These days, manufacturers are thinking long and hard about the technologies they introduce into the enterprise. In recessionary times, those investments increasingly must follow the three “L’s” rule: They must be low-risk, low-cost, and layered.

Recognizing manufacturers’ need to do more with less, business intelligence software vendors are introducing “lightweight” tools, most of which are available in a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model. Emerging vendors, such as my-DIALS, Transpara, and PivotLink, claim these SaaS tools will empower the average user to make real-time operational and enterprise business decisions while controlling up-front costs. Not to be left out, established BI vendors, such as SAP, and best-of-breed software suppliers, such as SPSS, Inc., are simplifying user interfaces while maintaining some back-end heavy lifting in the form of sophisticated mathematical algorithms.

Of course, in these turbulent times when every penny and relationship count, companies are scanning the entire supply chain and manufacturing landscape to ensure that they are delivering the right product at the right time with quality built-in — to avoid recalls, warranties, and any other nasty and costly product problems.

While words like “optimization” and “efficiency” are often tossed about as the manufacturing mantra, managers are beginning to peel back operational layers to see what being more productive actually entails.

Layered Look

Before a company can effectively accelerate performance, it must have the right tools in place. And, following the trend toward lower risk and lower cost, vendors are offering new tools that layer on top of existing systems and extract actionable information.

Transpara, for example, offers a lightweight, Web-based tool that includes BI and visualization and can access existing back-end applications, from plant floor historians to finance systems. Transpara’s tool can track key performance indicators (KPIs), such as equipment utilization rates, and it repurposes the data for delivery to mobile devices — for example, a BlackBerry or iPhone. This layered approach makes larger back-end applications more accessible to the everyday user or executive on the road.

“The market is moving faster than a company can decide what to do,” says Transpara founder and CEO Michael Saucier. “The only way out of that dilemma is to push decisions down the food chain,” and, more important, “arm people with the right information.”

Similarly, myDIALS is a SaaS, lightweight BI tool that provides a dashboard in addition to some of its own business analytics. It, too, can connect to any business or operational system and pull customized KPIs into a visual display on a desktop. The result is an easy-to-understand summary of what’s happening behind the scenes in any particular operation. Customer Snap-on Inc., for example, taps into factory floor metrics using myDIALS in order to improve safety conditions.

While these two tools focus on what’s happening within the enterprise, PivotLink focuses on demand forecasting, optimizing inventories, and understanding cash flows.