SAP AG today announced its intent to acquire Visiprise, Inc., a privately-held provider of manufacturing execution software solutions delivering integrated manufacturing operations to companies of all sizes. Acquisition of Visiprise is part of SAP’s "Perfect Plant" strategy and supports their PLM roadmap and its goal of helping customers achieve operational excellence and product and service leadership. SAP anticipates that the acquisition will be completed in July 2008 pending necessary regulatory approvals in the United States and Europe.
The combination of SAP Business Suite applications, the SAP Manufacturing Integration and Intelligence (SAP MII) application and Visiprise Manufacturing should help customers deploy end-to-end, "plan to make" processes across multiple plants through an integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) and manufacturing execution systems (MES) solution.
CIMdata believes that integrating MES with ERP is a core precept for the merging of PLM and Automation. SAP’s acquisition of Visiprise is a solid step toward providing their customers with a more comprehensive manufacturing control solution. It can also provide a bridge between SAP’s ERP and PLM solutions and the Digital Manufacturing domain.
