Technology Solutions partners with Apriso on real-time practices

Chicago, IL; Long Beach, CA — Technology Solutions Co . (TSC) and Apriso Corp . recently announced that they’ve joined forces to bring previously unavailable, real-time business solutions to large corporations. TSC is a system integrator focused on meeting its customers’ needs by combining the most advanced technology with business process expertise. Apriso invented bottom-out enterprise software, which was the first off-the-shelf, event-driven, real-time applications software for collaborative supply, manufacturing and distribution processes.

‘In today’s global economy, companies face intense competitive pressures, requiring them to rethink their bottom-level business processes, and adopt ‘best practices,’ such as lean supply or Six-Sigma quality initiatives,’ says David Wasson, CPIM, TSC’s senior VP. ‘TSC specializes in helping companies align their business processes to better support corporate objectives and improve performance. Today, there’s an opportunity to help these companies become more effi-cient, adaptive businesses. Combining our business process and technology expertise with Apriso’s event-driven, bottom-out enterprise software applications, puts us in an ideal position to provide valuable solutions in this important new area.’

Wasson added that systems integrators have historically focused on integrating top-down enterprise software, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) or supply chain management (SCM), into companies operating with the traditional forecast-based business model. However, as markets shift to a customer-driven model, some companies are finding that they must realign their business processes to become demand-based, adaptive enterprises that operate with greater efficiency. To reach these objectives, they not only need specific process expertise, but also a previously unavailable type of enterprise software to support these new processes. ‘Apriso is in the forefront of this much-needed enterprise application marketplace, and our companies’ combined expertise can provide significant and growing benefits for many of our clients,’ says Wasson.

Wasson adds that best practices often go by names that include the words ‘pull,’ ‘lean supply,’ and ‘Six Sigma.’ These practices form the strategic underpinnings of many leading companies, such as Dell, Toyota, and Wal-Mart. ‘Pull’ refers to a strategy in which products or their components, even highly-customized ones, aren’t built until ordered, but then are manufactured and shipped almost immediately. ‘Six Sigma’ refers to a focus on quality at every step of a process, so that defects appear in only one of every 3.4 million products. ‘Lean supply’ focuses on minimizing process steps, inventory, waste, movement and rework, so that a product is built as efficiently and as quickly as theoretically possible. Companies that focus on such best practices usually do them in combination.

Because of its event-driven, real-time, process-based architecture, Apriso’s FlexNe software is able to understand, manage and monitor the real-time business processes that define an enterprise’s supply, manufacturing, and distribution infrastructure. So far, collaboration between TSC and Apriso in the aerospace and defense industry has generated positive early returns, reports Wasson.

‘Our corporate customers and the systems integrators that support them are all looking to evolve their businesses to the demands of the new ‘execution’ economy,’ says Adam Bartkowski, Apriso’s president and CEO. ‘TSC is clearly one of the most forward-thinking firms in today’s market because it recognized that a huge opportunity exists in assisting enterprises in their move to lean, adaptive, and real-time business processes.’

Bartkowski adds that a unique aspect of Apriso’s software is that it can also be applied in small, tightly focused areas. This allows firms like TSC to work with their client to find the areas with the greatest need for immediate relief, and solve those business problems first. Then, as priorities dictate, more processes can be added to the project, until a corporation has fully achieved ‘operational excellence’ throughout its entire operation, including suppliers.

—Jim Montague, News Editor, Control Engineering, jmontague@reedbusiness.com .

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