Fairfax, VA — March 24, 2003 — Integration software provider webMethods Inc. today announced that semiconductor company NEC Electronics America Inc. would use the webMethods Integration Platform and its Enterprise Web services capabilities for its global business processes, creating an automated way for select partners and customers to access information in real time.
NEC Electronics America said it tapped the provider as the integration software for its eManufacturing customer Web site, which is a self-service Web application enabling select customers to check the status of semiconductor orders, inventory availability and shipping forecasts. The real-time visibility, according to the company, is expected to boost productivity through better process flows, increase customer satisfaction and eventually lead to cost reductions.
Among other benefits, NEC Electronics America said its overseas affiliates responsible for final semiconductor assembly can better allocate resources and staffing based on data on delivery times and inventory projections. Hiroshi Furusawa, IT director, NEC Electronics America Inc., stated, "This improved visibility enables our customers to obtain answers to their questions on their own quickly and in real time."
webMethods said the initial integration project involved coordinating information requests between NEC Electronics America's networks in its Santa Clara, Calif., headquarters and its Roseville, Calif., manufacturing facility, with the eventual goal of having Web services enable retrievable data housed in additional databases in other locations.
NEC Electronics America decided to adopt Web services after evaluating several other solutions, but found they were not conducive to the distributed environment the company needed. Instead, the semiconductor company opted to create a set of Web services, using webMethods' support for open standards, to address specific customer inquiries — including ship summary, work in progress, available inventory and delivery forecast. Each service connects into the Integration Platform, requesting information that the platform then retrieves and assimilates from back-end systems. From there, the data is delivered back out in digestible form to the front-end customer application.
Whereas in the past, NEC Electronics America said its employees had to field customer inquiries over the phone, query systems for data, collate the results and issue what were essentially static reports, the new solution cuts the time spent answering customer requests by two-to-three hours per day, freeing up employee resources for handling and fulfilling orders, and making production planning decisions.
In addition, the automated nature of Web services enables select customers to have their data queries fulfilled at any time, without being restricted to normal business hours.
