Epicor Delivers Far Reaching New Functionality with Vantage

Industrys First Fully Service-Oriented Manufacturing Solution Enhances Support for Supply Chain Management and the Unique Requirements of Aerospace and Automotive

Epicor Software Corporation, a leading provider of enterprise business software solutions for the midmarket and divisions of the Global 1000, today announced availability of the newest version of its global manufacturing solution built with service-oriented architecture (SOA), Epicor Vantage, at the International Manufacturing Technology Show.

This latest release of Vantage offers enhanced supply chain management capabilities, robust business process management (BPM) functionality and support for the unique requirements of the automotive and aerospace and defense industries (See: Epicor Revs up Vantage Functionality for Automotive and Epicor Vantage Soars with New Features for Aerospace and Defense), as well as strengthened support for industrial machinery manufacturers.

The new release builds on the success of Epicor Vantage 8.0 launched at the end of 2004 the industrys first manufacturing solution completely architected from the ground up to support growing market requirements for SOA. Featuring an n-tier architecture built with Microsoft .NET and Web services technology, Vantage, enables businesses to leverage best-in-class software services through open industry standards, simplifying application development and integration. The architecture exposes all functionality as Web services, offering new levels of application reliability, scalability, system interoperability and flexibility, combined with a rich user experience and low total cost of ownership.

New Advanced Supply Chain Management Enhancements

Vantage now offers a full range of advanced supply chain management capabilities to address a wide range of requirements in inventory management, purchasing and receiving and distribution. The new release provides the tools needed to manage every aspect of inventory control from tracking parts stored in multiple plants, warehouses and bins, to support for lot, serial and dimension tracking.  New capabilities also automate processes associated with purchase contracts for businesses that purchase inventory items via delivery schedules that undergo regular revision and re-issue, and against which regular ongoing deliveries are made. An enhanced Fulfillment Workbench gives the ability to reserve and un-reserve inventory for sales orders, as well as auto-picking and submit for picking/printing at the order level. New filter capabilities further streamline sales order management and allow for easy sorting. 

With the latest Vantage release, manufacturers and distributors now have new options for outbound order packing, which offer greater flexibility and control of the shipping process, and integrate directly with the manufacturers manifest system of choice. For example, the new Pack Out function allows multiple containers per packing slip, carton level packing and grouping of picked items for shipment.  The system captures carton specific details such as carton weight and exact contents, and if multiple orders are being shipped to the same customer they can all be packed into a single carton. The system also streamlines the packing process by supporting grocery story-type scanning of bar-coded inventory.

An important addition for global manufacturers is the container tracking feature overseas containers can take several weeks to reach the destination harbor, accompanied by a single to multiple purchase orders, and must pass through customs before being loaded onto a truck for final delivery.  Vantage automates container tracking and updates the status and due dates of all corresponding purchase orders from the time the container leaves the warehouse through to its final destination.

BPM Capabilities Enhance Business Agility

Vantage puts robust business process management (BPM) functionality in the hands of the business user, providing powerful capabilities to modify business processes as needed to increase business agility and responsiveness. Using a wizard-driven interface, business users can assign business rules that define how the system handles transactions in response to various parameters and conditions.

Vantage BPM enhances supply chain management functionality and supports manufacturing process orchestration at all levels. The powerful business integration platform enables manufacturers to improve business performance by streamlining activities within any business process.  Vantage BPM includes predefined actions so that any user - given proper security rights - can define a business process routing, including advanced processes orchestrated with Epicor Service Connect.  Service Connect provides a straightforward solution for graphically mapping process flows and orchestrating transactions for eliminating non-value added steps to streamline virtually any process both within Epicor solutions as well as connectivity to external applications or processes. 

Availability

The new release of Vantage is now shipping. For more information, visit the company Web site at www.epicor.com/www/products/manufacturing/vantage/.