Apriso promises totally synchronised design to production

So says production and warehouse management software developer Apriso, which yesterday announced availability of real-time integration between PLM (product lifecycle management) and manufacturing execution system Apriso’s FlexNet. Synchronisation, says the company, comes about by combining FlexNet’s Business Integrator, Global Process Manager and Quality Execution with Advanced SPC capabilities. The result: new product introductions can be pushed through much more quickly – even for manufacturers with distributed, global product development and operations. By implementing ‘platform to platform’ communications between PLM and FlexNet, users can get efficient transfer of knowledge and data between product design and production. “The transition from product design to production is typically the most expensive, time-intensive aspect of delivering products,” says Marc Halpern and Andrew Hughes of Gartner. “The ability to manage these linkages through ‘manufacturing process management’ initiatives allows manufacturers to continuously improve design and operations.” But it doesn’t stop there. Manufacturing processes, which have grown increasingly complex due to globalisation, regulation and improvement initiatives, can also be simplified using Apriso’s approach. Combining MES and PLM down to a level of detail that includes FlexNet SPC (statistical process control) and integrates analytics into production, engineering and quality processes, is the secret. It gets away from the multiple ‘silo’ programmes, each designed for a specific task and usually lacking real-time data transfer between systems. As Dr Michael Grieves says in his white paper entitled Multiplying MES Value with PLM Integration, published last month: “Continuous Improvement initiatives will benefit from the collection of data when MES has access to as-built product information. Production performance can easily be correlated with as-built product data to then evaluate which product component or process could be modified to improve output, increase product quality or improve product performance.”