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by Diane Himes, MA Editorial Staff Posted on Sunday, June 24, 2007 6:27:35 PM   | Abstract: | Manufacturing-centric provider of on-demand ERP and MES products covers a wide swath of functions and customization. |
In the late 1980s, Rob Beatty got an assignment from the tier-one automotive supplier for which he worked: Improve the quality of parts being produced, reduce changeover time, increase the effective life of tooling, and improve customer satisfaction by increasing on-time delivery. Beatty decided what the company needed was a new system, based on relational database technology, that could help the company track and manage shop-floor processes. Once deployed, the system helped the supplier jump from last place to first on the lists of preferred suppliers maintained by many automotive OEMs. Fast forward a decade and a half, and that original, highly focused system has matured and expanded into the Plexus Online on-demand software system, a set of 350 modules used by a wide range of manufacturing companies to do everything from production scheduling to manufacturing execution, shop-floor control, quality management, traceability, inventory tracking, accounting, CRM, e-commerce, and business intelligence. Thanks to its breadth and ease of use, the Plexus Online system has attracted manufacturers in verticals from automotive to medical devices. Plexus Systems last year recorded $14 million in revenue and expects to grow to between $20 and $22 million in revenues this year. Beatty, now chairman, launched Plexus as a commercial client-server product in 1995. The real launch point for the company, however, came with its 2000 shift to an on-demand model. Rather than deploying the Plexus software internally -- and absorbing all the attendant costs and complexity, Plexus customers now tap into the applications online, avoiding headaches associated with managing backups, upgrades, and security. Customers can choose between subscription access to Plexus, with no upfront licensing and payments made on a month-to-month basis, and a hybrid option, under which a customer buys a full perpetual license as in the traditional scenario. In that case, a nominal monthly fee covers the cost for the hosting service. Customers can purchase a full enterprise package or a subset of individual modules of the product. Beatty says his company is able to compete with big-dog ERP vendors such as Oracle and SAP by focusing on the needs of its exclusively manufacturing-based customers -- especially discrete manufacturers. For example, he points to Plexus's 35 modules dedicated to quality management alone. He also stresses the software's tooling capabilities, as well as shop-floor control, PLC integration, and highly detailed parts traceability capabilities. Randy Remdenok, president of Peerless Steel (Troy, MI), a Plexus customer, says his company found out about Plexus during a visit to another company that was using the software in its pre-on-demand iteration. Remdenok had already looked at several major software vendors offering traditional ERP packages, but Plexus won out because it worked with his company -- before it had made any investment in software -- to determine best practices and to work toward Peerless's goal of compressing order-to-delivery time. According to Kevin Reale, industry analyst with AMR Research in Boston, Plexus's biggest challenge will be maintaining the flexibility of its off-the-shelf product. The way one company manages its lean processes, he says, might not apply to another. So Plexus will need to find ways to support multiple processes. Plexus officials answer that its customers have gained from the experience of other Plexus users. And, Beatty says, Plexus will work continually with clients to identify best practices and incorporate them into the solution. Page : 1 2 ... NEXT |