The company stated that Proficy Workflow provides an industrial Business Process Management (BPM) solution that digitizes and streamlines production processes - from work instructions and SOPs to corrective action and HACCP monitoring.

"Proficy Workflow brings the power and results of BPM to the industrial environment," said Erik Udstuen, GE Fanuc's Software General Manager. "As one of the world's largest and most innovative manufacturers, GE can help companies deliver BPM to production operations and drive three key initiatives: integration - coordinating processes across the enterprise; digitization - driving processes electronically; and finally lean - defining a process improvement framework for business transformation."

GE Fanuc said that with Proficy Workflow, companies can improve, eliminate and automate steps in production to lean their organizations - decreasing time to value on materials, speeding response, lowering TCO and ensuring sustainability. This new industrial BPM software combines manual and automated work processes without custom code, allowing production experts to solve problems immediately without demands on IT.

Built on an SOA platform, Proficy Workflow integrates information and services on a Plant2Enterprise basis, adding value to all existing ERP, MES and HMI systems. Companies can integrate business and production processes across systems and departments for reliable, repeatable process execution. GE Fanuc added that the software provides for the integration of people and their functions, or roles, allowing for customization to individuals' work styles and decision making. With improved integration, production teams can manage and audit work processes more effectively and consistently.

"A key tool that will enable today's plants and factories to realize [the] strategy for operational excellence is the ability to define the process or workflow steps required to achieve a logical execution path," said Craig Resnick, research director with ARC Advisory Group. "Proficy Workflow appears to meet this criteria of a tool that will help move manufacturers, processors, and OEMs to a single environment where the existing systems are connected and interacting with each other to maximize the information value of each asset, which will positively impact plant and factory productivity and profitability."

GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms, a joint venture between General Electric and Fanuc of Japan, is a high-performance technology company and a global provider of hardware, software, services, expertise and experience in automation and embedded computing, with products employed in virtually every industry, including manufacturing automation, defense, automotive, telecommunications, healthcare and aerospace.