Press Release - 28 July 2003
Production Modelling Ltd. Announces Licensing of Microsoft VBA

Orchestrate Software provides manufacturing industry with tailored planning solutions for optimum business performance

Production Modelling Ltd., a leading provider of simulation, planning and scheduling solutions, today announced the licensing of Microsoft's Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) for inclusion into the next release of their Orchestrate planning and scheduling application. The integration of VBA into the Orchestrate product will provide Production Modelling’s customers and partners with the industry standard development environment to easily extend, customise and integrate the Orchestrate product with other line of business applications. Using Orchestrate’s latest scheduling technology with VBA 6.0 support, customers and partners will be able to optimise their business performance to more rapidly deliver business benefits to their customers.

Production Modelling expects strong demand for the product, both from its existing customers and new companies who are seeking to improve business performance.
“Production Modelling is demonstrating its commitment to business application extensibility through COM and integration of VBA," said Robert Green, VBA Product Manager, Developer Division at Microsoft Corp. "By implementing to VBA 6.0, Production Modelling Ltd. is enhancing their product by delivering premier scripting and customisation technology in conjunction with Production Modelling’s existing strong support of the Microsoft platform and technologies."

“The integration of VBA into Orchestrate, allows customers, developers and partners to modify user interfaces, extend functionality and to easily connect with other key business applications to create fully integrated business solutions,” said Gordon Smillie, Group Director, Enterprise & Partner Group, Microsoft Ltd. “The combination of the Orchestrate advanced scheduling technology, robust support for VBA, and powerful systems integration capability, enables customers to rapidly and easily deploy this advanced business solution to enhance and optimise their business performance.”

“The Orchestrate scheduling software is a powerful business planning tool for any company,” said Rob Bateman, Vice President - International Operations of PROMODEL Corporation. Orchestrate, can be applied throughout the entire business, aiding strategic decisions in Sales & Operations Planning, Supply Chain Management and Manufacturing Operations. Production Modelling has been our partner for 12 years, marketing our PROMODEL simulation products in the UK, and this reciprocal partnership extends our joint marketing operations globally, enhancing the value of our existing products and services.”

“Orchestrate, with the new VBA integration, and links to our ProModel simulation software, extends and enhances our simulation technology, increases the value to our customers, and enables us to create customised solutions which will help our clients to improve business performance, achieve 100% customer compliance, gain significant competitive edge, and increase bottom line profit.”
Features in Production Modelling’s Orchestrate Version 3, include the following:

• Unique Schedule Optimisation –encompassing genetic algorithms for “goal - based” solutions that match business objectives
• Link to ProModel simulation for rapid “What-if?” analysis
• Integration with ERP systems and Shop-Floor Monitoring systems

Production Modelling Ltd. is a UK-based software and consulting company operating globally through its worldwide partner and distributor network. It has been helping companies achieve business performance improvement for over a decade, with many of the world’s most successful organisations amongst its clients.

Its business solutions have resulted in multi-million pounds of business benefit to its customers, enabling them to increase their competitiveness, improve operational performance, and achieve business goals.

For more information contact Roger Randle.

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