Apriso Offers Real-time Performance Dashboard

Extension to FlexNet Suite offers window into enterprise's key performance indicators

Extension to FlexNet Suite offers window into enterprise's key performance indicators

Long Beach, CA — October 8, 2003 — Software provider Apriso has rolled out an extension to its FlexNet Suite of collaborative supply chain execution applications, promising to give enterprises the ability to monitor and react to key production and logistics "performance indicators" (KPIs) in real or near-real time.

Apriso says its "Real-time Performance Dashboard" is a set of configurable software applications called Metric Panels that monitor production and logistics KPIs in real time, and present a continuously updated display of these indicators on one or more computer displays.

Through the Metric Panels, an enterprise's workforce can be alerted when the performance of any monitored process is out of tolerance. The KPIs can be generated and/or reported to any business level, from individual machine components to work centers, suppliers, departments, plants, enterprises or even entire trading groups, according to the solution provider.

The Real-time Performance Dashboard is not a standalone application, but rather is offered as an extension to Apriso's FlexNet Suite, a family of collaborative workflow applications, linked by the Internet, that are intended to allow an enterprise to install, configure, run and refine its production, supply and distribution processes in real time. Underlying the applications is a database that includes over 21,000 predefined data elements, most of which are usable in the definition or calculation of key performance indicators. It is the existence of this unprecedented real-time application and data infrastructure that makes the Real-time Performance Dashboard possible, Apriso says.

The Dashboard itself consists of a Performance Dashboard Administrator, which is built into the FlexNet Suite, and three Metric Panels, each of which is available individually.

The Administrator is the user's tool for designing real-time KPI reports for the processes of interest. It provides the ability to identify, design and deploy reporting systems that help direct data to the right people at the right time. The Administrator permits "windows" to be defined that can be opened to various levels of detail — from summary "roll ups" to "drill-down" views — providing data to supervisors and shop floor workers alike, based upon their roles and upon user-defined policies. Alerts based upon trends, thresholds, tolerances or other metrics can also be defined.

"Built-in" KPIs — such as OEE (overall equipment effectiveness), OTIF (on-time, in-full), line balance ratios, takt time, order aging and first-run quality performance — are accessible, depending upon the Metric Panels licensed. Across the three Metric Panels, the Dashboard provides 44 built-in KPIs. In addition, the user may tailor the definition of these built-in measures, or create entire new measures, using interactive formula builders.

The Metric Panels themselves are the enterprise's windows into its various processes. The panels track KPIs in scorecard format against the benchmarks defined in the Administrator, in real or near-real time. KPIs can be displayed on a Metric Panels by role and can remain in the background until anomalies are detected. Users who wish to drill down can analyze underlying performance details using trend charts, as well as a number of pre-defined and ad hoc analytical reports and graphs, or can navigate to more granular data via hyperlinks.

The Metric Panels being offered are Lean, Six Sigma and Cost. Lean includes 24 built-in KPIs, Six Sigma has 13, and Cost comes with seven.

The Metric Panels support multi-lingual localization. They can run in a browser window on PCs, PDAs, mobile or wireless devices. In addition to its integration with FlexNet applications, the Real-time Performance Dashboard also integrates easily with third-party applications, such as external portals or KPI reporting tools, using XML.
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