CDC Factory is the industry’s first and only packaged manufacturing operations management system that leverages human capital in plant operations and standardizes the best practices of lean manufacturing, OEE, (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) and continuous improvement. With the certified integration, SAP customers can establish a real-time framework that unlocks hidden capacity on the factory floor by managing production scheduling in real time, pinpointing the causes of plant inefficiencies and providing immediate feedback on key operating metrics including rate, yield, utilization and per unit cost. The system focuses on unlocking the potential of human capital on the shop floor by providing pre-defined workflows for the environment of the workplace and a highly intuitive kiosk-style interface for real-time performance tracking. This enables factory floor operators to act on information in real time and make immediate decisions to adjust production schedules, improve OEE and reduce waste. This role-based design extends to middle and senior management where information is summarized to make the daily operations of all plants throughout the enterprise transparent. Since CDC Factory is a packaged solution specifically designed for process manufacturers in the food and beverage, pharmaceutical and consumer packaged goods industries, it is often installed and producing results in eight weeks or less.

According to a AMR Research report in July 2007, "While the CDC Factory may be the new kid on the block, it’s not just midsize manufacturers in the food and beverage, pharmaceutical, and CP industries that should take notice. Global manufacturers should take heed as well. AMR Research’s Manufacturing Peer Forum members say that unlocking the potential of plant operations personnel and letting them take ownership of the improvement process has been highly successful in operations excellence initiatives. We couldn’t agree more, having long been proponents of role-based, industry-specific templates for manufacturing-focused software applications. While this approach has been long embraced by MES and EAM best of breeds, ERP-based manufacturing software applications continue to deliver back-office user paradigms to the shop floor. This forces users rather than software to be adaptive. CDC Factory breaks this paradigm, offering users an easy-to-consume application that supports rather than hinders their productivity, while acting as a front end to virtually any back-end ERP." Simon Jacobson, AMR Research Senior Research Analyst, "CDC Software Delivers Operations Excellence in Plain English", July 2, 2007

In a recent Gartner report, “We propose that the primary focus in a modern manufacturing operations management solution should be on the people and processes rather than on the equipment…. Manufacturers wanting an integrated manufacturing operations management (MOM) solution [should] consider a people-based performance metrics solution as an early part of your investment. All manufacturers [should] look for vendors that can provide measurements, reports, and the ability to enter and analyze causes out of the box…. ” Andrew Hughes, Gartner Research Director, “Improving Production Effectiveness: Measure the Right Thing”, September 17, 2007

CDC Factory SAPConnect is a packaged composite application (PCA) that integrates CDC Factory with SAP’s ERP applications. In addition to the certified integration for SAP, CDC Factory is deployed and integrated with many of the industry’s leading ERP applications.

"With CDC Factory, we have set several new industry standards," said Eric Musser, CEO and president of CDC Software. "This is the industry’s first and only out-of-the-box manufacturing operations management system and it has been repeatedly proven to deliver results in weeks rather than months or years. Now, with certified integration to SAP, we are making it even easier for SAP customers to take full advantage of these leading-edge capabilities in plant efficiency and management visibility. This certification also opens up a new channel for CDC Factory and we will be actively seeing additional consulting partners with deep industry expertise that parallels our own in food and beverage, life science and consumer packaged goods."