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Key takeaways:

• Recipe management is a multifaceted business challenge for companies that develop food or formula based products
• Infor enhances Optiva for the user experience, and leverages Ming.le to put the power of social at users’ fingertips
• Infor brings added capabilities to project management and compliance
• Infor provides consistency for their on premise and cloud based offerings

Infor’s Optiva has always been a strong technical application for managing recipes. With Optiva VER. 12, Infor focused on taking Optiva from a technical platform to being a user friendly solution. In addition, Infor has tied Optiva into Ming.le, enabling social networking in the context of managing the product definitions, this is attractive to the younger generation of knowledge workers. Infor expanded many capabilities to bring Optiva to the level of being a PLM platform for recipe based products whether top down (chef creations) or bottoms up (chemistry based formulations). With VER. 12, Infor has enhanced Optiva to include supply chain interactions, project management tools, and improved compliance management.

For end users Infor is providing a consistent look and feel bringing a simplified user interface as shown in Figure 1. No matter which function of Optiva one is interacting with the appearance and the process has been made highly intuitive. Wizards and applets make the interface adaptive to the end user preferences. Quick links to common functions can be found easily and are directly associated with the items being acted upon.

Figure 1—Optiva’s Clean User Interface

In addition to modernizing the user interface Infor has brought Ming.le into Optiva, enabling end users to have dialog and information exchanges as they use the system, eliminating delays and errors that might occur due to having to pause work activities to obtain missing pieces of information. This instant and social networking connection allows the younger generation workforce to connect within their organizations in a familiar and engaging manner. Infor has additional plans to further connect users by leveraging GT Nexus (www.gtnexus.com) to enable networks-of-networks level interactions and to bring supply chain interactions into the workflows of Optiva. Optiva Ver. 12 is clearly redesigned to engage the end user, marking a successful transformation that has been occurring over the past three years, resulting in a much improved user experience along with having enabled a more collaborative interface.

Digging deeper by following a work flow, CIMdata was walked through the test plan capabilities showing how test plans can be set up based on various compliance criteria as shown in Figure 2. Microbiological, chemical, and nutrient test methods can all be stored and linked to the test plan. This type of process flow and connectivity is maintained throughout Optiva.

Figure 2—Test Plans Linked to Test Methods

The tests don’t stand alone. Test plans, test methods, and test progress can all be managed and tracked within projects. Rolling up multiple ingredients into a project while maintaining the integrity of the isolated ingredients yet bringing them into a bill of materials structure allows recipe capture required for labeling and reporting. Tasks can be assigned and routed with status tracking presented in a dashboard layout as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3—Dashboard of Task Status

All in all, Infor’s Optiva brings the best of its technical reputation to bear in a highly usable and connected manner. It also marks a journey being taken by Infor in committing to the cloud. With Optiva VER. 12, customers have the choice of remaining on premise or moving to the cloud, using AWS, without compromising functionality.

CIMdata is pleased to see Infor taking a world class technical recipe management system to the level of being a PLM platform, with a modernized, simplified user interface and having enabled a cloud based solution without compromise. The consistency of Infor’s recent product efforts are being seen across all of Infor’s offerings and CIMdata looks forward to seeing where Infor takes Optiva next.