COLUMBIA, S.C. — The South Carolina Manufacturing Extension Partnership (SCMEP) is making available to SC manufacturers an advanced productivity improvement solution that will be featured at next week’s InnoVenture Southeast 2009 conference in Greenville. This solution, called ForeSight, a software-as a-service (SaaS) framework developed by X2Order, Inc., is the only application developed specifically to drive effective customer order fill rates, rather than optimization of manufacturers’ internal forecasts, plans and schedules. X2Order is one of 15 companies that will present at the 6th annual InnoVenture event at the Carolina First Center on Tuesday, March 24th.
SCMEP, the state’s leading provider of Lean tools and training, views ForeSight as a complement to the Lean methodologies that have been adopted by many South Carolina manufacturers. “We recommend X2Order’s ForeSight to all of our clients as a valuable tool that will enhance their existing ERP or MRP systems and Lean manufacturing practices to maximize customer order fill rates at minimum cost,” said SCMEP Vice-President Chuck Spangler.
ForeSight works with a company’s ERP/MRP systems. It is the only off-the-shelf technology solution that provides early warnings regarding emerging problem conditions that put customer orders at risk. When exceptions are found, ForeSight delivers timely alerts to the appropriate production employees, and provides them with priority lists of tasks required to overcome the problem conditions. This enables taking a course of action when the cost to resolve the problem is lowest and the probability of success highest.
The results are significant: a 3-percent increase in order effectiveness adds 1-percent to manufacturers’ profit margins; while a 5-percent increase improves manufacturers’ return on assets by 2.5-percent, according to AMR Research.
ForeSight integrates seamlessly with enterprise planning applications without writing to the users’ systems of record, so there is no risk of interfering with existing platforms. The tool’s delivery model uses turnkey implementation with minimum risk and maximum value, offering considerable benefit to Lean practitioners. ForeSight is as a browser-based software service, so there’s no computer hardware of software to install on-site. Deployment and configuration take only a few weeks and pricing is monthly fee-based.
X2Order CEO Richard Dean points out a final reason he expects ForeSight to be well-received next week at InnoVenture and in the months ahead by SCMEP’s manufacturing clients: “In today’s difficult economic environment, manufacturers need to become more effective, very quickly, at low cost and low risk. ForeSight can help achieve those objectives. The result can be to keep more production-and more jobs-on-shore by helping our manufacturing customers to be more competitive.”
About South Carolina Manufacturing Extension Partnership
SCMEP (www.scmep.org) is a private, non-profit group that serves as a proven resource to South Carolina businesses, providing them with a range of innovative strategies and solutions to strengthen leadership, develop competencies, drive growth, and eliminate waste. An independent 501c (3) (non-profit) organization, SCMEP is a manufacturing extension center affiliate of the National Institute of Standards and Technologies (NIST), a federal agency within the U.S. Department of Commerce that promotes U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness.
About X2Order, Inc.
X2Order, Inc. (www.x2order.com) was founded in 2008 and offers a unique software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution that enables manufacturers to grow their profits by automating, enforcing, and sustaining Lean Manufacturing and other modern manufacturing efficiency strategies.
