Rockwell Software ERP Integration Gateway

Rockwell Automation has extended the capabilities of its Rockwell Software industry solutions with an enterprise resource planning (ERP) integration gateway application.

The application allows plants to more easily and cost-effectively exchange transactions and execute business processes across the plant-floor and business systems, in real time. This exchange is a critical component in achieving demand-driven, agile manufacturing and the ability to deliver a perfect order.

The robust and expandable architecture of the ERP Integration Gateway allows for exchange of common types of information required for agile manufacturing, such as quality, order planning and scheduling, as well as accounting of production costs and material usage. The ability to exchange quality information between manufacturing and business systems provides a number of benefits - including fewer deviations and exceptions, lower cost of quality and compliance and faster release of finished goods - which help improve customer satisfaction.

The integration of order planning and scheduling also helps manufacturers improve on-time delivery, supply chain efficiencies and resource utilisation, and it gives the ability to more quickly respond to changing business demands. Integrating accounting of production costs and material usage can help reduce cycle time and inventories and can provide a more accurate accounting of product and production costs.

The ERP Integration Gateway is delivered on the Rockwell Software manufacturing services bus, a key component of the Rockwell Software manufacturing operations platform. The manufacturing services bus provides a proven service-oriented architecture (SOA) framework for messaging between applications that is secure, robust, scalable and highly available. The manufacturing services bus supports all of the common enterprise integration patterns and more than 30 different transport technologies, allowing for deployment into any existing IT environment with minimal disruption. The message bus architecture and flexibility helps provide a maximum return on existing IT investments, simplifies integration projects and eliminates dependencies between systems.