GE Fanuc Automation, Charlottesville, Va., a unit of GE Industrial, has established a sales and marketing agreement with SAP America Inc. to jointly market GE Fanuc Production Management solutions and SAP applications — easing plant floor and enterprise integration to increase quality and drive productivity for their automotive and mill products' customers.
According to Tom Cruz, GE Fanuc vice president of software and service, the partnership will allow both companies to have bi-directional flow of crucial production information, such as production schedules, quality performance, inventory consumption, and maintenance status.
“This partnership allows for the gathering, analyzing, and transforming of real-time data to continuously improve a company's productivity and performancem,” says Cruz. “The real-time visibility and intelligence facilitated by the combined solution translates into improved agility, quality, and efficiency by tracking and executing production operations through a closed-loop information exchange with the SAP Business Suite.”
Traditionally, integration of production data and business systems has been limited to manual processes or narrowly defined automated transactions. In contrast, the joint GE Fanuc and SAP solution identifies constraints in real-time, ensuring “right-first-time” production, managing production sequences, and limiting warranty and recall exposure.