Manufacturing

Life sciences focus for FlexNet

25 June 2008

Apriso has released FlexNet 9.4 SP1, which is designed to help life sciences manufacturers better manage their quality, CAPA and lean initiatives by providing additional containment management capabilities.

The product allows manufacturers to identify, isolate and take action on known or suspected quality defects within their raw materials, components and finished goods processes – within warehouse, production, quality and maintenance operations processes.

The .NET-based FlexNet solution is designed specifically for the medical devices and pharmaceuticals areas, and currently constitutes the industry’s only unified architecture for business processes. By adding actionable capabilities to their CAPA and Quality Management Systems (QMS), organisations can integrate quality execution with containment management to maintain brand equity while minimising the possibility of product recall.

“Manufacturers have historically taken a very fragmented approach to the acquisition of QMS, with no overarching enterprise architecture in mind,” said Simon Jacobson in the March 2008 AMR Research report: Laying the Framework for an Effective CAPA Strategy. “These site-level deployments often lack integration with existing supplier management systems and MES investments. They also don’t tie into similar systems across other manufacturing sites for networked event detection and alarming or consistent inspecting methodology.”

“Apriso was the first to deploy native business process management within our FlexNet operations execution system to integrate operations processes, enabling agility across manufacturing and the supply chain,” said Rick Gallisa, industry director of life sciences at Apriso. “The expanded capabilities of our life sciences solution simply builds upon the success already achieved in executing quality programmes and lean initiatives within this industry segment.”