Underlining the extent to which Digital Equipment Corp is losing ground, one of its key software partners – in which it has a significant minority stake, Consilium Inc, is hedging its bets with a strategic agreement with Hewlett-Packard Co. Consilium, Mountain View, California spacialises in manufacturing software for the VAX, but it is now to work together with Hewlett-Packard to put its software up under HP-UX Unix on the HP 9000 Series 800 machines, pitching the combination at the pharmaceutical, medical devices and chemical industries worldwide. The relationship is said to include activities that span the manufacturing market, ranging from discrete industries such as semiconductors, to process industries such as pharmaceuticals and speciality chemicals. Consilium’s manufacturing execution systems software is used in many industries to track, control and co-ordinate all elements of manufacturing processes in real time. Consilium’s FlowStream integrated software, which previously ran only on the VAX, now runs on HP 9000 Series 800 servers and 700 workstations. FlowStream designed to make process improvements to lower costs, while maintaining compliance with various regulatory bodies, and is aimed at health care and speciality chemical companies. Consilium’s WorkStream Open application, designed to meet the needs of discrete semiconductor, electronics and aerospace and defence producers that must make real-time decisions, trace genealogy, show conformance to regulatory or customer requirements and get the most out of expensive capital equipment, is already available on HP 9000s, and Hewlett uses it in three of its own manufacturing divisions. DEC invested $4m in Consilium and raised its stake in the firm to 5.8% in 1990 (CI No 1,459).
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