We were excited to announce earlier today our intent to acquire of Apriso, a leading provider of manufacturing software solutions. More precisely, Apriso’s expertise is into Manufacturing Operations Management (MOM). To learn more about it, we asked a couple questions to Tom Hennessey, VP Marketing for Apriso.
1. First, could you let us know about Apriso’s expertise and how you see fit with DELMIA?
APRISO Corporation develops, markets, services and supports software used in manufacturing. APRISO delivers on-premise global manufacturing software platform which provides visibility into, management of, and synchronization across a network of manufacturing plants. The platform includes but is not limited to “Manufacturing Executions System” (MES) software.
APRISO extends the current DELMIA offering in MES into new industries as APRISO has targeted manufacturers in the automotive, life sciences, packaging, high tech and consumer goods industries in addition to aerospace & defense which DELMIA (via its Intercim acquisition) currently supports. APRISO also extends the DELMIA application footprint to Quality Planning & Execution specific for fabrication processes, Plant Maintenance, Material Logistics and Warehouse Management System not currently offered by DELMIA. This whole domain is referred to by some analysts as Manufacturing Operations Management (MOM). And, APRISO has focused on the global, enterprise-wide deployments across a manufacturer’s supply chain, providing multi-site organizations with supply chain visibility, benchmarking capabilities and best practices management.
2. Wait, talking about Intercim and MES, isn’t there an overlap here?
No, there’s no direct overlap between the two companies’ technologies and product offerings. While there are some common customers, for the most part the install base is distinct. While there is some overlap on paper between APRISO (Flexnet) and DELMIA Operations Velocity (Intercim) in that they are both Manufacturing Execution Solutions, the business problems and customers served are different enough that the overlap is only in name. Inside DELMIA Operations, Velocity will still focus on the assembly of complex products that requires exceptional traceability for regulation and quality purpose; while Flexnet will bring additional capabilities to cover the need of high throughput fabrications in aerospace industry but also in the consumer goods, packaging, life sciences, automotive and industrial equipment industries.
Moreover, DELMIA Operations Intelligence prescriptive analytics is a perfect complement to all APRISO customers aiming at faster new product and process introduction (NPPI) and continuous process improvement.
3. Could you let us know more about the underlying technologies of the FlexNet product?
APRISO’s product line is the FlexNet Global Manufacturing Platform which utilizes a proprietary Business Process Management (BPM) technology to configure execution applications in manufacturing. The BPM tool has been configured to deliver MES (production), Warehouse Management System (WMS or material logistics), plant maintenance, Time & Labor, Quality and supply chain visibility processes. The Platform also includes 3 applications that run above the plant to synchronize and coordinate the manufacturing network:
- Global Process Manager to distribute and manage best manufacturing processes across locations
- Manufacturing Process Intelligence to provide for real-time analytics and visibility across manufacturing and
- Global Traceability and Genealogy to manage “As-Built” and “As-Manufactured” histories across manufacturing networks.
FlexNet is built on .Net technology from Microsoft and supports the Oracle and SQLserver databases in production, and SQLserver enterprise edition for analytics. All compiled code is in C#. Solutions as implemented include customer specific processes configured via the BPM tool that can include JavaScript, stored procedures, etc.
Thanks to Tom for the great explanations and again, a warm welcome to all Apriso employees! 🙂
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93YXvkXQqZE
