P.J.
Jakovljevic
- November
6, 2001
Event
Summary
On September 7, the Syspro Group, a privately held Worldwide provider
of enterprise software for small to medium enterprises (SMEs), with its
US headquarters in Costa Mesa, CA (www.sysprousa.com),
was named a recipient of the START Magazine Vision Technology & Business
Award for 2001 in the Manufacturing ($50 million to $200 million)
category. In naming Syspro Group as the winner of the START Vision Award,
the judges expressed admiration for the company's recent development of
the Material Yield System, a software solution that enables manufacturers
and distributors to maximize the use of scraps.
This
Part One of a two-part note on Syspro. This part details recent developments.
Part Two discusses the Market Impact and makes User Recommendations.
Material
Yield System
On July 30, Syspro announced the general release of a new module designed
to fill the specific needs of manufacturers and distributors that rely
on the cutting of shapes and pieces from standard size materials, e.g.,
sheets, tubes and rods, as part of the manufacturing process. Specifically,
the new Material Yield System is targeted at the Plastics, Steel, Rubber,
Paper and Lumber industries that need to maximize yields, minimize waste
and, where possible, return remnants to inventory.
The
new Material Yield System reportedly accommodates a seamless integrated
workflow to satisfy a series of common requirements that include customer
specific dimensional requirements, automatic yield calculations from full
sheets and stock remnants, and the return of scraps to inventory with
the automatic creation of new part numbers and pricing. Moreover, the
new module will attempt to fill custom orders from existing inventory,
another branch's inventory, the purchasing of material from a vendor,
or a combination of each.
These
latest awards are the culmination of a year, which to date, has seen the
Syspro Group honored by numerous publications and associations. This should
be no surprise given the company's rather busy product enhancements' activity
in recent times.
IMPACT
Encore Version 5.1
On August 21, Syspro announced a new release of its flagship IMPACT
Encore Enterprise software. Version 5.1, which supersedes IMPACT Encore
Version 5.0, offers expanded system functionality, new e-business-centric
capabilities and added support for multi-site facilities with a new module
and numerous enhancements to existing modules. The new module encompasses
Engineering Change Control. Enhancements include Goods in Transit and
Blanket Purchase Orders functionalities.
IMPACT
Encore 5.1 also features other numerous module enhancements. For example,
General Ledger financial reports can now be published as extensible markup
language (XML) documents for viewing on the Internet or an intranet. The
documents have drill down capability from the general ledger codes to
the source documents as well as full report editing and journal posting
capabilities. IMPACT Encore 5.1 stores archived sales orders and work
orders as XML documents which can be recreated as HTML pages using a Web
browser. The archived data is accessible using any XML-aware tool. Archiving
in this manner allows the user to store files off-line for security or
practical reasons. Archived data can also be easily retrieved for the
purpose of creating new items, such as a new work order.
Business-to-business
(B2B) trading has been enhanced with the optional use of XML documents
with published schemas for transferring purchase orders and sales orders.
IMPACT Encore Version 5.1, available since September 15, is being offered
in two versions, the Microsoft SQL Version and a C-ISAM version.
e.net
solutions Architecture
On August 6, Syspro announced e.net solutions, a new component
architecture designed to give authorized individuals the ability to interact
with IMPACT Encore data over the Web as well as from remote devices, including
palm pilots and cell phones. e.net solutions is a component-based framework
that provides a standard way of directly accessing the business functionality
within the IMPACT Encore solution while maintaining the software's built-in
business rules and security. In addition to enabling such functions as
remote purchase order entry and inventory status determination, e.net
also facilitates the integration of best-of-breed applications with IMPACT
Encore.
e.net
solutions delivers IMPACT Encore's functionality as discrete 'objects'
of code, each object being a Microsoft COM (Component Object Model) component.
Users can then access these objects using popular scripting languages,
such as Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) or Active Server Pages (ASP).
Applications communicate with the COM interface, not with IMPACT Encore
directly. e.net solutions components can be accessed either directly on
the application server or remotely using the Distributed Component Object
Model (DCOM). e.net solutions is currently in beta testing. The final
product will be released during the fourth quarter of 2001.
Extended
Supply Chain Capabilities
Finally, on June 4, the company announced new, extended supply chain capabilities
for its IMPACT Encore enterprise software with the addition of a Return
to Vendor (RTV) module. The new module enables a company to control the
return and exchange of items purchased from suppliers with visibility
and tracking through the conclusion of the transaction. The module also
interfaces with IMPACT Encore's Return Merchandise Authorization (RMA)
module to facilitate the return of parts from customers back to the original
supplier. The RTV module removes any items to be returned to a vendor
from available stock and holds them in a review area pending negotiations
for the return. In addition, the module allows for credit notes and replacement
items. It also tracks the costs of items not replaced, handles stocked
and non-stocked items and retains an unlimited history of all RTV transactions.
Additionally, the RTV module issues return documents and creates purchase
orders for expected replacement items.
This
concludes Part One of a two-part note on Syspro. Part Two discusses the
Market Impact and makes User Recommendations.