Industry Leaders Join Professor Michael E. Porter for the 2009 Endeca Manufacturing Summit Endeca Hosts Top Supply Chain Executives to Discuss Driving Competitive Advantage and Improving Profitability Through Daily Decision-Making

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Nov 05, 2009 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Endeca Technologies, Inc., a search applications company, today announced that more than 100 manufacturing executives gathered for the 2009 Manufacturing Summit held on October 28 at the Harvard Club of Boston. Under the theme "Discovery for Daily Decision-Making," the event focused on the role of everyday decisions in the supply chain.

Presenters explored how providing both employees and customers with tools that guide them through diverse and changing information would lead to better choices than they would have reached on their own -- a catalyst for increasing operational efficiency and competitive advantage.

Professor Michael Porter, the father of the modern strategy field and leading authority on competitive strategy, explored the new role of IT in competition.

This effort includes aligning information with users to enhance decision-making with the goal of driving competitive advantage and improved profitability, representing a new approach to creating value using information assets.

Professor Porter's ideas were shown in action by visionary executives from several of Endeca's customers, including Harris Corporation, winner of AMR Research's 2009 Supply Chain Excellence Award, ThermoFisher Scientific, and Whirlpool.

"Traditional sourcing and supplier rationalization approaches are coming up short for manufacturers that need to drive next-level or second-wave savings in categories they've already sourced in the past," said Jason Busch, author of Spend Matters. "Thanks to a number of Endeca users, we now have real case studies showing how manufacturers and their procurement organizations are reducing complexity and better integrating multiple functions to drive greater commodity, part and component standardization, reuse and savings." To learn more about The 2009 Manufacturing Summit and to view presentations from the event, click here.

"Many of today's companies have current IT investments in place that focus on automating process, not improving individual discretion," said David Caruso, vice president, manufacturing at Endeca. "These companies need a new approach that complements their current IT investments, and both unifies siloed information and encourages exploration to foster discovery in daily decisions.

Our Manufacturing Summit provided insights and proof points from some of the most advanced strategists, providers and practitioners of supply chain methodology today." Endeca's Discovery for Manufacturing provides visibility across previously siloed systems for key decision points in the value chain, such as selecting the best parts for a new product design, selecting the lowest risk supplier, and identifying the true source of product failures. Each search application in the Suite helps business users easily interact with large volumes of diverse and changing information, improving millions of daily decisions. It also makes the entire value chain more flexible and adaptable, raising quality while cutting costs. To learn more about Endeca's Discovery for Manufacturing Suite, click here.

About Endeca Endeca is a leading provider of search applications. Search applications built on Endeca's technology deliver the clearest visibility into information, driving hundreds of millions of dollars in cost savings and increased revenue for our customers. Powering these solutions is Endeca's Information Access Platform, a major enterprise search innovation based on a fundamentally new architecture for building high-ROI applications that let users access any data from anywhere any way they need it. With this improved information visibility, customers make better choices, and employees better decisions. More than 250 million end users around the world access information through Endeca solutions, which are in use at more than 600 leading organizations including: ABN AMRO, Boeing, Cox Newspapers, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, Dell, Ford Motor Company, Hyatt, IBM, John Deere, the Library of Congress, Texas Instruments, and Walmart.com.

Headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., Endeca has operations in North America, Europe, and Asia. For more information: endeca.com or [e-mail].

SOURCE: Endeca Technologies, Inc.

CONTACT: Endeca Technologies, Inc. Alison Durant, + 617-674-6335 Director, Corporate Marketing & Communications [e-mail] Copyright Business Wire 2009 -0- KEYWORD: United States

North America

Massachusetts INDUSTRY KEYWORD: Technology

Data Management

Electronic Design Automation

Software

Manufacturing

Engineering

Other Manufacturing SUBJECT CODE: Conference