Service Oriented Architecture for MES Citect announces the release of version 3.2 of its Manufacturing Execution System, Ampla; a highly scalable MES solution that drives the effective planning, operation and improvement of production operations. To gain a competitive edge in today's market, successful manufacturers are using Manufacturing Execution Systems to reveal opportunities for improved business performance and increased profit margins.

    Ampla V3.2 provides new features to support Service Oriented Architectures and significantly reduce the time to develop operational reports. Ampla V3.2 utilizes a new web service layer to support SOA and Ampla's web services have been designed up-front for platform independence and broad interoperability, including culture invariance, time zone independence, WS-I compliance testing and Java interoperability testing.

    "Service Oriented Architecture or SOA is being rapidly adopted as a key to enterprise architectures by leading companies in mining and manufacturing," said Colette Munro, Global Director, Ampla. "SOA allows multiple applications to provide and consume services using standards, which in turn provides our clients with faster integration and more flexible business processes. The move to SOA has also enabled us to deliver new services to our customers more rapidly."

    Ampla, Citect's high-quality, scalable MES solution delivers real-time access to plant and business information allowing key personnel to identify and act on opportunities to refine the workflow, maximize OEE, and to correct problems before they impact on supply chain, regulation compliance and production. To continually and sustainably improve business performance, successful manufacturing companies need to use modular solutions which give fast, incremental and measurable benefits, with a long-term vision of an integrated architecture for maximum business impact. Ampla solutions are designed to be deployed in a modular fashion, where each module delivers specific benefits to aid in improving each business need independently, while integrating together to provide exponential value as additional modules are deployed.

    "SOA-based solutions allow companies to assemble application components, such as data models, business rules, user interfaces, and workflows, to meet their specific business requirements. The flexibility of these 'composite applications' allows companies to reconfigure their processes more quickly and effectively in response to changing business conditions or customer requirements," stated Bob Mick, Vice President, ARC Advisory Group.

    "Using Ampla's new reporting features, we have been able to build sophisticated operational reports faster than ever before," noted Shaun Smith, General Manager, Primatec. "Ampla's data management is unique in it's ability to prepare data for reports." As part of its focus on standards and connectivity, Ampla V3.2 now also connects more seamlessly to standard reporting tools such as Microsoft Reporting Services, Crystal Reports and others. This allows IT departments and end-users to more easily leverage their existing reporting infrastructures.

    In addition, new support for Spanish and Portuguese (Brazilian) languages has been delivered to bring Ampla's proven ROI in mining and manufacturing to the rapidly growing South American market. "2008 will be another challenging year for the mining and manufacturing industries," said John Ross, CEO Citect. "Strong demands for growth will need to be balanced against efficiency. Ampla V3.2 will make it easier for operations management executives to understand and improve plant performance."