Manufacturing intelligence software provider Activplant this week announced a new version of ActivEssentials, the company's technology framework, featuring an open architecture that is interoperable with third-party software and aimed squarely at manufacturers engaged in lean initiatives.
"This announcement is an augmentation of our current strategy of providing performance management applications to help manufacturers drive bottom-line improvements," said Dennis Cocco, Activplant's founder and chief product strategist on a call with members of the press. He emphasized that the new version of the company's technology platform does not signal a change in its focus on providing software products. Activplant's applications, including Throughput Analyzer, are built on top of the ActivEssentials platform and expose the constraints that prevent or slow the flow of product through a plant. "Applications are key, but they have to sit on top of a platform," Cocco said.
With ActivEssentials 5, users can access corporate reporting tools and portals, and build queries that can be shared with third-party reporting tools. Users also can extract shop floor data in real time to share with non-Activplant applications, including enterprise resource planning (ERP), product lifecycle management (PLM), and supply chain management (SCM) software.
The ActivEssentials 5 release demonstrates a step toward three of the company's aims, Cocco said: to make Activplant applications open and extensible through the use of a service-oriented architecture (SOA) that makes shop floor data available across the enterprise; to enable data sharing across a multi-site enterprise; and to improve the security, quality, and performance of manufacturers' data.
Activplant's technology involves what Cocco called a "light touch" infrastructure, which he credits for implementations that can take as little as four to 12 weeks. Cocco told Managing Automation that the secret to Activplant's scalability across multiple plants is that the technology doesn't focus on specific processes — which can vary considerably between applications — but instead consistently measures the value stream of any operation against one formula.
"We're not an MES or SCADA vendor. Our focus is to help customers run a better plant with a continuous improvement strategy and drive a better process, versus focusing on the data," Cocco said.
There is no charge to upgrade to ActivEssentials 5 for customers with active maintenance agreements. In addition, officials said, Activplant offers a "performance challenge" whereby customers can try the software before purchasing a license.
MI tools, such as ActivEssentials, that facilitate low-maintenance interoperability among disparate applications are key to continuous improvement programs, including lean and Six Sigma, according to Ralph Rio, an industry analyst with ARC Advisory Group. A main barrier to realizing the benefits of lean initiatives, Rio told Managing Automation, is "sliding back to old ways," whereby different teams work on connecting disparate applications one at a time, with each team reinventing the process each time. This adds up to an "ugly situation from a change management standpoint," Rio said.
The vast majority of ActivEssentials customers are running version 4, officials said. Notable customers include Toyota, Gillette, TRW, and Daimler-Chrysler. The preponderance of customers are in the automotive industry, where Activplant has its roots, but officials said they have had success in other discrete industries, such as food & beverage and consumer goods, and will continue with efforts to expand into other industries.
ActivEssentials is built on Microsoft's .NET platform, and recently attained certification for interoperability with SAP's NetWeaver platform.