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Waterloo
Manufacturing Software Offers New Partnering Opportunities
Wellesley, Massachusetts
Waterloo Manufacturing Software develops and markets the
TACTIC advanced finite capacity planning and scheduling system (a.k.a. APS
system) to discrete industry manufacturers worldwide. APS systems, such as TACTIC, are being touted as one of the
hottest segments of the manufacturing software market.
We believe this is partly due to the systems being an enabling
technology for many initiatives (e.g., outsourcing partnerships) meant to
improve the management of the various manufacturing supply chains in the
face of ever-increasing worldwide competitive pressures.
Many manufacturers are using APS systems to continuously
balance what’s good for business with what’s good for customers as
they evaluate and implement ways to improve competitiveness.
They use the sophisticated APS what-if features, and the improved
visibility and flexibility provided by APS to simultaneously increase
revenues, lower costs, and tie up less capital in their businesses.
However, as with any new technology, there are bound to be
changes to achieve the benefits. With
change comes risk. Often,
manufacturers seek help from consultants to assess the benefits and manage
the risks of new technology, such as APS.
Editors notes
Competitive
pressures are increasingly forcing manufacturing management teams to quote
ever-shorter lead-times, to offer ever-changing options, and to ensure
ever-higher levels of on-time delivery.
Furthermore, they’re being challenged to perform without excessive
inventory, without increasing costs, and without what later turns out
to be too much of the wrong capacity.
The potential adverse effects are particularly acute for the component
and subassembly portion of the original equipment manufacturing supply
chain. For these businesses,
constant changes make cost-effectively balancing competitive lead-times
against the efficient use of limited resources both crucial and difficult.
In the current era, management teams are increasingly
turning to the TACTIC advanced finite capacity planning and scheduling
system for help. TACTIC explicitly
and simultaneously considers their limited capacity and limited material
as they promise delivery, plan production, plan material, plan capacity,
and deal with changes and problems.
TACTIC projects the realistic effect on delivery, utilization,
and inventory of new orders, order changes, material problems, production
problems, vendor problems and business changes.
TACTIC possesses sophisticated what-if features.
These features
let management teams quickly combine formal data (e.g., orders, routings,
inventory, bills-of-material, and capacity limits) and intuition (i.e.,
what-if ideas). TACTIC allows
them to select the best what-if ideas to continuously balance what’s good
for business with what’s good for customers, as they encounter changes
and problems with increasingly complex tradeoffs.
TACTIC’s what-if features often provide significant visibility
and flexibility improvements over reports, staff meetings, wallboards,
and spreadsheets commonly used to project, simulate, and fix ever-increasing
problems.
Management
teams can use TACTIC standalone for planning, order promising, scheduling,
and capacity management. TACTIC
can also be easily integrated with business systems.
TACTIC enables teams to better use their valuable business system
data to overcome the finite capacity planning and scheduling limitations
inherent in business systems. Many
teams have found that adding TACTIC saved them the cost, time, and disruption
of replacing their business system to improve competitiveness.
In many cases, it helped them boost the return from their business
system investment as well. They
used their business system data, TACTIC’s sophisticated what-if features,
and the improved visibility and flexibility provided by TACTIC to simultaneously
increase revenues, lower costs, and tie up less capital.
Waterloo Manufacturing Software develops and markets TACTIC to manufacturers worldwide. TACTIC and associated support services are offered to U.S. manufacturing companies from offices located in Boston, Cleveland and Los Angeles. TACTIC is offered to other manufacturers through a network of distributors.
More information
If you have questions or need more information, feel free to e-mail Charles Murgiano at cjmurgiano@waterloo-software.com or call 216-382-2541