SDCExec.com |

Long Beach, CA — May 22, 2008 — Apriso, a provider of adaptive software solutions for global manufacturing operations management, has announced an enterprise warehouse management system (WMS) specifically designed and built for manufacturers.

Rather than delivering yet another WMS product to better manage distribution centers, Apriso said its FlexNet Warehouse Management for Manufacturers has the unique approach of improving manufacturing agility and operations performance. These benefits are accomplished by natively integrating warehouse operations with production processes to eliminate idle inventory, provide complete traceability across production and the supply chain, increase quality, and drive lean initiatives as a comprehensive material flow management system.

"The implementation of a warehouse management system built from a manufacturer's perspective offers a differentiated approach to extend lean initiatives into the warehouse," commented Steve Banker, director of supply chain management at ARC Advisory Group. "Pull systems such as Kanban, just-in-time and just-in-sequence are common within best-in-class manufacturers. The implementation of a platform supporting business processes spanning production and material flows adds a new level of performance improvement, driving further waste from already lean processes."

As a module of the FlexNet Operations Execution System, Apriso said FlexNet Warehouse Management for Manufacturers synchronizes raw materials, components and semi-finished goods with production, manufacturing, fabrication and assembly operations. By leveraging FlexNet's Global Manufacturing Suite, this material flow management system can be deployed locally at the warehouse while being managed globally, across the enterprise, to allow lean, quality and other continuous improvement initiatives to spread from a pilot site across the global enterprise.

"Achieving tight integration between production and warehouse operations has provided full traceability for materials and finished goods flows while enabling the highest level of responsiveness to changing demand conditions within our production line and supply chain," commented Rustam Sanaev, IT Operations manager, BAT (British American Tobacco). "The FlexNet platform is vital, facilitating performance improvement within both warehouse and production operations, allowing us to improve our production ability within an increasingly complex operations environment to best serve multiple customer segments."