Product category:
Manufacturing Information Technology systems
News Release from: SSA Global | Subject: iBaan Value Apps strategy and OpenWorldX
Edited by the Manufacturingtalk Editorial
Team on 25 October 2002
Platform helps users make the most of IT
A new enabling platform for the rapid creation and deployment of business process solutions helps users manage key business activities and enables companies to unlock existing IT investments.
Baan - the leading enterprise application provider for industrial enterprises and part of Invensys - has announced its iBaan Value Apps strategy and OpenWorldX, a new enabling platform for the rapid creation and deployment of business process solutions This strategy helps customers manage key business activities across people and applications, enabling companies to unlock the value contained in their existing IT investments
This article was originally published on Manufacturingtalk on 20 Aug 2001 at 8.00am (UK)
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The iBaan Value Apps strategy also helps customers better respond to the current challenging economic climate by creating more responsive, end-to-end business processes throughout the extended enterprise.
OpenWorldX is the next generation of Baan's proven integration, information, and collaboration technologies that dramatically reduces the time and effort required to configure and deploy iBaan solutions.
OpenWorldX combines, enhances, and extends Baan's field proven integration, information, and collaboration technologies, including OpenWorld, DEM, B2B Server, Business Intelligence Server, and Enterprise Server.
Further reading
Machinery and heavy equipment makers benefit
Industrial machinery and equipment IT solution provides better agility and control across the extended enterprise the complex, order-driven industrial goods manufacturing industry.
Internet-enabled solutions are more focused
Baan has extended its iBaan suite of Internet-enabled solutions to support aerospace and defence, automotive, industrial machinery and equipment, electronics, and process manufacturing.
Baan sets up dedicated SCM business unit
Baan has further extended its supply chain management knowledge-driven enterprise strategy with the formation of a dedicated strategic SCM business unit.
Availability of OpenWorldX is expected in early 2003.
iBaan Value Apps leverage OpenWorldX to focus on a business process and engage only the specific software components needed to deliver the solution.
"Customers today are looking for solutions to specific problems that can be realised quickly and remain flexible to changes in their business process over time," said Laurens van der Tang, President of Baan.
"By providing solutions that span classical application boundaries, iBaan Value Apps will further enhance Baan's leadership position among software applications providers.
Additionally, as part of the Invensys Real Time Enterprise Framework, we have an unprecedented capability to reach deep into the real-time world to create the operational velocity necessary for a truly responsive extended enterprise." Examples of planned iBaan Value Apps include Supplier Collaboration, Configuration and Commitment, and Engineering Design Collaboration.
The first iBaan Value Apps will be available shortly after the first shipments of OpenWorldX.
Baan will deliver its iBaan Value Apps through an enhanced solution delivery organisation as well as its alliance network.
A key part of the Invensys Real Time Enterprise, iBaan Value Apps are tightly focused business process solutions, which remove the latency of information delivery for internal company business processes and between companies in a supply chain.
The result is a dramatic increase in the velocity of business process execution.
This, in turn, dramatically increases the responsiveness of the organisation to its customers, suppliers, and employees.
As evidenced by the creation of a new business unit called Enterprise Enabling Technologies (EET), Invensys continues to invest in making the Real Time Enterprise vision a reality.
EET has been formed to create the solutions tooling with which iBaan Value Apps are created, delivered, and maintained.
A key focus of EET remains the delivery of interoperability solutions for Baan and non-Baan products alike - expanding Baan's promise of 'Integrated, but Open' capabilities.
EET will be led by industry veteran Jeffery L.
Kissling who has a long history of delivering innovative solutions to market both as an award-winning entrepreneur and as part of Invensys.
Baan's OpenWorldX is the top layer of a three-tiered architecture called the Real Time Enterprise Framework (RTEF).
RTEF is a process-driven framework that manages collaboration between people, applications and devices to create a more responsive business - a Real Time Enterprise.
In addition to the enterprise management layer addressed by OpenWorldX, other components of the RTEF are: * Production Engine, addressing the middle layer and delivering real time enterprise capability for cross-enterprise and workflow requirements.
Development efforts for Production Engine are being led by Invensys Manufacturing Solutions.
* ArchestrA, addressing the lower level, and providing a core set of services for transforming factory asset information and developing applications for component providers.
ArchestrA is an automation and information architecture that enables every system in an industrial plant to work in concert.
ArchestrA is an open-development platform with tools that uniquely enable third parties such as OEMs, machine builders and system integrators to build domain knowledge and add significant value to the solutions they provide.
Invensys business unit, Wonderware has lead responsibility for developing and delivering ArchestrA.
Economic and technology trends are requiring companies to have a low-cost, highly efficient way to integrate their applications into a seamless unified information technology infrastructure that makes available the right information to the right person in the right context and at the right time.
Komatsu, a leading manufacturer of heavy equipment, is following this approach to realize business value by reducing lead times for several key supply chain management activities.
For example, Baan has helped Komatsu reduce the majority of its supplier lead times from more than 60 days to less than 30.
In addition, Komatsu reduced the time to place purchase orders from five working days to less than a day.
Purchase orders are now published to the e-commerce website before each workday begins.
"Industrial companies today are faced with major challenges in retaining profitability and positioning themselves for success once the current economic problems abate," said Laurens van der Tang, President, Baan.
"We are taking this approach to help our customers create focused solutions to specific business problems and to unlock the value in their substantial legacy investments.
We believe that that the Value Apps strategy offers a new level of interoperability that will lead to powerful new efficiencies in their operations and across their entire supply chain." "By defining real-time enterprise needs at the enterprise level, Baan will help lead the entire Invensys effort to deliver on the company's commitment to help its customers create a real-time enterprise.
Invensys is the only company with the products, knowledge and people who understand all levels of the enterprise," explained Kissling.
Baan helps industrial enterprises optimize their enterprise performance strategies and compete in the knowledge-driven 'networked economy', with its ever-increasing demands for information, integration, and collaboration.
Through its open and powerful iBaan suite of Internet-enabled solutions, Baan is ideally placed to support organizations in the manufacturing, logistics, services, and engineering industries as they move towards tighter integration of their complex processes, closer collaboration throughout their value chain, and greater accessibility of cross-enterprise transactional and analytical information.
Baan has more than 15,000 customer sites worldwide and is part of the Production Management division of Invensys.
Invensys is a global leader in production technology and energy management.
The group helps customers improve their performance and profitability using innovative services and technologies and a deep understanding of their industries and applications.
Invensys Production Management works closely with customers in order to drive up performance of their production assets, maximize their return on investments in production technologies and remove cost and cash from their whole supply chain.
The division includes APV, Avantis, Baan, Eurotherm, Foxboro, SIMSCI/Esscor, Triconex and Wonderware.
These businesses address process and batch industries -- including the oil, gas and chemicals, food, beverage and personal health care -- and the discrete and hybrid manufacturing sectors.
Invensys Energy Management works with clients involved in the supply, measurement and consumption of energy and water, to reduce costs and waste and improve the efficiency, reliability and security of power supply.
The division includes Energy Management Solutions, Appliance Controls, Climate Controls, Global Services, Metering Systems, Powerware and Home Control Systems.
These businesses focus on markets connected with power and energy infrastructure for industrial, commercial and residential buildings.
The company also serves the specialized rail, wind-power and electronic manufacturing (power components) markets through Invensys Rail Systems, Hansen Transmissions and Lambda, respectively, in its development division.
Invensys operates in more than 80 countries, with its headquarters in London.
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