If I had a dollar for each time that I’ve heard the words, “paperless society”, I’d be drinking a Mai-Tai, watching the waves roll-in from my private Hawaiian beach-front property.  Well maybe that’s an exaggeration, but the reality is that after 40 years of talking about it, technology is now here to support the concept.
 
In March 2013, Aberdeen Group published a document titled, Mobility Making Waves in Manufacturing, I couldn’t agree more but would like to add two words and change the title to, SAP and Mobility Making Waves in Manufacturing, and these aren’t the Mai-Tai watching kind of waves.  In 2005 SAP purchased Lighthammer, in 2006 they acquired FactoryLogic, in 2008 Visiprise, in 2009 Business Objects and then in 2010 they added Sybase, today I understand the vision which drove these acquisitions.
 
Now when I meet with prospective and current customers and they say we want a paperless shop-floor with full security, we want our operators, from their mobile devises and without leaving their workstations, to have the ability to clock-in and out for the day and to log-in and out of an operation, and we want them to have the latest work instructions and 3-D documents and they should be alerted, also via mobile devise, when their equipment is starting to trend out of tolerance, I can look them in the eye and say no problem.
 
Just in time, a concept has become a reality.  I say just in time because, from what I’ve observed, the next-generation workforce is all about “swipe and tap”, a fact that none of us can deny.

Packsize Taps Into Global Manufacturing and Demand and Grows 40% with SAP and Bramasol

Chosen as one of Forbes America’s Most Promising Companies, the Packsize story is one manufacturing companies need to watch. Join this webcast to learn how Packsize partnered with SAP and Bramasol to establish a solid foundation to support a yearly growth rate of 40%. After implementation of the SAP Business-All-In-One solution, Packsize has achieved global visibility into manufacturing demand and status, procurement needs and sales activity. With that result Packsize continues to attract marquee companies across the globe and recently just established a relationship with Staples as their sole supplier for On Demand Packaging®.

On June 25 - 26, 2013, SAP will host a large, national Customer Value Network (CVN) event focused on manufacturing, with Bramasol as a sponsor. Join the manufacturing industry's thought leadership community for this educational forum. Network and learn about the transformational opportunities in manufacturing today and what is working and successful for other companies in managing their business, growth and profitability on industry best practices and technology solutions.

I was just listening to an interview from last week’s SAP’s Sapphire user conference where SAP’s Co-CEO, Bill McDermott reported that SAP’s cloud business grew by 380% in Q1.  He didn’t break it down, but one can reasonably assume that the bulk of this growth occurred in business applications like core ERP, SCM, SFM, HCM solutions.  It got me thinking about where we are with Analytics in the cloud.  A report published last fall by noted BI analyst Howard Dresner tells how adoption of analytics in the cloud is still in the early innings.  This makes sense.  As business applications move to the cloud, more businesses get familiar and comfortable with this new computing model.  Perhaps more importantly, it puts business data—the lifeblood of analytics—out in the cloud making the move to cloud BI a natural next step. 

Headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, Packsize is a Bramasol customer that has made an impact on its customers, communities and environment with its innovation through a foundation created using SAP. Packsize is much more than a shipment company; it's a company that innovates and is always thinking about how to run their business better, because their business is the business of their customers.

Bramasol worked with Packsize to ensure supply chain efficiency with an SAP solution that works for their business. As you can see from the pictures below, Packsize builds boxes- but not just any boxes, it builds them to shipment size. To the most demanding measurements based on a cubic algorithm that takes all the information loaded in the SAP system and can precisely pinpoint the size a box needs to be to fit a shipment. This can be one box or many boxes. No need for fillers, packaging and waste that is commonly found every time a shipment is sent.

The impact is huge. Shipping savings, cost of distribution savings, transportation savings- all throughout the value chain from order to shipment to disposal. Customers can price more competitively because they pass savings along in shipping to their customers.

Working with Bramasol to Ignite Possible, Packsize is a great example of how SAP is helping to make the world run better every day. Stop by booth #2518 and meet with the Bramasol team to see how we can make your business run better and ignite possible with you!

In picture:
CEO Hanko Kiessner, Packsize
CFO Bradley Wittwer, Packsize

What does it mean to run your company better? SAP is focused not only on creating software that ensures the highest functionality for your business, but also in emulating the mindset of the "empowered generation": those focused on making the world run better and improve people's lives.

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