EPICOR Software , a leading provider of enterprise business software solutions for the midmarket and divisions of the Global 1000, has announced the latest version of its 100-percent service-oriented architecture (SOA) global manufacturing solution, Epicor Vantage.
Epicor Vantage 8.03 offers enhanced supply chain management capabilities and robust Business Process Management functionality as well as strengthened support for industrial machinery manufacturers.
The new release builds on the success of Epicor Vantage 8.0, the industry’s first manufacturing solution completely architected from the ground up to support growing market requirements for SOAs.
Featuring an n-tier architecture built with Microsoft .NET and Web services technology, Vantage, enables businesses to leverage best-in-class software services through open industry standards, simplifying application development and integration.
The architecture exposes all functionality as Web services, offering new levels of application reliability, scalability, system interoperability and flexibility, combined with a rich user experience and low total cost of ownership.
Supply chain management enhancements
Vantage now offers a full range of new advanced supply chain management capabilities to address a wide range of requirements in inventory management, purchasing and receiving and distribution.
The new release provides the tools needed to manage every aspect of inventory control – from tracking parts stored in multiple plants, warehouses and bins, to support for lot, serial and dimension tracking.
New capabilities also automate processes associated with purchase contracts for businesses that purchase inventory items via delivery schedules that undergo regular revision and re-issue, and against which regular ongoing deliveries are made.
An enhanced Fulfillment Workbench gives the ability to reserve and un-reserve inventory for sales orders, as well as auto-picking and submit for picking/printing at the order level. New filter capabilities further streamline sales order management and allow for easy sorting.
With the latest Vantage release, manufacturers and distributors now have new options for outbound order packing, which offer greater flexibility and control of the shipping process, and integrate directly with the manufacturers’ manifest system of choice.
For example, the new Pack Out function allows multiple containers per packing slip, carton level packing and grouping of picked items for shipment.
The system captures carton specific details such as carton weight and exact contents, and if multiple orders are being shipped to the same customer they can all be packed into a single carton. The system also streamlines the packing process by supporting grocery story-type scanning of bar-coded inventory.
An important addition for global manufacturers is the container tracking feature -- overseas containers can take several weeks to reach the destination harbour, accompanied by a single to multiple purchase orders, and must pass through customs before being loaded onto a truck for final delivery.
Vantage automates container tracking and updates the status and due dates of all corresponding purchase orders from the time the container leaves the warehouse through to its final destination.
Enhanced business agility
Vantage offers robust Business Process Management (BPM) capabilities that enhance supply chain management functionality and support manufacturing orchestration at all levels.
From an IT perspective, Vantage’s business integration platform enables manufacturers to improve business performance streamline and add value to any business process.
Designed to support both internal and external connectivity to Epicor solutions as well as to external applications or processes, BPM provides a straightforward solution for graphically mapping process flows and orchestrating transactions, and eliminating non-value added steps to streamline virtually any process.
Vantage also puts BPM functionality in the hands of the business user, providing powerful capabilities to modify business processes as needed to increase business agility and responsiveness.
Using a wizard-driven interface, business users can assign business rules that define how the system handles transactions in response to various parameters and conditions.