Rockwell, Maryland-based Manugistics Inc, which claims to be the major supplier of full supply chain management systems, has launched Manugistics4, a three-tier client-server release of its software. Manugistics offers a suite of software applications to support operational decision-making for manufacturers, from the raw material supplier through the whole manufacturing process and all the way to the end customer. It features fully integrated functions such as demand forecasting, scheduling and automatic load balancing, deployment, materials planning, future capacity scheduling and finite capacity scheduling for short term planning. The latest module in the suite is Constrained Production Planning, which it says enables medium to long-term planning within the constraints of supply, resources and plant capacity. It enables input from various data sources, for example sales history data from the main manufacturing system, or point of sale data, to be used for accurate forecasting of customer demand, to facilitate forward planning and scheduling of resources to meet the demand. Since a company has a finite amount of plant, says Arthur Vonchek, Manugistics Northern Europe director, any extra production capacity it can squeeze out of that plant goes straight to the bottom line. Manugistics says version 4 uses true three-tier distributed architecture, enabling the user interface, application programs and database to be distributed globally. The company has used object technology not just at the program development level but also at the database level, which it says gives enormous performance benefits over traditional relational database handling. It says it has adopted a completely open approach, and has strategic alliances with Hewlett-Packard Co, IBM Corp and Digital Equipment Corp, and on the database front with Oracle Corp, Sybase Inc and Informix Software Inc. The system will also integrate with SAP AG’s R/3 software, and Oracle financials. Manugistics could not give precise costs for the Constrained Production Module, beause it depends on the size of the installation but said including implentation costs the range could be ú50,000 to ú500,000. It is currently in beta test and is planned to be generally available on January 1 1996.
