NetSuite Manufacturing Edition is being hailed as the first and only cloud manufacturing suite designed to help fast-growing, mid-size manufacturers run their global business operations better. Jim McGeever, CFO of NetSuite, says the new cloud offering will improve manufacturers' agility and visibility, by providing "comprehensive support for the multi-company, multi-plant, multi-location and multi-currency enterprise".
Key functionality includes multi-site planning and management, MRPII, production management, engineering change control (ECC), shop floor control and WIP (work-in-progress) management.
"While some vendors make promises about cloud-based products that don't live up to their hype, and others build niche tools for manufacturers, only NetSuite delivers a complete manufacturing suite from the cloud that is available and running today," claims McGeever.
"With NetSuite, manufacturers now have the suite they need to move their key operations to the cloud, and reap the many productivity and cost reduction benefits cloud computing has to offer," he adds.
McGeever emphasises three key benefits for manufacturers: seamless management of global businesses; flexible cloud-based manufacturing management; and adaptable computing.
Seamless management, he explains, means support for multi-company, multi-plant, multi-location and multi-currency manufacturers, with instant real-time visibility into all aspects of operation.
As for the business management aspects, McGeever points to the fact that, with this system, manufacturers can "establish new locations with no need to build expensive server farms or virtual private networks in each new territory, slashing the huge costs associated with conventional IT".
Early adopters agree: "After deploying NetSuite to manage our multi-national manufacturing business, we were able to reduce excess inventory, improve margins and improve our overall global business," comments David Duff, CFO of Xtellus, a manufacturer of fibre optic networking components.
And Ian Elliott, CEO of wireless devices intallation and repair firm CertiCell, adds: "With the NetSuite Manufacturing Edition, all our subsidiaries are rolled up in one system, giving us an operational bird's eye view and increased operating efficiencies."
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