Kewill ERP Announces Major New Enhancements of MAX 3.5 ERP Suite

Business Wire, March 13, 2000

Business Editors

FOSTER CITY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 13, 2000

Latest Product in Kewill's E-Manufacturing Suite of Solutions

Enables Access to Multiple Enterprise and e-Business

Applications and Solutions

Kewill ERP today announced MAX 3.5, the latest product in its E-Manufacturing line of solutions designed to help small to mid-size manufacturing enterprises (SME) manage their business relationships, execute business transactions and improve collaboration with customers, suppliers and service partners through the Internet.

MAX 3.5 features Systems Manager, a new HTML-based user interface enabling users to access multiple enterprise applications and e-business content and software. Other new enhancements:

-- Engineer Change Order module features a new multi-part search "where used"
facility. This is a Windows Explorer-type tree view of a new Bill of Materials
(BOM) which quickly identifies all necessary product structure changes to
implement an engineering change order (ECO).

-- Ability to automatically document ECO changes derived from BOM changes;

-- EDI module includes international functionality with EDIFACT support for ERP
transactions and a remote paging feature for instant notification of a failed
transmission;

-- Users can schedule unattended operation of important processes including the
execution of the MRP Explosion.

-- Sales order processing module includes streamlined functionality for
processing of credit return orders;

-- Database utilities that provide an information system manager with all the
statistical database information required for custom report writing and
development of customized applications

At IFCO Enterprises, Inc. a Malvern, PA-based manufacturer of the Invisible Fence Brand of electronic pet containment systems, the company is using MAX's new system manager as part of an employee portal initiative. "MAX's System Manager is the first step in the company's plans on making the Internet play a large role in our business," said Rick Elder, business systems manager with the company.

"MAX 3.5 provides customers with the foundation for fully exploiting our e-Manufacturing solutions," said Aidan Hegarty, president of Kewill's ERP division. "MAX's new user interface helps users streamline access to multiple enterprise applications from anywhere such as the desktop, Intranet or Internet. It allows employees to fully exploit an e-business portal within its own organization, ultimately maximizing productivity and efficiencies throughout the enterprise."

MAX 3.5 is available now and pricing starts at $15,000 for a complete system.

Kewill recently announced its E-Manufacturing line of products. This offering includes data hosting services through Kewill.net, a "supply chain business portal" platform that allows Kewill's MAX and JobBOSS users to view and execute business-to-business transactions on the Internet.

The business portal platform will serve one of the largest installed bases in the SME marketplace -- more than 42,000 Kewill customers, as well as their suppliers, subcontractors and customers. Kewill's E-Manufacturing offering also virtually eliminates the complexity, costly investment and maintenance of an E-commerce infrastructure for the SME manufacturer. Even the smallest manufacturer can take full advantage of electronic commerce without worrying about firewalls, security, hardware and other Internet back-office complications.

Kewill's MAX solutions are built for small to mid-size discrete manufacturing and mixed-mode enterprises that value advanced software functionality, reliability and fast implementation times (often within 90 days). MAX solutions span the enterprise -- from manufacturing, accounting and supply chain management to customer management.

Other recent new products of Kewill's comprehensive MAX ERP application suite include: MAX Sales Manager and Service Manager applications, a customer relationship management (CRM) suite with full-featured sales force automation and customer support functionality; an Advanced Planning System - an interactive computer-aided scheduling system that allows both finite capacity resources and material resources to be tracked simultaneously; Finite Capacity Scheduling - an interactive scheduling system that takes individual detailed orders and determines specifically where and when each step of the work will be performed; Alert Manager - an automated data reporting and exception messaging tool; Product Configurator - software that allows users to build complex product configurations and generate sophisticated quotes and proposals while compressing sales cycles and creating accurate product routings and bills; and Shipping - which enables users daily, weekly or real-time visibility on the status of orders throughout the shipping process.

Kewill ERP

Kewill ERP is one of three operating divisions of Kewill Systems plc, the specialist in supply chain management software and services. It is the leading provider of ERP systems to the SME sector (Benchmark Research) with more than 10,000 installations worldwide. The company's products comprise complete solutions for job shop, batch, make-to-order, make-to-contract, discrete and repetitive manufacturers, and are well known for their rare combination of functional breadth and depth coupled with ease of use and rapid implementation cycles.