PeopleSoft injects JCIT-based lean into EnterpriseOne

Enterprise suite vendor PeopleSoft shook up the lean manufacturing software market last fall when it purchased software assets from lean manufacturing education firm JCIT International. Now PeopleSoft is on the second round of integration of lean functionality.

The acquired functionality was integrated with PeopleSoft's EnterpriseOne Manufacturing suite starting with release 8.10 back in June, says Andy Carlson, a PeopleSoft VP. The first area of integration was lean procurement, which now leverages JCIT's logic for Kanban.

But the 8.11 release of EnterpriseOne—formerly a J.D. Edwards product, and due out in December—will blend in more JCIT assets, including functionality for mixed-model line design, resource planning, and resource simulation.

Carlson says JCIT's software excelled at "decomposing" and then reconstructing the different factors involved in setting up and adjusting lean manufacturing operations. Without the right software tools for lean, Carlson says, this lean knowledge "sits inside the head of a few key people and complicated spreadsheets. That makes it hard to make lean easily repeatable across a global corporation."