.

Employees can see product availability across sites, regardless of where the product is located. So

products stocked in another country, in another language, currency or unit of measure appear natively

to local users. Material logistics provides users with full, remote real-time available-to-promise (ATP)

capabilities.

Enterprise-wide Material Logistics, Planning and Execution

Material Logistics provides visibility of orders, transfers, replenishments and shipments and can be used

to account for inventory in transit, outside processing, consignments and vendor managed inventory

(VMI).

Infor XA

www.infor.com

Material Logistics allows for intelligent supply chain management. Material Logistics contains logic

allowing orders to be fulfilled based on a variety of criteria, such as:

- Distance from customer

- Cost to produce

- Product availability

Infor Development Framework (IDF)

Material Logistics was developed using Infor’s Infor Development Framework (IDF). IDF is a suite of

development tools used to produce powerful, scalable applications using Infor’s unique development

standards. The IDF offers a rich user experience providing a graphical interface using tabs, lists, views

and sorts in an easy-to-use package. IDF driven applications also provide a variety of deployment

methods because the application is fully capable of being fully utilized in a web-browser. Applications

using IDF also take full advantage of Infor’s other technological advances such as System Link. System

Link takes advantage of IDF application’s XML structure to allow you to easily integrate to other

Infor XA

www.infor.com

applications and databases. Material Logistics has also been designed to leverage Infor tools such as

Powerlink and Netlink, making the product as flexible as it is powerful.

Material Logistics IDF-derived architecture means that the application is easy to use, and provides

powerful, real-time information delivered to your fingertips whether you’re in the office or around the

world.

Material Logistics user interface has been designed to streamline common tasks. Tasks in traditional

InterSite Logistics and Multi-Environment InterSite Logistics, which would have required navigating

through multiple screens, can now be completed from a single, simple screen. This ability saves users

time and effort to complete common tasks.

Material Logistics Transactions

There are three types of orders within Material Logistics: Type-1, Type-2 and Type-3. They are described

as follows.

Type-1 – Type-1 orders are intercompany transfers at standard cost. Type 1 orders are simple

intercompany transfers that can be completed with or without invoicing between companies or logical

business units.

A typical Type-1 scenario would be a customer calls into a customer service center to order a particular

item. In real-time the customer service representative would be able to immediately see that the item is

unavailable at the requesting warehouse. The customer service representative can also see that part is

available (real-time). When the order for this part is created, demand is placed on the supplying

Infor XA

www.infor.com

warehouse. When the supplying warehouse ships the item, the requesting warehouse is notified of the

shipment. The part is shipped at cost to the requesting warehouse. For purposes of illustration we will

say that the part sells to the customer for $100 and has a cost of $100. This scenario is illustrated in

Figure 1.

Figure 1

Type-2 – Type-2 orders facilitate order entry across multiple plants or warehouses. It solves the issue of

multiple languages and currencies. Type-2 orders also facilitate accommodation of multi-national issues

such as VAT taxes and cross-border paperwork. With Material Logistics, users have the ability to view

product availability across multiple companies.

Figure 2

Infor XA

www.infor.com

Type-3 – Type-3 orders are orders placed with a company and fulfilled through a direct-to-customer

drop-ship directly from the vendor.

Figure 3

Infor XA

www.infor.com

What’s New in Material Logistics?

Many companies currently using InterSite Logistics (ISL) and Multi-Environment InterSite Logistics (MISL)

may be asking themselves, “What’s new in Material Logistics and what the benefits of ML are over ISL

and MISL?” The following is a partial list of added functions and features not currently found in ISL and

MISL.

- Infor Development Framework (IDF) browser based user interface, which includes: tabs, cards,

and other Windows standard architecture.

- The ability to see across multiple countries, languages, currencies in real-time.

- Greater accountability over the creation and deletion of remote orders.

- Makes it easier to close out and receive remote orders.

- Allows for invoicing against remote orders as well as the ability to do Free on Board (FOB)

InterSite transfers.

- Facilitates the creation of new Enterprise Warehouses.

- Better integration with Customer Order Management (COM) / Customer Service Management

(CSM), Engineering Product Data Management (EPDM).

- Ability to do remote drop-ships direct from vendors to end customers.

- Material Logistics orders integrate with multi-sourcing.

Material Logistics is seamlessly integrated with Customer Service Management (CSM)

Infor XA

www.infor.com

Infor Corporate Headquarters

13560 Morris Road

Suite 4100

Alpharetta, Georgia 30004

Direct: +1 [800] 260 2640

Infor XA

Infor XA