NPRao
30th January 2003, 22:01
Mid-Market Automotive ERP Grows Up
By Larry Gould for Automotive Design & Production Magazine
Summary:
If you're a small- or medium-sized automotive supplier, here are some traditional mid-market ERP systems to think about-plus a surprise guest.
http://www.autofieldguide.com/articles/010307.html
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[ Extend & integrate ]
Acquired two years ago by Invensys plc (London, England), a production technology and energy management conglomerate, Baan is very much alive and well, Fred Thomas, industry director of global automotive for Baan Company (Holland, MI), excitedly assures all listeners.
As proof, last summer Baan upgraded its automotive ERP package, iBaan Automotive, with a service pack. No great shakes here, just an overall upgrade covering all the bases of iBaan, including its EDI functions. The result was twofold, according to Thomas. First, the Baan automotive footprint has become far more complete. Second, one iBaan automotive solution now exists for use worldwide.
But there are some gems here medium-sized manufacturers will appreciate. Fully integrated into the ERP side of iBaan is the iBaan SCM suite. This includes advanced planning and scheduling, thus giving users the ability to monitor actual supply chain process plans, simulate scenarios, consider constraints and analyze results, and quickly respond to customer queries and changesall using data from ERP and CRM.
Last June, Baan extended its PLM with a host of capabilities. For instance, iBaan Product Data Management (PDM) links an organizations computer-aided design (CAD) to ERP. iBaan Lifecycle Analyzer lets users determine the effect of a change on key factors such as cost, stock, production line schedules, time to market, and product quality.
Nowadays, Baan is working on yet another level of integration, named OpenWorldX. This data infrastructure is the intelligent glueThomas termfor creating a much better, tighter, integrated product that melds disparate software pieces together. The first step in that is to further solidify the world-of-acquisition that makes up Invensys today, which includes the Wonderware InTrack manufacturing execution system and the Advantis enterprise asset manager. Such integration is Invensys search of manufacturings Holy Grail: real-time visibility from the shop floor level to the executive suite.
OpenWorldX is also focused on integrating Baan applications with various third-party and legacy information systems. Last April, Baan reified its any-to-any application connectivity by announcing plug-and-play compatibility with SAP. This connection is one result of a deployment at Foxboro, a process control company (also an Invensys acquisition), integrating iBaan E-Sales with an SAPR/3 ERP system.
By Larry Gould for Automotive Design & Production Magazine
Summary:
If you're a small- or medium-sized automotive supplier, here are some traditional mid-market ERP systems to think about-plus a surprise guest.
http://www.autofieldguide.com/articles/010307.html
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[ Extend & integrate ]
Acquired two years ago by Invensys plc (London, England), a production technology and energy management conglomerate, Baan is very much alive and well, Fred Thomas, industry director of global automotive for Baan Company (Holland, MI), excitedly assures all listeners.
As proof, last summer Baan upgraded its automotive ERP package, iBaan Automotive, with a service pack. No great shakes here, just an overall upgrade covering all the bases of iBaan, including its EDI functions. The result was twofold, according to Thomas. First, the Baan automotive footprint has become far more complete. Second, one iBaan automotive solution now exists for use worldwide.
But there are some gems here medium-sized manufacturers will appreciate. Fully integrated into the ERP side of iBaan is the iBaan SCM suite. This includes advanced planning and scheduling, thus giving users the ability to monitor actual supply chain process plans, simulate scenarios, consider constraints and analyze results, and quickly respond to customer queries and changesall using data from ERP and CRM.
Last June, Baan extended its PLM with a host of capabilities. For instance, iBaan Product Data Management (PDM) links an organizations computer-aided design (CAD) to ERP. iBaan Lifecycle Analyzer lets users determine the effect of a change on key factors such as cost, stock, production line schedules, time to market, and product quality.
Nowadays, Baan is working on yet another level of integration, named OpenWorldX. This data infrastructure is the intelligent glueThomas termfor creating a much better, tighter, integrated product that melds disparate software pieces together. The first step in that is to further solidify the world-of-acquisition that makes up Invensys today, which includes the Wonderware InTrack manufacturing execution system and the Advantis enterprise asset manager. Such integration is Invensys search of manufacturings Holy Grail: real-time visibility from the shop floor level to the executive suite.
OpenWorldX is also focused on integrating Baan applications with various third-party and legacy information systems. Last April, Baan reified its any-to-any application connectivity by announcing plug-and-play compatibility with SAP. This connection is one result of a deployment at Foxboro, a process control company (also an Invensys acquisition), integrating iBaan E-Sales with an SAPR/3 ERP system.