ERP Express was created specifically to address the unique needs of the small to midsized business (SMB) discrete manufacturer, along with the ability to easily scale as a company grows. Originally conceived as VISUAL Manufacturing by Lilly Software Associates in 1992, VISUAL was the first Microsoft Windows™ based manufacturing software solution on the market. VISUAL Manufacturing was founded on the premise of providing an intuitive graphical user interface to speed the decision making process and to drive greater worker efficiency for improved productivity and increased profitability.

Master Production Scheduling
VISUAL Manufacturing was the first Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system to include a fully integrated, concurrent production scheduler (patented in 1998) that considered both resource and material availability simultaneously, and provided instant visibility into a schedule's financial impact on throughput and profitability.

VISUAL Enterprise
A key element to the success of the VISUAL product has been its ability to keep pace with new technology, application trends, and best business practices. VISUAL Manufacturing was renamed in 1999 to VISUAL Enterprise when it became the first fully integrated, end-to-end business application suite to include: ERP, APS, MES, Quality Management, WMS, CRM, and eBusiness all in one system. In 2003, VISUAL Enterprise adopted the latest in production scheduling best practices, by incorporating the Lean Manufacturing philosophy known as Drum-Buffer-Rope (DBR). DBR, a concept created by Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt, and documented in his landmark book "Necessary but not Sufficient," provided a breakthrough methodology that greatly simplified the process of improving throughput. VISUAL is one of the few products on the market that provides four different scheduling methodologies within the same product, depending on the manufacturing need or business philosophy, including: Finite Capacity Scheduling, Infinite Capacity Scheduling, Lean Scheduling and Rate Based Scheduling.

ERP Express
In late 2004 VISUAL was acquired by Infor with the purchase of Lilly Software Associates and subsequently renamed to its current product brand, ERP Express. Through the acquisition, ERP Express continues to benefit from Infor's strong financial resources, additional products and technologies shared across the Infor organization and a more diverse and experienced complement of business, technology, and professional service staff that understand the needs of the SMB manufacturing business.

ERP Express will continue to be focused specifically on the SMB manufacturing segment, with a long term vision to constantly seek new best practices and technologies to enable these manufacturers to compete more effectively in their market. Whether it is a Make-to-Order, Engineer-to-Order, Assemble-to-Order, Configure-to-Order, Make-to-Stock or Mixed mode manufacturing environment, ERP Express software can easily accommodate any discrete production environment. ERP Express's focus on best business practices and innovative production methodologies have enabled over 4,000 companies worldwide to improve customer satisfaction, and increase their operational performance and profitability

Who is Infor?

Infor is changing what businesses expect from an enterprise software provider by delivering, through acquisition and innovation, proven business-specific solutions with industry experience built in. For our customers, this means:

• Lower total cost of ownership
• ROI now, not later
• A wide choice of solutions to support your business challenges, from a provider with global scale
• A product strategy to enrich, extend, and evolve our solutions to meet your needs, at your own pace

Infor is passionate about enterprise software and we are committed to delivering, through innovation, the best business-specific solutions to meet our customers' diverse business challenges and ever-changing needs.

Our solutions enable companies of all sizes to be more enterprising and adapt to the rapid changes of a global marketplace.