Accelerate Innovation through Customer Involvement

SAP's co-CEO commit to increased innovation through higher levels of customer engagement and software development speed. ...

... "What we will change is to accelerate the pace of the innovation we deliver to you. We will do that by energizing our entire company to become even more open to and informed by the needs of your company. This is not a new task, as innovation has long but quietly flourished in many groups within SAP. Our goal now is to bring these groups together and unleash the creativity at SAP by fostering a new motivated employee culture, increasing customer involvement, and by increasing the clock speed of development efforts. " ...

Via SAP: Letter to SAP Customers

ERP Shop Floor Integration through SAP MII

SAP Manufacturing Integration and Intelligence.

Bosch RFID Lean Manufacturing

ERP Process Manufacturing Demo for SAP Business One

Fortis Plastics Lean Manufacturing ERP Initiative

Strategic Information Group has enabled the implementation of QAD at Fortis Plastics' manufacturing sites. The new ERP system supports the integration of manufacturing after a series of acquisitions and the implementation of lean principles to create efficiency. Fortis Plastics is a leading manufacturer that specializes in molding, compounding, and tooling. The company is committed to operational excellence and deploys an agile business model to react quickly to market trends. ...

... "Many benefits were derived from the rapid QAD ERP implementation including establishing company wide standardization, streamlining procurement and improving scheduling accuracy. Having a fully integrated and easy-to-use system has improved visibility enterprise wide and reporting now takes minutes instead of days to compile and deliver. The decision to implement QAD complements Fortis' ongoing lean manufacturing initiatives. " ...

Via Strategic Information Group: Fortis Plastics ERP Roll Out

QAD can be configured to enable lean manufacturing enterprises. ...

QAD Lean Manufacturing Software: "QAD Lean Manufacturing provides a suite of tools that supports both lean manufacturing and flow scheduling practices for production, replenishment and inventory."

Fortis is committed to quality through lean. ...

Fortis Plastics: "Our assurance of quality is put to use using combined tools of Quality, Continuous Improvement and Lean Manufacturing. "

FlexNet Lean Material Flow Software Deploys Best Practice Integration

Apriso and Accenture collaborate to deliver a best practice lean software solution that enables material flow and business processes, such as operations synchronization, visibility and controls, quality management and traceability, error proofing, and ERP system integration. ...

... "This new FlexNet solution fills some of the white spaces or gaps around Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) applications in Lean manufacturing environments, benefiting manufacturers who seek to reduce waste and cut cycle times while improving quality in logistics operations, production and customer responsiveness. Valeo, a $12B industry leading global automotive supplier, played an important role in the design of this solution by identifying key Tier 1 automotive supplier requirements while ensuring the solution adhered to Lean principles. " ...

Via Apriso: Lean Solution

Enterprise Lean Initiatives

JDA Software sees lean thinking as a model for transformation of the manufacturing enterprise and shares next-generation supply chain strategies to position for success. ...

... "Commit to Lean on an Enterprise-wide Basis: The primary goals of traditional lean manufacturing – drive out inefficiencies, reduce costs and waste, increase value and decrease variability – remain the same today. Only now these goals need to be embraced across the extended enterprise – both internally and externally with supply chain partners. In today’s dynamic business environment, virtually all operation processes are interrelated and disruptions along the extended supply chain need to be responded to quickly and in real-time. Confining lean to a single manufacturing facility or production area is not sufficient. Lean initiatives cannot work if done in isolation because changes made in siloed functional areas, such as manufacturing, distribution or transportation – or even at the local, regional or country level – can have unintended consequences that can lead to problems or increased costs in other areas. The most effective lean initiatives focus on the extended supply chain. For this reason, companies are deploying advanced modeling tools that can consider all costs and provide optimized strategies across a comprehensive supply chain network of distribution centers, plants, contract manufacturing partners, sourcing options and logistical lanes. " ...

Via JDA Software: Supply Chain Strategies to Improve Business Performance

Lean Value Stream in ERP System

QAD supports lean value stream ...

JIT Lean Supply Chain

Leadership appointment bring lean experience to the supply chain. ...

... "Under Ms. de Souza’s leadership, EI is developing and executing direct and indirect materials procurement strategies utilizing lean principles including JIT and Consignment as well as streamlining EI’s Supply Chain through full implementation of the SAP toolset. " ...

Via Endicott Interconnect: Jennifer de Souza

Software Enablers For Lean Processes

Manufacturing software that enables lean processes is still climbing the maturity curve, as supply chain and ERP vendor extend their applications to support these new capabilities. ...

... "The SCM software used for lean manufacturing is only about a half-decade old, says Moore, and some of the applications on the market are merely incrementally enhanced manufacturing resource planning tools that don't actually support true lean processes. " ...

Via Computerworld: Lean

ERP Integration Supports Manufacturing Lot Traceability

Video case study of manufacturing integration ...

Quality Execution System Integrates into ERP

Apriso Corporation improves the functionality of their FlexNet Quality application – with a Quality program capable of performing purely as an execution application, or as a Quality Execution System. ...

... "This application enhancement provides manufacturers a viable alternative to purchasing third party Quality Management Systems (QMS), which can often be challenging to integrate with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) applications because of overlapping business processes, incompatible quality plans and data collection activities. Apriso's FlexNet QES was designed instead to complement existing functionality within ERP systems provided by vendors such as SAP, Microsoft, Oracle or Infor Global Solutions. Few will argue the importance of an effective quality assurance program to achieve global manufacturing excellence - the challenge lies in how to effectively design, execute and administer such a program. One approach has been to purchase a third party QMS to provide planning, execution and reporting on overall product quality. The problem with this approach is that many existing quality management functions within ERP systems already perform most of these tasks, so any benefits from a QMS implementation are reduced through a duplication of efforts and data reconciliation issues.

Quality Execution Systems recognize that ERP applications are designed as centralized data repositories, providing a global view of corporate performance, customer interactions, and order status while supporting Quality Assurance (QA) planning efforts best performed at the corporate level. Best-in-class manufacturers have demonstrated that quality execution is best performed as an embedded process - not as loosely linked activities - within production, maintenance and warehouse operations. " ...

Via Apriso: Quality Execution System

Microsoft Dynamics Lean Enterprise Solution

Microsoft will integrate lean techniques into its Dynamics software solution. ...

... "As a part of this new program, Microsoft announced Microsoft Dynamics Industry Solution for Lean Enterprises that will expand the core functionality of the Microsoft Dynamics AX solution. This expansion via a code acquisition from eBECS Ltd., a privately held company that delivers a complete lean enterprise solution, will enable customers to optimize processes and better connect and integrate the entire supply chain, from the customer to the supply partners, to support demand-driven operations. Microsoft Dynamics Industry Solution for Lean Enterprises will be available to customers as a separate module as part of the Advanced Management edition of Business Ready Licensing by the end of calendar year 2007, initially in English only. Microsoft plans to integrate the acquired code into the next release of Microsoft Dynamics AX and have it localized for all Microsoft Dynamics AX languages. " ...

Via Microsoft: Microsoft Dynamics Deepens Industry Investments: New acquisition, industry investments and ISV solutions certification reiterate balanced approach to delivering industry-relevant software.