Baan launches iBaan for Industrial Machinery and Equipment

Baan - the global provider of B2B collaborative commerce solutions and part of Invensys plc - has announced its new iBaan for Industrial Machinery and Equipment (iBaan for IM&E) solution to provide better agility and control across the extended enterprise for organisations in the complex, order-driven industrial goods manufacturing industry.

For the first time, iBaan for IM&E will offer industrial enterprise organisations a comprehensive range of applications focused on core business information functions from ERP and CRM, through to supply chain management and product lifecycle management. This will provide these manufacturers with true cross-enterprise analytical capabilities and comprehensive project control to help them closely link their sales, engineering and production operations and achieve significantly enhanced customer intimacy, operational excellence and product leadership.

For organisations with customer intimacy requirements, iBaan for IM&E can place engineering/pricing knowledge in the hands of the sales rep, reseller or customer to help provide greater order accuracy, and offers accurate service order entry and customer confirmation on-site to help maximise service revenues.

To enhance operational excellence, the solution delivers self-service portal capabilities and automatic change propagation that can be used to minimise supplier coordination costs, integrated planning to minimise work-in-progress, and collaborative planning to minimise lead times. For improved product leadership, iBaan for IM&E can manage 'as sold/as built/as engineered/as maintained bill of materials' to provide lifecycle value, and can share product information across the enterprise and with partners to increase proposal accuracy and help reduce estimating costs.

Gildemeister Aktiengesellschaft, Europe's leading lathe and milling machine manufacturer, uses Baan's enterprise applications to help manage and control the sales, production, finance and service processes in its Bielefeld (Germany) headquarters, nine production plants and 40 sales and service subsidiaries worldwide. Founded more than 130 years ago, Gildemeister is one of the most innovative companies in the industrial machinery sector. Some 61 new machine models were designed and brought to market during the past three years, and 80% of Gildemeister's turnover, which hit the record level of one billion euro in 2001, are made with machines that have been launched within the last two years.

"Innovation is key in our industry, and we make sure that our production processes are just as innovative as our machines", says Dr Raimund Klinkner, member of Gildemeister's Board of Directors, responsible for Logistics, Production and IT. "The Baan system allows us to configure and to manufacture our machines with an extremely high degree of customer-specific customisations. At the same time, improved data transparency across the supply chain and closer collaboration with our suppliers, who are now integrated electronically in our logistics and production processes, enabled us to reduce the average order execution time by more than 30% since we introduced Baan."

Liebherr technology is firmly established in the world of building construction and civil engineering. Its program of construction machinery includes full-line offerings for construction cranes, excavators, mining trucks, crawler tractors and loaders, pipe layers, concrete mixing plants and truck mixers.

Erich Rief, Manager of Liebherr's central IT organisation department commented: "Together with Baan, we have been working on improving our business since 1996, in areas like manufacturing, finance and supply chain planning. Our most recent joint achievement has been to simplify the interaction with our major suppliers. Using Baan's supply chain solutions, we now produce less paper, receive goods earlier, and save cost through simplified order, accounting and payment processes. As a next step, we are now implementing iBaan E-Procurement, which will streamline procurement of office supplies, tools and spare parts."

The Baan offering for Industrial Machinery & Equipment distinguishes itself in many ways from competitive offerings. For example, iBaan for IM&E offers a sales configurator that takes into account all constraints of the potential offering and helps speed up the sales process. The iBaan solution is unique in the fact that the 'as sold' BOM will be transferred into the 'back-end' 'manufacturing' configurator managing the 'as built' configuration. Since the entire process ranging from engineering and sales towards the delivery on site can be controlled and accessed on a project basis, iBaan for IM&E recognises the special need for project control in this industry by connecting its project solution to other Baan solutions.

iBaan for IM&E also recognises that this industry differs from most discrete industries in that there may be only a handful of projects for ETO manufacturers, yet they are sizeable and often lasting one to two years. Since these enterprises cannot carry the financing on these projects (which often represent up to a quarter of their annual revenue), iBaan for IM&E supports the practice of ETO manufacturers called 'progress billing' to maintain visibility on cash flow and reporting the logistical and financial progress of the project. The 'installation' phase of the project is supported by enabling users to track time and expenses and support project scheduling ranging from the most simple to the highly complex.

The iBaan for IM&E solution supports the diverse applied manufacturing typologies found in the Industrial Machinery and Equipment sector - from Assemble to Order (ATO) to Engineer to Order (ETO) - and enables the deployment of emerging lean manufacturing techniques. It provides comprehensive project control, including support of progress billing, tracking the financial progress of the project and project scheduling, along with Cross-Enterprise Analytics including specific business content like Key Performance Indicators, role-based reports and industry-specific Business Process Flows.

Gregory Gorbach, Director of Collaborative Manufacturing Research at ARC Advisory Group, Inc, commented: "Organisations in the industrial machinery and equipment sector are increasingly focusing on the collaborative resolution of the key issues affecting their businesses - namely design considerations; time-critical production; moving from equipment to performance; addressing sharp cyclical fluctuations; order-driven networks for complex assembly operations; and dependency on suppliers and sub-contractors. With the launch of iBaan for IM&E, Baan is utilising its industry experience to provide these manufacturers with the Collaborative Manufacturing Management solutions and services they require to meet these challenges and drive their enterprise performance."

Rene Hollebrandse, IM&E Industry Director for Baan, said: "In the world of industrial machinery and equipment, new production chains are arising due to adoption of more and more 'new' technologies provided by specialised suppliers - such as sensor technology, microelectronics, laser technology and industrial image processing, with many needing special software - while in some regions the trend of outsourcing the more standardised components to lower wage countries can be observed. Collaboration based on Internet technologies is therefore increasingly becoming an essential function to remain competitive in this field.

"The iBaan for IM&E solution is at the forefront of Internet-enabled solutions in this industry and certainly recognises the triangle between Sales - Engineering - and Production, since sales configurations can automatically be transferred into manufacturing configurations, all the while linked to engineering data via the PLM solution. The solution also supports product lifecycle data in every stage of production through a PLM solution," Hollebrandse continued.

More information will be given at inForum - the event for business leadership - to be held on 17-19 April in Rome, Italy. For details, please visit http://inforum.baan.com.

The iBaan suite of Internet-enabled solutions that combines proven Baan technology with new developments to enable customers to take significant steps towards seamlessly integrating systems and processes. It provides end-users with personalised and easy-to-use information, and empowers businesses to collaborate with their customers and suppliers over the Internet.