Glovia Adds New Links For Supply Chains

When companies need enterprise resource planning software that meets the needs of their organizations, they typically have two options: Buy more generalized ERP software and fine-tune it themselves or turn to vendors that have built vertical applications for specific industries.

Fujitsu Ltd. subsidiary Glovia International is one such vendor, and this week it's rolling out a new version of its ERP suite designed for engineer-to-order and high-volume manufacturers.

Glovia, which counts among its more than 1,000 customers such well-known companies as Bosch, Caterpillar, Dell, and Mitsubishi, spent two years developing the new capabilities in its ERP suite to improve the software's ability to manage more complex supply chains that span the globe.

Glovia.com 7 centralizes demand and supply management by aggregating forecast and customer order data and provides demand planners with views of total item demand and demand allocation so they can more easily make forecast adjustments and drill down to detailed information. A new supply-management capability helps companies place demand in the most appropriate production facility based on available capacity and inventory levels while taking into account cost and customer delivery dates.

It also includes a new XML collaboration and integration framework that makes it easier for Glovia.com to exchange information with disparate systems. It also supports other industry standards, including J2EE, Soap, UDDI, ebXML, Corba, and RosettaNet.

In addition to the new supply-chain management functions, there are also improvements to the suite's customer-relationship management, procurement, manufacturing, financials, and projects applications.