Performance management vendor Invistics lands CEO; takes "four-walls" focus
By Roberto Michel, editor -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 4/1/2004 7:00:00 AM
When software companies of nearly every stripe—including manufacturing execution, ERP, and business intelligence vendors—lay claim to performance management, then it's time to specialize. Relative newcomer Invistics exemplifies this notion—latching on to the performance management concept, but giving it a plant-level focus.
"Most performance management solutions take a top-down approach and deliver a set of reports or metrics, says Scott Geller, who joined Invistics as president and CEO in January. "We're giving users a workbench and a set of tactics to get at their goals, looking a specific tradeoffs and decisions in manufacturing."
Invistics bills itself as a manufacturing performance management vendor. Its FlowPath suite offers nine applications that span activities such as accepting orders, sequencing production, optimizing inventory levels, viewing orders, and quality control. If this sounds like an operational, factory-focused spin on performance management, it is, says Founder Tom Knight, the company's former CEO and now chairman and chief strategy officer.
"We call it an 'inside the four-walls' approach because for the entire enterprise to perform, each plant has to perform," says Knight, a former plant manager prior to entering the software industry. "What we bring to the table is a set of algorithms that do the optimization for the tough decisions that need to be made at each plant, like lot sizing or inventory levels."
Geller and Knight say the Invistics suite uses optimization technology to examine tradeoffs in areas like inventory levels versus customer service, but the optimization technology is simpler than that found in advanced planning software.
"Advanced planning solvers typically need a mountain of data," says Knight. "Our algorithms work off of the base set of data you need to determine how your operations can run best. If you want to set certain targets, the applications will tell you what you need to do to improve."
Among Invistics' customers is New York-based Bristol-Myers Squibb. According to Invistics, the pharmaceuticals giant deployed FlowPath at a plant to address factors including cycle-time reduction, campaign sizes, operations costs, and inventory levels. The deployment is said to have cut cycle times for high-volume products by 50 percent.
Geller's background includes being CEO of a product configuration software vendor. He acknowledges there are other vendors offering inventory optimization packages but, he adds, FlowPath can balance multiple tradeoffs, and with inventory, "we're optimizing within the four walls."
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