Levi Strauss & Company Technology Center to Install MK Manufacturing Software

Levi Strauss & Company capped a year-long search for software to manage centralized purchasing operations for its U.S. and Canadian factories and to support the customized manufacturing and inventory of machines used to make Levi's Jeans and apparel by purchasing MK Group for its Technology Center in Richardson, Texas.

MK Manufacturing, a product of the MK Group, an independent business unit of Computer Associates International (Islandia, N.Y.), lets equipment manufacturers address critical issues like product management and cycle time reductions to costing, project management, distribution and field services.

The technology center has 80 employees and is responsible for the research and development, design, engineering and manufacture of specialized sewing equipment including configure-to-order or assemble-to-order machines for Levi Strauss plants. The center is also the central purchasing facility for all equipment used in Levi Strauss' U.S. and Canadian apparel manufacturing plants.

According to MK Group, MK Manufacturing was selected because of its flexibility, ease of integration, executive reporting facilities including the elimination of paper flow and the security features. Other factors influencing Levi's selection process were the product's Internet capability and Proactive Management Control, featuring Computer Associate's proprietary agent technology.

The MK Group provides software for manufacturing enterprises on Windows NT and the UNIX platforms from Hewlett-Packard, Digital, IBM and Sun Microsystems in a variety of relational database environments. The MK Group also offers solutions in the Hewlett-Packard MPE/iX and Digital OpenVMS environments.

The installation will take place over the next six to nine months.