CDC Software Delivers Newest Version of Ross OnePlan for On-Demand Planning and Factory Scheduling

Software as a Service (SaaS) Solution Provides Customers with Increased Ease-of-Use and Improved Manufacturing Performance Management
 
CDC Software, the enterprise software company of CDC Corporation, today announced that the latest release of its Ross OnePlan applications are now available.  These applications provided as on-demand Software as a Service (SaaS), enable customers to buy, implement and begin using the technology in a very short time period.   A critical supply chain management solution, OnePlan 5.0 delivers increased production schedule visibility, manufacturing performance management and greater ease-of-use for demand-driven process and consumer products manufacturers.  The applications are easily integrated to customers' existing ERP systems enabling the transfer of manufacturing and scheduling data with legacy systems.

OnePlan 5.0 enables factory plans and schedules to be quickly updated to match the speed of the business weekly, daily or hourly to balance changing demand for products with available material, labor and equipment capacity.  In addition to its finite scheduling functionality, OnePlan includes predictive metrics with workflow capabilities to provide powerful performance management, team planning and communication capabilities.  This combination of collaborative scheduling with metrics-based performance management gives manufacturers a compelling value proposition for increasing perfect-order performance while improving efficiency of plant, labor and materials utilization in the factory.

Darigold, one of the nation's largest agricultural cooperatives, producing the equivalent of two million gallons of milk everyday, began using OnePlan in its Portland, Ore., plant in 2005 and in its Issaquah plant in 2006.  Darigold recently implemented version 5.0 in both plants and is already seeing benefits in the efficiency of the companys operations that exceed expectations.

With the rapid implementation of OnePlan 5.0, weve already begun to see changes in our manufacturing operations, said Rob Scacco, supply chain strategy and optimization manager at Darigold.  We are very happy to see the commitment to thoughtful feature development and quality CDC Software is putting into its products.

OnePlan is delivered as a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution with a monthly subscription fee.  Unlike traditional solutions, customers require no hardware, software or IT support to run OnePlan other than a standard PC and Web browser.  Another key feature is collaboration of reports, schedules and analytics results across the organization. 

We acquired the OnePlan applications earlier this year and are proud to demonstrate our customer commitments with the on-time release of the latest enhancements in version 5.0, said Eric Musser, president, CDC Software.  The on-demand planning and scheduling applications in OnePlan are proven to help companies with legacy ERP systems improve the efficiency and responsiveness of their operations.  We are seeing rapidly growing interest in these cost-effective applications and, with no software to install locally, customer sites around the world can be up and running in a few short weeks and realize an immediate return on the investment.  We are continuing to ramp-up our sales and delivery capabilities on a global scale to address the demand.     
 

Other notable enhancements in OnePlan 5.0, which is available immediately, include:

• Improved operational efficiency A powerful scheduling engine with flexible sequencing logic allows OnePlan to deliver significant improvements in operational efficiency, including reduced changeovers, increased capacity utilization, reduced inventory levels and reduced labor costs.  The results are higher customer-service levels at lower costs.
• Improved response to change OnePlans dynamic alert capabilities help customers identify and respond rapidly to changing demand and materials availability in an enhanced manner.
• Modeling of by-products Bills of materials have been extended in OnePlan 5.0 to handle products that arise in the manufacturing process.  Customers can now easily create, view and edit by-products and can also easily see by-products when viewing the plans for an item and when examining the inventory analysis for an item.