PeopleSoft Catches The Flow Wave

PeopleSoft Inc., following in the footsteps of Oracle Corp. and American Software, recently began offering software to support flow or lean manufacturing concepts. The new set of planning and execution applications, called PeopleSoft Flow Production System, is being offered as an extension to PeopleSoft's Demand Planning and Production Planning and Management software. PeopleSoft and Toyota Manufacturing NA have agreed to form a group of industry companies called the Lean Manufacturing Advisory Council to guide the software firm in incorporating best practices of low manufacturing techniques in its software package Based on customer feedback from some of the world's largest anufacturing organizations, we have developed the Flow Production System to address the industrywide need for flow-related functionality," says John Webb, vice president of supply-chain product management at PeopleSoft, headquartered in Pleasanton, Calif. "By working with Toyota, and following its highly effective and influential production methodology, we have been able to include many of the Toyota Production System principles in this strong extension of our overall manufacturing and supply-chain management solutions."