SAP AG today announced its intent to acquire Visiprise, Inc., a privately-held provider of manufacturing execution software solutions delivering integrated manufacturing operations to companies of all sizes. With the addition of Visiprise, SAP will deliver on its "Perfect Plant" strategy to bring together core SAP solutions with the software, hardware and services offerings of ecosystem partners to drive innovation for discrete manufacturers. The integration of Visiprise's plant-level manufacturing execution solutions will offer discrete manufacturing customers a product offering designed to increase production responsiveness, improve operational efficiencies and enhance quality and regulatory compliance.
Headquartered in Alpharetta, Ga., Visiprise serves more than 60 global customers, including many existing SAP customers in discrete manufacturing industries including high-tech, aerospace & defense, automotive and medical device.
According to Jim Hagemann Snabe, corporate office and member of the executive council, SAP AG, the combination of the two companies will offer manufacturers better visibility by linking the operations of the plant floor to production planning and operations management. This should help enable manufacturers to respond profitably to the growing demands of their global customers, he added.
Manufacturing executives and plant managers are under increasing pressure to coordinate manufacturing planning across the global supply network while driving efficient and responsive local execution to ensure the delivery of fast-moving products within short lead times. Through the combination of SAP Business Suite applications, the SAP Manufacturing Integration and Intelligence (SAP MII) application and Visiprise Manufacturing, customers gain network-wide visibility, enterprise orchestration, plant to network data integration and the ability to deploy end-to-end, "plan to make" processes across multiple plants through an integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) and manufacturing execution systems (MES) solution from a single partner.
SAP and Visiprise have a history of partnership as part of SAP's "Perfect Plant" initiative and related ecosystem dating back to 2005. In November 2006, Visiprise received an investment from the global SAP NetWeaver Fund. Soon after, in January 2007, Visiprises flagship solution, Visiprise Manufacturing, was named an SAP-endorsed business solution. In February 2007, the Visiprise ERP Shop Floor Integration 1.0 packaged composite application achieved "SAP xApps Certified -- Powered by SAP NetWeaver" status. Most recently, SAP agreed to resell and market the Visiprise Manufacturing product under the name SAP Manufacturing Execution by Visiprise. In addition, Visiprise solutions are fully integrated into live end-to-end manufacturing process scenarios showcased by Tata Consulting Services (TCS) at SAP's "Perfect Plant" center of excellence at SAP's Newtown Square facility.
"We are excited to join the SAP team and work together to further serve our customers as their needs continue to evolve and grow," said Sean McCloskey, president and CEO, Visiprise.
SAP anticipates that the acquisition will be completed in July 2008 pending necessary regulatory approvals in the United States and Europe. Visiprise employs approximately 300 employees and has additional offices in Carlsbad, California and Kiev, Ukraine. The company will provide additional details about the integration of the companies after the closing of the transaction. Terms of the transaction are not disclosed publicly.
