British American Tobacco Standardizes on Apriso’s Global Manufacturing Platform

LONG BEACH, CA – September 19, 2012 – Apriso, a leading provider of manufacturing software solutions, today announced that British American Tobacco (BAT) has elected to standardize on Apriso’s FlexNet as their exclusive Manufacturing Execution System (MES) software solution. This decision was based on BAT’s 10-year working relationship with Apriso, during which time the flexibility, scope of capabilities and depth of Apriso’s solutions have been realized first hand at six sites now live across the globe. Apriso’s solutions help BAT to effectively meet today’s rigorous production, warehouse logistics, quality and regulatory requirements.

This enterprise agreement ensures FlexNet will be deployed at BAT’s strategic factories to unlock even greater value as an enterprise MES platform for manufacturing operations management. BAT can now better manage their manufacturing operations on a global scale to ease continuous process improvement and improve operational agility across their enterprise.

“Apriso has proven itself as a strategic partner for manufacturing. We have already improved operational efficiency, quality and traceability within primary and secondary manufacturing processes while simplifying SAP ERP integration with shop floor operations,” said Ian Geraghty-Bellingham, Global IT Manager for Manufacturing, at BAT. “Our next step is to expand upon our successful Apriso partnership to achieve even further operational efficiency as we strive to achieve a more holistic, global approach to manufacturing operations management.”

As with all Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) companies, BAT faces increasing complexity ranging from SKU proliferation and innovative packaging requirements to complex regulatory labeling needs. By ensuring processes are managed at the right level between ERP and FlexNet, operations have been simplified, contributing to greater agility and quality across BAT’s operations, helping to enable improved capacity utilization.

“BAT clearly recognizes the value Apriso delivers on a plant-by-plant basis. With an enterprise decision to standardize on Apriso, BAT can achieve even greater process collaboration between plants to better manage as a collective whole,” stated Jim Henderson, president and CEO of Apriso.

“The tobacco manufacturing industry is undergoing a significant change, driven in part by globalization and demand shifts to emerging markets, such as the BRIC nations,” said Dariusz Kudzia, senior director of EMEA field operations at Apriso. “These industry challenges require new strategies to support Lean operations, process governance and shared best practices to drive down costs. A global standard for manufacturing operations management is vital to achieve these objectives, especially when production is dispersed across different geographic regions, to ensure brand integrity is maintained, regardless the origin of production.”

About Apriso Corporation
Apriso is a software company dedicated to helping its customers transform the performance of their global manufacturing operations. It does so by enabling manufacturers to achieve and sustain manufacturing excellence while adapting quickly to market changes. FlexNet, Apriso's manufacturing software, uniquely enables companies to manage processes and share best practices across their operations with its BPM platform-based architecture. Apriso supports continuous improvement initiatives by delivering visibility into, control over and synchronization across manufacturing and the product supply network. Apriso serves nearly 200 customers in 40+ countries across the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa. Customers include GM, Tesla Motors, Volvo CE, Cummins Inc., L'Oréal, Luxottica, Lockheed Martin, Bombardier, Textron Systems, MBDA and Saint-Gobain. Learn more at: apriso.com. Visit our blog at apriso.com/blog.

Apriso and FlexNet are registered trademarks of Apriso Corporation. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Apriso Corporation
301 E. Ocean Blvd; Suite 1200
Long Beach, CA 90802

Media Contacts:
Michael Gallo
Gutenberg Communications
+1 (212) 239-8594
mgallo@gutenbergpr.com

Gordon Benzie
Apriso Corporation
+1 (562) 951-8054
gordon.benzie@apriso.com

This release was published on openPR.