Camstar, J.D. Edwards to Offer Integrated MES/ERP for Semiconductor/Electronics, Textiles and Metals Manufacturers

In an effort to connect plant floor activities to business-level applications, Camstar Systems Inc (Campbell, CA), an independent developer of manufacturing execution system (MES) software, and J.D. Edwards (Denver), developer of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, announced plans to penetrate the textiles, metals, and semiconductor/electronics markets with an integrated MES/ERP product offering.

The two companies are collaborating on development of a Certified Interface Methodology (CIM) that will effectively join Camstar's MESA and InSite MESs with the J.D. Edwards software so that customers can deploy combined MES and ERP systems with a minimum of integration programming effort and maximum level of flexibility.

Camstar's Windows NT-based InSite and IBM AS/400-based MESA packages provide detailed work-in-process tracking and increased visibility into key plant floor performance indicators needed to successfully manage manufacturing operations. When used in conjunction with the J.D. Edwards OneWorld and WorldSoftware products, the result is a manufacturing system that supports full application integration between shop floor production activities and enterprisewide business systems.

Camstar and J.D. Edwards currently have a number of customers in the textiles, metals, and semiconductor/electronics industries who have implemented the MES and ERP systems together in their manufacturing environments. The CIM now under development by the two companies is based on the experience obtained from working together in each of these industry environments, and will offer new customers in those markets pre-packaged integration which will significantly reduce installation effort and time-to-deployment.

"There has been a substantial information gap existing between factory operations and enterprise systems that has created, in effect, an informational blind spot," says Larry Graziani, Camstar's director of corporate development.

"With the kind of MES-to-ERP integration we've developed with J.D. Edwards, the enterprise-level and MES systems are able to deal directly with each other based upon actual production and business data," Graziani explains. "In addition, the need to manually move information between the two layers is now totally eliminated."