Apriso (www.apriso.com), a provider of manufacturing software solutions, announced on Sept. 12 new Intelligence Packs, now part of the company’s Manufacturing Process Intelligence (MPI) Version 2.0 solution. These Intelligence Packs enable greater “out-of-the-box” functionality and expanded, pre-configured analytics (370+ KPIs) to analyze a wider scope of manufacturing operations. This solution is said to be an ideal complement to existing Business Intelligence initiatives as it provides better decision support for continuous improvement of operations performance. .
Manufacturers seeking to improve their enterprise manufacturing intelligence, business analytics and decision support capabilities face many challenges. According to an InformationWeek study conducted late last year, data quality and ease-of-use with complex software tops the list of challenges when implementing BI / Analytics solutions. Integration compatibility and scalability issues are difficult too, especially while trying to cover the entire enterprise. See Figure 1 detailing how these challenges are only increasing. Read the complete InformationWeek research here.
Apriso’s MPI 2.0 works seamlessly with every other FlexNet application to effectively address four of the top five business analytics challenges, as identified in this survey. Newly introduced Intelligence Packs offer pre-configured integration to the entire suite of FlexNet applications.
For example, if a plant manager identifies that Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) is trending down, quick resolution is required. With Apriso’s Machine Intelligence Pack, the manager can drill down into the components of OEE, such as machine availability, deeper than just planned and unplanned downtime. Machine Intelligence Pack provides the flexibility and business context to “slice and dice” this information to reveal hidden correlation to products, shifts, work centers or other factors, helping you to quickly expose and fix a hidden bottleneck responsible for below target production numbers.
Three Intelligence Packs are now available, which include 370+ Key Performance Indicator (KPI) analytics covering equipment, production and labor performance. As MPI 2.0 is part of the FlexNet family of manufacturing operations management applications, the user interfaces are easy to understand and configure to role-based displays, further simplifying the user experience. As all applications share the same unified data model, integration and compatibility issues are non-existent. Further, as each Intelligence Pack KPI is pre-standardized, conflicts arising on how to determine which is the best measurement are virtually eliminated.
“Those electing to implement a complete manufacturing intelligence solution can now easily do so across all of their manufacturing operations, resulting in greater visibility into production, warehouse, quality, maintenance and labor activities,” stated James Montgomery, Apriso’s MPI product manager. “Apriso’s Intelligence Packs are unique to the industry. No other vendor offers such a complete turn-key approach to enterprise manufacturing intelligence. A combined MPI and BI solution makes a lot of sense when the complexity and dynamics of your shop floor operations can be standardized and then fed back into your corporate enterprise BI system.”
