Selected Suppliers of Manufacturing Intelligence Sofware

ABB

ABB is led by CEO Joseph Hogan. The company had $32 billion in revenue in 2009. ABB's Process Automation division delivers automation products for control, plant optimization, and industry-specific application knowledge and services to help process-industry customers worldwide. The division's MI offering, cpmPlus, is part of ABB's Collaborative Production Management suite of applications. The software provides process and production management, advanced optimization, and connectivity solutions for the process industries.

Aegis Software

Aegis Software is a privately held company led by its founders, CEO Jason Spera and CTO John Walls. Since 1997, Aegis has provided high-tech manufacturers with improved speed, control, and visibility in all aspects of factory operations. Aegis is currently installed in 1,150 sites worldwide. The company's FUSION Analytics software makes Manufacturing Intelligence data traceable and visible through built-in reporting, analytics, and real-time dashboards.

As One Technologies

Founded in 1994, As One Technologies, a maker of event-driven manufacturing operations management software, is led by CEO David Wicker. The company's MI offering, called Catalyst PDC, provides real-time, context-aware data collection, centralized storage, and comprehensive analysis. Using open connectivity, the software is a comprehensive manufacturing operations management platform.

Automation & Control

Automation & Control Inc. (ACI) was founded by Ron Iannacone in 1995. ACI is the developer of FIN, a historical data-collection program, which constitutes its MI offering. The software collects and stores key processing data and also generates daily e-mails of KPIs, predetermined by users, to help management analyze important parameters. Web-enabled FIN allows users to view production lines, and other plants, from anywhere in the world.

Birst

Founded in 2004, Birst is led by CEO Brad Peters and serves a wide range of industries, from manufacturing to life sciences and pharmaceutical companies. The company provides a Business Intelligence software package called Birst, a fact-based, decision-making SaaS product. Birst is used by manufacturers and others for supply chain analysis and optimization, manufacturing intelligence, and product lifecycle analysis. 

CDC Software

Founded in 2002, CDC Software is a hybrid enterprise software provider of on-premises and cloud deployments. The company, led by CEO Peter Lip, reported revenue of $204 million in 2009. The company has two MI offerings. CDC Factory is a packaged manufacturing operations management system that is used to standardize improved daily work control practices and formalize continuous improvement initiatives. CDC Factory integrates the functionality of shop-floor data capture; packaged metrics such as overall equipment effectiveness, analytics and scorecards; continuous improvement capabilities; and paperless quality management. The other offering is Ross EPM, a module (available as a standalone unit) for Ross ERP that enables fast, multi-dimensional and cross-functional analysis of key business drivers. Ross EPM provides analysis of customer service and sales performance, production levels and performance, inventory levels, trends, and sales metrics.

DataNet Quality Systems

DataNet Quality Systems, established in 1995, is led by CEO Stephen Arnett. The privately held company offers an MI product called WinSPC, which provides statistical decision-making at the point of production and delivers real-time, actionable information to where it is needed. WinSPC software is installed at more than 2,500 customer sites worldwide.

GE Intelligent Platforms

GE Intelligent Platforms was founded in 1987. The company is led by CEO Maryrose T. Sylvester. GE's MI solution includes a number of products: Proficy Plant Applications, Portal, Open Enterprise, Scheduler, Troubleshooter, Cause+, DataMart, Historian, Workflow, CIMPLICITY, iFIX, and Pulse. The software capabilities include data access, collection, contextualization, and presentation. The company’s operations management applications facilitate collaboration through tight integration of plant systems with plant and business systems. This integration permits improved information flow and visibility, enables real-time performance management, enhances continuous improvement and quality programs, and allows companies to better manage and execute their operations.

ICONICS

Russ Agrusa, CEO, leads ICONICS, which was founded in 1986. The privately held company specializes in visualization and automation software and has 250,000 installations in more than 60 countries. The company's MI offering, BizViz, compiles data from multiple processes into visual summaries, including dashboards, reporting, and analysis. From visualization and information, manufacturers can make informed improvements to their processes and applications using BizViz.

InetSoft

Founded in 1996 and led by CEO Luke Liang, InetSoft has more than 3,000 customers for its Business Intelligence software. The company's application allows users to create and use interactive, Web-based dashboards and reports. InetSoft's Data Block technology allows reuse of queries and the capability for end-user defined data mashup. The product also includes visual analysis technologies that allow self-service for the average business user, IT administrator, and developer.

Matrikon

Matrikon's leader is Ian Brown. Founded in 1988, the company is a provider of systems and application-independent software for the process industries. With more than 100,000 customers, Matrikon products enable users to anticipate, identify, and correct problems, share best practices, and take the action necessary to achieve and sustain objectives. Matrikon was acquired by Honeywell Process Solutions, a division of Honeywell International Inc., on June 28, 2010. For the MI market, Matrikon offers a suite of products that help companies turn real-time operational data into actionable knowledge.

nMetric

Privately held nMetric was founded in 2000 and is under the leadership of CEO Chris Koski. Driven by its patented scheduling engine and Smart Job technology, nMetric brings process automation to logistics environments. Smart Jobs intelligent scheduling technology is based on a probabilistic approach to operational events. In this way, the nMetric intelligent scheduling software serves as a link between an ERP system and the factory floor. It provides data on material availability, order information, production routing, and other information-gathering activities. .

Oracle

Founded in 1977, Oracle’s annual revenue for fiscal year 2010 was $26.8 billion. Oracle’s CEO is Lawrence J. Ellison. The company serves 370,000 customers globally across a wide range of industries. Oracle's Enterprise Manufacturing Intelligence product, Oracle Manufacturing Operations Center, is based on the ISA-95 reference model, with pre-built KPIs, measures, and role-based dashboards focused on OEE, production performance, and schedule adherence, It can collect data from PLCs, SCADA, data historians, meters, sensors, MES, etc., and integrates with ERP systems. The software's Sustainability Sensor Data Management feature enables sustainability and energy-aware manufacturing by capturing, analyzing, and reporting on energy consumption and corresponding GHG emissions.

Parsec Automation Corp.

Parsec, founded in 1988, is led by CEO Eddy Azad. The company is the developer of an MI offering called TrakSYS, software that manages operations and tracks, records, analyzes, and reports on events critical to productivity enhancement. TrakSYS is used at more than 3,000 manufacturing sites worldwide, primarily in food and beverage, pharmaceuticals, and CPG. TrakSYS focuses on delivery information throughout the enterprise. The software collects data from disparate sources using a single application deployment for overall operational management. TrakSYS applies user-configurable analytics and business rules to turn raw data into usable intelligence that identifies the root causes of poor performance, quality levels along with their impacts, and the opportunities for improvement.

QlikTech

Led by CEO Lars Bjork, QlikTech was founded in 1993 and serves more than 16,000 customers. As of Sept. 29, 2010, the company's trailing 12-month revenues reached almost $207 million. QlikTech’s Business Intelligence product, called Qlikview, delivers analytics and search capabilities. The software makes calculations that help users gain insight through intuitive data exploration.

Rockwell Software

Rockwell Software is a unit of Rockwell Automation, whose chairman and chief executive is Keith Nosbusch. With regard to manufacturing intelligence, Rockwell believes that most of what manufacturers need to know about their production operations is buried in their manufacturing data. The company’s FactoryTalk VantagePoint EMI is the gateway to that data. The software connects all manufacturing-related data sources–real-time, historical, relational, and transactional–to create a single virtual data resource that can access, aggregate, correlate, and present role-appropriate information to workers via a simple Web browser.

SAP AG

Founded in 1972, SAP AG is the world’s largest business software company. Its 2009 revenues were more than €10.6 billion. The company has more than 95,000 customers in over 120 countries. Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe are co-CEOs. In the Manufacturing Intelligence space, SAP Manufacturing Integration and Intelligence (SAP MII) provides the ability to aggregate, contextualize, and summarize plant operational data so that it makes sense in a business context. SAP MII can load plant metrics into the enterprise reporting system, but can also respond to synchronous requests for a more real-time enterprise. SAP MII provides an abstraction layer for the heterogeneity found in manufacturing sites/plants. SAP MII also allows users to build a common model that can be used across plants, and then “wire-in” the plant-specific data points during deployment.

Siemens

Peter Löscher is the CEO of Siemens AG. The company has three main business sectors: industry, energy, and healthcare, with a total of 15 divisions. Worldwide, Siemens and its subsidiaries reported revenues of more than €76 billion in 2009. The company's Production Intelligence software represents its entry into the Manufacturing Intelligence space. Production Intelligence enables the factory management team to respond quickly to changes in real time by providing high-level business workflow information.

Solarsoft

Solarsoft is led by CEO Shawn McMorran. The company has grown organically and through acquisition since 1986, and has worldwide revenue of $100 million. Solarsoft’s plant and Enterprise Manufacturing Intelligence package is called Solarsoft Informance. The software helps manufacturers accelerate operational performance initiatives such as continuous improvement. Solarsoft Informance is designed to facilitate decision-making on the plant floor to improve manufacturing performance.

Transpara

Transpara, founded in 2005 by Michael Saucier, offers the Visual KPI mobile monitoring and Business Intelligence software product for the manufacturing, utilities, and data-center industries. Visual KPI provides real-time monitoring, trending, and alerting. In addition, the Visual KPI designer was built in Microsoft Excel, and the entire application is data-driven. Through integration with the OSIsoft PI System and others, Visual KPI works with any data historian.

Vistrian

Founded in 2002 by CEO Ron Allen and CEO S. Suresh, Vistrian provides on-premise and SaaS-based Manufacturing Intelligence products that extract and process data from production tools, operator interfaces, databases, and legacy systems. Using Vistrian's FactoryLOOK systems, users can collect and analyze real-time process data across all departments to interpret, aggregate, calculate, and deliver a single view of relevant events, alerts, and KPIs needed for making timely business decisions.

Wonderware (Invensys)

Led by CEO Sudipta Bhattacharya, Invensys Operations Management is an operations management and business optimization software provider. The company’s offerings are in use by more than 40,000 clients. For fiscal year 2009-2010, Invensys Operations Management reported sales of approximately $1.5 billion. Its Wonderware Intelligence product allows companies to turn their corporate objectives, such as improving production throughput or decreasing variability in product quality, into measurable KPIs by accessing, structuring, and presenting the data that contributes to these measures, regardless of where that data resides.

(Editor’s Note: This select list of Manufacturing Intelligence Software suppliers is based on market research reports, analyst reports, and company information.)