nMetric's Manufacturing Collaboration System Fits XRM Model; Anticipating Events, nMetric's 4C Provides Live Scheduling, Real Time Monitoring and Tracking, Messaging and Analyses

    COSTA MESA, Calif.--Dec. 13, 2001--By providing event-driven live scheduling, monitoring and tracking, messaging updates to all parties, and analyses of the shop floor, nMetric's 4C solution fills the gap in the manufacturing supply chain between planning and execution.
    It presents manufacturers with the opportunity to look forward, become aware of prospective threats ahead of time and have the ability to take corrective actions proactively.
    According to Forrester Research, a new breed of apps called eXtended relationship management (XRM) speeds up and expands the scope of supplier, channel and customer relationships and enables firms to monitor partner status, manage inter-company transactions and optimize design, production and service. (Source: Forrester Report "Apps for Dynamic Collaboration").
    "With the nMetric 4C solution, mid-sized and smaller manufacturers can finally become part of the supply chain," emphasized nMetric CEO Tom Carpenter. "Our 4C provides visibility into manufacturing operations and up-to-second knowledge of individual order status in real time. At last, these companies, which are so vital to completing the supply chain, can instantly confirm their capability to build a specific order delivery request or handle an increase in business with a software solution beginning at only $50,000."
    According to the Forrester article, XRM optimization characteristics include adaptive planning, which allows iterative, decentralized optimization; tradeoff analysis to reconcile partners' conflicting goals; and support for continuous self-learning.
    With the nMetric 4C system, orders are continuously monitored at every moment in real time to assure status and notify if delivery expectations are being met. Mid-sized manufacturers know where their production hot-spots are located, can determine if there is a contention for resources now or in the future, and ascertain ahead of time what order delivery dates may be in jeopardy. 4C also has the ability to resolve at-risk orders, capacity constraints, engineering changes or other operational events that are impeding the order's progress and notifies all who need to know in time to react accordingly. When and if resources or demands change or might change, 4C attempts to resolve any problems that could affect delivery dates and/or proactively notifies all specified partners.
    If there are prospective large shifts in plans or resources, users can proactively use 4C to manually determine the impact of various "what-ifs" on present order dates in the queue. They can anticipate what the effects of each change will be before making them.
    nMetric's 4C architecture is designed and implemented using industry standard J2EE, Java and OAGI (Open Applications Group) Business Object Definition XML throughout the application, uniquely enabling cross-platform scalability across the enterprise, including all emerging trading exchanges. It is browser-based to easily interface with other supply chain software systems. The web-enabled system is browser independent, utilizes popular Sequel Server or Oracle DBMS, and runs on either NT or UNIX platforms.
    "Today, if a customer wants a quantity 100 by Wednesday and there are 60 in the warehouse, there is no way to determine if the remaining 40 can be manufactured in time," asserted Carpenter. "With our 4C system, they will know when the needed 40 are being produced. That's a powerful, profit-inducing advantage. We believe that the typical mid-sized manufacturer will obtain a first-year return on investment between 95 to 265 percent, depending on how capital equipment intensive they are."
    nMetric provides the 4C system through systems integrators and software implementers.

    About nMetric

    Founded in 2000, nMetric's 4C system is the only software that provides mid-sized and smaller manufacturers with live scheduling, monitoring and tracking, messaging updates and analysis so that they can completely oversee all steps of their manufacturing process and proactively supervise the dynamics of their supply chain in real time to accurately predict what will happen. Company headquarters are at 3070 South Bristol Avenue, Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626. Phone is 888-561-9700. Web site is www.nmetric.com.

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