SAP Partners With SoftBrands To Address Tier 3 Manufacturing Sector

(Chicago) – At National Manufacturing Week, SAP (Germany) announced a partnership with manufacturing solutions provider Softbrands (Minneapolis) to develop a Fourth Shift Manufacturing Edition of SAP Business One. The combined solution, which is targeted at small manufacturers with 20 to 200 employees, incorporates Softbrand's solution for manufacturing management, Fourth Shift, with Business One's financial, sales force automation, customer relationship management, and workflow capabilities. A lean manufacturing version, integrating Softbrands' DemandStream product to support pull-based production scheduling, is also planned.

Joint development between Fourth Shift and Business One started in December, and there are plans for a mid-year release. According to Jim Shepherd, VP of Research for industry analyst AMR Research, "We expect to see a great deal of interest in this combination from smaller independent manufacturers and large SAP customers looking for a plant- or division-level system that is tightly integrated to the mySAP Business Suite." The solution will be offered through SAP Business One partners worldwide.

For more information on the Fourth Shift Manufacturing Edition of SAP Business One go to www.sap.com or www.softbrands.com.