eBECS lean manufacturing technology acquired by Microsoft Dynamics

The announcement came at the bi-annual conference for Microsoft Dynamics customers, Convergence 2007. It’s part of investments Microsoft is making across five key industries – manufacturing, distribution, retail, services and the public sector. The system, dubbed Lean Enterprise for Microsoft Dynamics AX, enables users to optimise processes and integrate supply chains to support demand-driven operations. It will form part of the Microsoft Dynamics Industry Solution for Lean Enterprises and will be available as a separate module as part of the Advanced Management Enterprise suite in Microsoft Dynamics ‘Business Ready Licensing’ by the end of this year. Microsoft also says it plans to integrate the code into the next release of Microsoft Dynamics AX and have it localised for all Microsoft Dynamics AX languages. Says Kevin Hall, managing director of eBECS: “This is a big day and is the culmination of several years’ effort; it is a recognition by Microsoft of the quality of functionality developed by eBECS. “We believe Lean Enterprise is the first fully integrated software solution that truly takes ERP into the lean world across the entire supply chain. “Increasingly, manufacturers are turning to lean thinking to provide a competitive edge to their operations, particularly where the competition is from low labour cost operations in the Far East. But technology is only part of the answer for those organisations looking to embrace lean. Lean Enterprise can help enable profitable changes in the use of time and resources, both internally and throughout a supply chain.”