AGC Automotive chooses Apriso for operations execution system
By Manufacturing Business Technology Staff -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 12/18/2007 1:40:00 PM
AGC Automotive, the world's largest automotive glazing supplier, will deploy Apriso's FlexNet operations execution system to improve adaptability on ACG's production line while enhancing visibility across ACG's global supply chain.
This ambitious project will initially comprise 13 of 15 facilities, and a network of external production centers and warehouses located across Europe. The expected time frame for completion is just under three years.
Faced with a growing need to increase operational efficiency, AGC Automotive recognized that a real-time operations system could complement its ERP deployment, providing the necessary integration layer between plant-floor operations and corporate-level planning. The resulting objective is to improve responsiveness, while contributing to achieving best-in-class customer satisfaction.
"We are impressed with Apriso's automotive industry knowledge and ability to cost-effectively provide an operations system with real-time visibility, all the way across our global supply chain network," says Luc Pirau, IT manager at AGC Automotive Europe. "As we engage in our ERP rollout, [Apriso will tightly integrate] with enterprise applications such as ERP, demonstrating how well the two systems complement each other to improve overall operations performance."
Manufacturers with multiple production or supplier locations face increased complexity to improve operations management. The Apriso FlexNet solution addresses these challenges by providing an adaptive platform to establish, distribute, and maintain standardized business processes across the enterprise. With real-time visibility to business processes, it is possible to identify opportunities for improvement and then immediately implement those changes.
The Apriso FlexNet platform was designed as an enterprise application built on business processes, rather than as a plant-floor application built on hard-coded commands. By taking this approach, it is easy to create a Center of Excellence to identify core processes suitable for usage throughout the organization. It is only through this Core approach to global deployment that the ambitious roll-out plan could be accomplished. Once a best-practice process has been identified and tested, it may easily be deployed to every location. The benefits from such a standardized approach include improved operational performance, lower training costs for employees and better aggregate results from continuous improvement programs, such as Lean manufacturing initiatives.
"IT systems supporting automotive manufacturing can be quite complex. This is especially true when integrating highly repetitive shop floor operations with enterprise applications, such as ERP and PLM," says Fred Thomas, Apriso's industry director for automotive manufacturing. "Apriso has highly refined this process to achieve lower-cost, higher-quality and improved operations execution performance. The automotive industry has now validated this achievement through new and expanded automotive customer deployments such as AGC Automotive."
