ERP poised to dent manufacturing software margins

NEWS The drive to tie manufacturing plants more tightly into the rest of the business could impact the market for plant and technical operations software, according to AMR Research. Although AMR is forecasting an annual growth rate of 22 per cent for the software over the next five years, it warned that ERP products are threatening to take a chunk of the profits. Many companies that have already bought ERP systems for the business side want to extend the systems into the plant. AMR also noted that plant operations software vendors could benefit by offering to extend ERP capabilities themselves. At stake is a market that AMR expects to reach $12.2bn by 2003.