The recent Epicor Insights 2013 conference highlighted how the 2012 Solarsoft acquisition strengthens Epicor’s presence in the lumber and building materials, wholesale distribution, print and packaging, and automotive sectors. In addition, Solarsoft gives Epicor new presence in process manufacturing (i.e., food and beverage, pharmaceuticals, mills, metals, and chemicals), whereas Epicor has traditionally focused on discrete manufacturing.

One byproduct of Solarsoft’s acquisition was Epicor Mattec, a standalone manufacturing execution system (MES), for which there reportedly is growing customer demand among manufacturing organizations worldwide. The product is also creating new opportunities for Epicor as an integrated solution with its next-generation enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, Epicor ERP (a.k.a., Epicor 9).

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Siemens PLM Software has announced the release of the latest version of its widely used digital manufacturing solution for manufacturing engineering, Tecnomatix 11. The latest release offers a more advanced digital manufacturing solution that promises to deliver smart, fast, and lean manufacturing, including Manufacturing Process Management (MPM).

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Apriso, a provider of global manufacturing software solutions, has introduced a Packaging Solution for Global Manufacturers to better manage complex packaging operations and conversion processes. Manufacturers in the consumer goods, food and beverage, and consumer electronics industries who implement this solution should have up-to-the-minute visibility into and control over plant floor systems, processes, and performance to enable better informed decisions and respond faster to change with accuracy, while still retaining the operations intelligence necessary for world-class product traceability and regulatory compliance adherence.

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Apriso, a provider of global manufacturing software solutions that has recently celebrated its 20th birthday, announced the launch of Apriso Global EMI (Enterprise Manufacturing Intelligence) solution—that provides a truly global and consistent platform. The solution gathers and reports up-to-the-minute information—wherever and whenever it is needed across an enterprise—tailored and presented in a way that is right for each individual decision maker.

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While some analysts may question the true revenue figure that can be attributed solely to SAP HANA (i.e., whether SAP is intentionally crediting HANA with revenues that might be attributable to other SAP offerings), the fact remains that businesses have currently only just scratched the surface of SAP HANA’s potential. For example, SAP recently announced that HANA would underpin new releases of manufacturing solutions as well as updates for existing solutions covering engineering, manufacturing, and sustainable operations. The announcement was made at Hannover Messe 2013, held April 8-12 in Hannover, Germany.

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I am quite familiar with the Russian auto industry, and thus I enjoyed analyzing the transaction that recently took place involving a big player in the automobile industry in Russian manufacturing hub Togliatti, whereby automotive industry supplier, Russia-based Saturno-TP, became a client of ERP software vendor QAD (also see yesterday’s TEC blog post).

Despite global industry depression, the automobile manufacturing industry in Russia is developing at an extremely fast pace, only comparable with China and a small number of other Asian countries. All major global auto manufacturers already established their assembly plants in the country three to six years ago, and now it is time for their parts and components suppliers from around the world to roll out their manufacturing facilities in Russia too. Although there is an advantage that comes with being local, Russian auto suppliers are experiencing tremendous pressure from car manufacturers with regards to quality and compliance with world-level standards in manufacturing and logistics business processes. This is quite a painful process overall that is quite well suited to the advantages that ERP software can provide; adopting a world-class ERP system would allow managing a company according to global manufacturing standards of the industry. Read the rest of this entry »

On March 10, 2013, Apriso, a global provider of manufacturing software solutions, celebrated its 20th anniversary. Apriso has established itself as a leader in the manufacturing operations management (MOM) industry, having accomplished 20 industry firsts during its first two decades of existence. This industry leadership has translated into substantial business value creation by Apriso’s customers, supporting Apriso’s significant revenue growth and global expansion to more than 45 countries.

It is indeed impressive that Apriso has survived for 20 years, given that a few manufacturing execution system (MES) software companies make it even for even 10 years (other than power houses like Rockwell, Siemens, Invensys, Honeywell, etc.). For more details, see the press release announcing the 20th anniversary, and the figure below, which illustrates the aforementioned “20 industry firsts” that Apriso has accomplished over those two decades.

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The Plex Systems team was in town recently. TEC’s P.J. Jakovljevic and I took the opportunity to sit down with the new Plex CEO, Jason Blessing, as well as V.P. of Corporate Strategy Jim Shepherd, and V.P. of Marketing Patrick Fetterman. Read the rest of this entry »

TEC is pleased to announce that Visibility.net by Visibility Corporation is now TEC Certified for engineer-to-order enterprise resource planning (ETO ERP) manufacturing under the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Evaluation Center. Read the rest of this entry »

In part 1 of this series, we took a look at IBS, some of the challenges the company was facing, and its software oferings for the business community. To discuss the aforementioned issues (see part 1) and IBS’ ongoing turnaround, we recently spoke to Doug Braun, the chief executive officer (CEO) of IBS. As CEO, Mr. Braun is responsible for translating business needs into products that solve customer supply chain problems.

TEC: How would you describe IBS’s current state of affairs? Read the rest of this entry »

On February 26, KeyedIn™ Solutions formally launched its new KeyedIn Manufacturing cloud solution at the Houstex manufacturing conference in Houston, Texas. KeyedIn Manufacturing is the latest entrant into the enterprise resource planning (ERP) for small to medium businesses (SMBs) space. TEC wanted to get more background on the product and had the opportunity to speak with Karen Adame, chief product officer at KeyedIn Solutions. We’ll share some highlights from that discussion here. Read the rest of this entry »

Several years ago enterprise applications market observers might have talked about Sweden’s “Three I” enterprise resource planning (ERP) vendors: Intentia, IFS, and IBS. While hardly anyone has ever questioned those publicly traded vendors’ industry savvy and product functionality, all three of them have struggled with stagnant growth and red ink for the major part of the late 1990s and early 2000s. The first one is no longer an independent company and is now part of Infor, after first merging with Lawson Software in 2005. IFS seems to be doing very well of late as still an independent publicly traded company, after undergoing its own thorough soul searching and regrouping a few years back. After refocusing on only asset-intensive and project-centric industries as well as via a few non-taxing acquisitions in the field service management (FSM) space, IFS has lately had an array of impressive customer wins. Read the rest of this entry »

After a very good 2012, IQMS, a manufacturing enterprise resource planning (ERP) software and manufacturing execution systems (MES) developer with an ongoing and proactive commitment to its product and relationships, continues 2013 with new customer wins—most recently, Airlite Plastics Co. has selected IQMS.

Airlite Plastics’ legacy software was a combination of commercial and custom-built applications that were creating numerous challenges. Difficulties supporting custom-built applications and integrating many different versions of the software encouraged Airlite Plastics to seek out a new ERP system. According to the press release, Airlite reviewed 10 to 12 ERP packages, but it would seem that many of them were not robust enough to make the final cut. Read the rest of this entry »

There was a new LANSA case study released yesterday that really grabbed my attention. LANSA is a Chicago-based developer and IT services provider that is primarily known for its solutions for legacy systems users who generally want to upgrade their systems but are not ready to shake the entire company up with an implementation of brand new software. Companies may feel that after many years their existing system is tuned to the company’s needs and works like a well-oiled machine, whereas there’s no guarantee a new system would work at the same level. Also, new upgrades and development tools of legacy systems can sometimes be so advanced that making a replacement with a new software is unnecessary. Read the rest of this entry »

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementations are mainly business projects rather than IT projects, so a lion’s share of efforts and, consequently, costs of ERP adoptions belong to the business side—for example, business process changes and master data preparation. However, ERP systems can’t just be acquired and started to be used overnight, so a system’s deployment itself and its fine tuning to certain business processes and practices is still a significant part of a deal. These processes are often interchangeable so it’s difficult to draw a fine line between system-related or business-related tasks—in some areas we have to change the system setup while in others we optimize processes because the software requires it. Sometimes clients need to modify both in parallel. Read the rest of this entry »