From the Plant Floor to the Boardroom

Software tools for enterprise management range from traditional ERP software to plant automation systems

After years of investment in enterprise business systems and plant floor automation, the manufacturing community has finally turned its full attention to connecting these two distinctly different, yet intimately related aspects of the manufacturing enterprise, says Kevin Roach, VP of Rockwell Software (Milwaukee, Wis.). Roach is chairman of manufacturing systems vendor association MESA International (Chandler, Ariz.), and his comment was made at MESA’s 2005 Plant2Enterprise Conference.

Echoed MESA board member Sudipta Bhattacharya, Vice President for Manufacturing Applications with SAP (Walldorf, Germany): “For years, the gap between these two layers was characterized by home-grown software, manual processes, and limited, costly integration.” Now, he says, manufacturers have realized that they can win significant competitive advantage by synchronizing production information and processes across the enterprise and the supply chain - and technology vendors are obliging with new software and solutions.

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