Campbell, CA and Los Angeles May 8, 2002 Camstar, a provider of collaborative manufacturing execution (CME) solutions, and Adexa Inc., a provider of supply chain management (SCM) solutions, have announced a technology partnership to deliver a real-time collaborative manufacturing solution that is tailored to global semiconductor and optical electronics manufacturers.
By integrating Adexa's iCollaboration suite and Camstar's Virtual Factory Suite of enterprise applications, the two companies said they are providing a collaboration platform that integrates business processes and accelerates product development.
"Lack of visibility into plant operations and synchronization of production activities in the larger manufacturing value network can result in partial and faulty business processes that disturb the balance of collaborative ventures," said Ken Brant, research director for Enterprise and Supply Chain Management at Gartner. "As production moves from a make-to-stock to a make-to-order paradigm, planning horizons will shrink, and manufacturers will need a new set of tools to schedule production and track capacity, materials and orders in collaboration with designers, channel partners and consumers."
The new solution created by Adexa and Camstar enable manufacturers to integrate the real-time supply chain and production information that is captured by the new solution into existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Adexa's iCollaboration suite creates a production plan and sequences work orders to optimize the schedule at the work center or machine level. Camstar's Virtual Factory suite then manages and controls the production and fulfillment processes within the individual factories by providing live work-in-process tracking, product genealogy, inventory visibility, parametric data collection and detection of events that warrant a reschedule response.
"The partnership between Adexa and Camstar presents a unique opportunity for joint customers to fully engage in a collaborative environment. The responsive planning and execution capability enables manufacturing operations to optimize throughput, yield higher quality, and generate higher customer satisfaction," said John Sibley, vice president of channels and alliances for Adexa. "By creating this 'live' information infrastructure within the manufacturing enterprise, Adexa and Camstar will improve plant efficiency and return on assets while helping companies achieve the highest customer satisfaction."
