Introducing Apriso FlexNet
Adapting at the Speed of Business
Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) have proliferated due to the constantly changing business priorities, globalization, punishing product schedules and ever increasing compliance requirements facing today’s manufacturers. As a result, many are implementing automated business processes as a first step to address production, supply chain and quality assurance challenges.
Achieving excellence and competitive advantage requires much more.
Manufacturing Execution Systems play an important role in collecting, managing and distributing production data, but are just a starting point. Apriso FlexNet® is a software-based platform and operations suite that provides much more than a Manufacturing Execution System, by delivering global visibility, adaptability and real-time control of manufacturing operations across the enterprise and supply chain network.
Manufacturing operations management across the enterprise
FlexNet is a Manufacturing Operations Management solution that enables you to increase production while reducing inventory, enhancing customer satisfaction and improving return on assets.
At Apriso, our leadership experience working with global manufacturers has enabled us to build feature-rich, adaptable manufacturing software applications. Apriso FlexNet provides much more and goes beyond MES. It is an enterprise adaptive system for managing production, quality, warehouse and maintenance operations – spread across multiple locations – while maintaining tight linkage to enterprise applications, including ERP and PLM.
But, don’t just take our word for it. Read what ARC Advisory Group has to say about the need for an Operations Management platform here.
Global management, enterprise-wide functionality
FlexNet has been optimized to excel when your operations are spread across multiple locations; within your production environment or across your supply chain network. With globalization a large part of today’s manufacturing vernacular, it makes sense to invest in a Manufacturing Execution System (MES) that is not challenged by data synchronization across applications and has mastered the process for establishing and distributing manufacturing best practices.
The growing importance of quality within the manufacturing environment – both from a supplier and producer perspective – has elevated this process to a strategic level.
The Apriso FlexNet solution includes each of the following software applications which may be purchased individually or as a collective solution for Manufacturing Operations Management, depending upon your unique operations execution and management needs:
Application integration across operations, down to the shop floor
FlexNet empowers you to seamlessly integrate with ERP, PLM and other enterprise applications to manage, control and quickly adapt to the complexities of your business. FlexNet’s dynamic, web-based suite of applications synchronize manufacturing and supply chain operations in real time, providing a conduit for continuous improvement of process and product design quality.
- Track and control all elements of supply chain operations — both within your company and across your global supply chain
- Optimize production with continuous improvement initiatives such as Lean and Six Sigma, effectively driving out the 7 wastes of Lean
- Execute a Quality Management System (QMS) that spans production, warehousing, maintenance and the supply chain, capable of evaluating and improving business processes
- Strive to attain a zero-inventory production model, implementing Just-in-time and Just-in-Sequence scheduling to improve synchronization of operations
- Ensure manufacturing and warehousing can work independently or as a cohesive supply network – even if your business systems (ERP, PLM, etc.) become temporarily unavailable
Virtualization
In order to help manufacturers address the constant challenge of reducing manufacturing IT costs, Apriso supports the deployment of FlexNet within virtual environments. Depending on the level of transactions and operations throughput, FlexNet’s suite of applications can be implemented on shared servers, operating within a virtual environment to save equipment and IT system management costs.
Virtual machine technology is becoming quite pervasive with users seeking to consolidate their physical servers within data center, storage networking, data protection and disaster recovery systems. This trend is now available on the shop floor, helping Apriso customers to cut the cost of implementation and IT maintenance while accelerating multi-site deployments.
Standardized virtual server profiles can be established once, and then easily replicated across the enterprise. Life Sciences, Consumer Goods and other regulated industry manufacturers stand to benefit further with reduced validation requirements, a major part of achieving regulatory compliance.
FlexNet Differentiators:
- Manage all manufacturing operations -- production, quality and logistics
- Plug & play applications are built on a Unified Data Model (UDM) to simplify master data management challenges
- Strategic platform for IT consolidation and simplification
- Easily integrate enterprise applications with built in business process authoring and management (BPM) capabilities
- Designed to complement an ERP deployment, performing as much or as little operations execution as you need, based on your unique configuration and production requirements
- Flexible integration across operations and down to the machine layer through use of a Services Oriented Architecture (SOA)
|
