Holistic solutions in the cloud
Opportunities in the manufacturing industry
The manufacturing industry is facing a fundamental change. External factors are exerting considerable pressure on the industry. Companies must deliver on their performance promises more reliably, organize processes more efficiently, and reduce costs more consistently. At the same time, digitalization is opening up new opportunities - from production and network planning to real-time route/route optimization. Digitalized processes help to improve utilization and lower unit costs. Integrated systems support planners in their business by providing a clear and up-to-date picture of the demand situation, or by making the current capacity utilization transparent to the transport planner on the basis of the current traffic situation and other general conditions. But this requires modern APS systems that can process information in real-time. These solutions are often complex, and they require long-term budget plans. .
As a result, the demand for cloud-based applications and services is increasing in the manufacturing sector. According to one estimate, the market volume of cloud manufacturing is expected to triple in just a few years. But the decisive factor is how the cloud is used as a tool so that manufacturing companies can expect the greatest possible benefit. For example, it’s increasingly crucial that each distinct area at a company is provided with information in real-time. Planning changes from one business unit should also be displayed by alert to planners in other units.
Rapid Implementation
Integrated Business Planning Systems (ibp) provide up-to-date figures on sales planning and demand planning, and thus ultimately also on transport planning. But this requires modern, highly developed APS systems that can process and provide information in real-time. Under certain circumstances, this can lead to a lengthy transformation process and result in high investment costs.
In order to introduce intelligent ibp software, a lengthy decision-making and coordination process isn't necessarily required. Cloud-based systems can be integrated into short-term budget planning and easily approved due to the payment model, which provides for monthly billing based on actual usage. The acquisition of specific hardware isn’t necessary if the cloud solution is operated in an external data center. In many places, the specialist department can, therefore, make the relevant investment decisions, which can already significantly shorten internal processes. In turn, the modular structure of cloud-based software can speed up implementation - and simplify operation. flexis offers cloud-based solutions that can be easily implemented regardless of the provider.
Flexible Services
flexis pursues an integrated approach in order to be able to connect its own solution to a large number of other software systems. By adopting the cloud model, the services that were previously combined in an application server can now organize processes on a smaller scale using new and improved APIs. Modules that have been tried and tested up to now are thus becoming more independent and flexible.
Customers can easily combine different modules: for instance, a microservice can be implemented quickly and reused. flexis’ goal is to make these services available in cloud app stores of large public cloud operators such as Amazon (AWS) or Microsoft Azure.
The flexis cloud not only offers a scalable architecture with a modular structure (which allows comparatively fast assembly of individual solutions from standardized building blocks), it also ensures high software quality through automated testing from the first line of code to the delivery of the software (i.e. continuous integration/continuous deployment - CICD).