Atlanta, Georgia-based enterprise resource planning vendor Mapics Inc is to bring out a supply chain management software offering, or advanced planning system (APS), named Wisdom. The AS-400 specialist will announce the new package at the CeBit conference in Hannover this week. The system will be commercially available from June 21.
Joe Phelan, Mapics’ APS product manager, says the system modernizes traditional planning applications by combining and integrating four elements of the process: master scheduling; material requirements planning; capacity requirements planning; finite capacity planning. Master scheduling deals with forecasting and analyzing demand. The two planning sectors calculate the resources needed, the personnel and machinery at the shop floor end, and the raw materials in the stock room. The fourth part represents an overall feasibility check, to see if the theoretical plans will actually function in practice.
Wisdom coordinates and synchronizes all resources at the same time, says Phelan. The advantages that the package has over traditional systems lie in timing, integration, flexibility, and cost cutting. Separation of the different processes meant that blockages, bottlenecks or disruptions would be registered but not explained. Wisdom explains what the problems are, where, why, and how to solve them. The system can be used for simulation, to check whether a customer’s order will arrive on time, or whether overtime will free blockages.
It also saves on human output, automating what are essentially iterative processes previously fulfilled by humans. It does this by solving ‘exception message’ problems automatically, instead of sending someone to investigate why the red light is flashing. Phelan was unable to offer an idea of cost, other than to predict that Wisdom will be anything from 50-70% less than the market in general. Phelan’s claim that one of the advantages we can offer to the market place is a reduced time of implementation, sounds hollow in the absence of evidence.
Mapics has tried to reduce code complexity to offer a common sense approach to the APS market. Dialight has been testing the system since December, but it is still not fully installed, which may or may not give an indication of implementation cycles. Responding to questions regarding Mapics’ late entry onto the supply chain management scene, Phelan hedges, we’re late in relation to the major independents, but not the large ERP providers. He cites Oracle, which has a partnering strategy, as a company slower on the APS uptake.
Schlumberger Ltd, the French smart card specialist, has already placed an order for a $1m Mapics ERP package that includes Wisdom. Mapics also intends to introduce ERP software packages for the Windows NT platform at some stage in 2000, although it had previously suggested they would be available from March this year.
