Apriso Software to Run in Two Factories in Poland; Important Momentum for Company's Efforts to bring Advanced Technology to Poland.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

LONG BEACH, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 13, 2003

Polish-born Adam Bartkowski, president and CEO of the 11-year-old enterprise software innovator Apriso Corporation, is realizing a long-held dream. When he took Apriso's helm in 1999, one of his goals was to leverage a significantly-untapped resource -- Poland's virtually unknown but growing cadre of outstanding software engineers -- as well as to bring economic benefits to the country of his birth.

Today, Apriso revealed its enterprise software suite is currently being installed in two factories in Poland, one owned by British American Tobacco Polska S.A. (as subsidiary of BAT) and the other by Hexal Polska (a subsidiary of Hexal A.G.), with both sites expected to be operational by this fall. In addition, the company disclosed that a team of Apriso software engineers based at Apriso's Krakow, Poland office, have contributed to nearly half of the engineering and development of Apriso's FlexNet(TM) -- a new type of enterprise software intended for the real-time management and control of manufacturing and supply operations in global enterprises.

Apriso's employment in Krakow has now reached 40, with 20 software development engineers. The remainder of the operation is focused on technical support for Apriso's customers and partners in the region and around the world.

"The best way to provide economic stimulus to countries with transitional economies like Poland is to give them challenging work that both generates local cash and also adds to the technical and intellectual infrastructure," said Bartkowski. "Our Krakow operation has been a real asset to Apriso, and, we hope, it has brought substantial benefits to its local community."

Bartkowski also explained that Apriso has developed a close and symbiotic relationship with the AGH University of Science and Technology (Akademia Gorniczo-Hutnicza) in Krakow which is expected to not only benefit from contact with Apriso's state-of-the-art technology, but also to be a source of future Apriso engineers and even customers.

Bartkowski, 52, the son of a butcher, emigrated to the United States with his family at the age of 13.

Apriso Software In Poland

Apriso is pioneering a new type of "bottom-out" enterprise software -- that is, it operates from the working levels of an organization -- rather than from the top down as does most legacy enterprise software. The traditional top down approach to software results in plans and forecasts, which then dictate the work orders to lower levels in the organization. Recognizing that the enterprise of the future must be managed minute by minute based upon events occurring in the bottom levels of an enterprise -- in the so-called "value chain" where products are actually manufactured -- Apriso's software is the world's first suite of enterprise software to flexibly react to and coordinate these events on a local or global basis.

British American Tobacco sought to use Apriso's technology for keeping track of finished goods and their contents in their plant in Augustow, Poland, adding to the growing number of BAT-Apriso installations around the world.

By contrast, Hexal's Poland installation in Warsaw will be its first deployment of Apriso software. As a pharmaceutical manufacturer, Hexal has significant requirements to know the exact history of all of its products and their disposition. Apriso's software enables the company to get that insight on a detailed level.

Both of these installations represent the essence of what Apriso is bringing to multinational corporations: an ability to define and flexibly manage processes through software on both a granular and a global level such that important strategic objectives -- including "lean supply," "six-sigma" quality, the "real-time enterprise", "lots of one", "demand pull", and product genealogy -- can actually be put into practice -- or "institutionalized". Moreover, the bottom-out software model lends itself to step-by-step deployment strategies, such as that used by BAT, where enterprises can focus on managing processes with the most immediate payback, and then "grow" the scope of the software installation systematically outwards as desired.

Empowering "Touch Workers"

But Bartkowski, with his Polish roots, sees additional benefits to Apriso's new software model. "For the first time, the power of information technology is being brought directly to the workers in the bottom echelons of the corporation," said Bartkowski. These people, the so-called "touch workers", are the ones who add significant value to a company's products, and represent the critical, and often forgotten "core" of the enterprise, he stated. "Over $100 billion in enterprise software has been deployed in recent decades for the sake of people who work in offices, to support their plans and forecasts," said Bartkowski, "but in the emerging 'execution' economy, the key actions, and business leverage, is down in the value chain." Increasingly, companies are depending upon the skills and insights of their touch workers to help optimize manufacturing flows, reduce errors, and eliminate waste, Bartkowski said.

Bartkowski comes naturally to the view that touch workers have much to contribute to the success of an organization. In addition to growing up surrounded by factory workers, early in his career he was a materials handler and a punch press operator. When he arrived in the US, he spoke no English, but within four years he was enrolled at Amherst College where he received a bachelor's degree, later followed by an MBA from Northwestern University. Prior to joining Apriso, Bartkowski was a senior executive with a number of well-known, global enterprise software companies. He views Apriso's enterprise software innovations as "critical" for industrial enterprises in the 21st century.

In addition to its Polish operation, Apriso has offices in 10 other countries and can claim over 140 customers with more than 350 installations of its software worldwide.

About Apriso

Apriso is the world leader in bottom-out enterprise software - a new software paradigm for enterprises in today's "execution" economy. The world's first bottom-out enterprise software suite, Apriso's FlexNet, provides global, real-time, borders-independent, event-driven workflow management (task dispatching, monitoring and exception handling), and organic process definition (the creation of reusable resources, specifications, processes, "routings", machine interfaces, signals, reports, and abstractions), in a simple framework based upon Microsoft's .NET Web services platform.

FlexNet includes the complete bottom-out infrastructure, and a growing suite of workflow management modules for logistics (orders, warehouse, shipping, materials), production (production, formulation, machines, factory, time), quality (process quality, material quality, genealogy, campaigns), and assets (maintenance, order tracking). Additional functionality enables any node to view performance, receive feedback, provide control, configure processes, pilot processes, deploy processes, interface with equipment, and interface with legacy applications such as ERP. Additionally, it supports -- across the extended enterprise -- the deployment of lean supply, six sigma, and "pull" operational processes.

Apriso was founded in 1992, and now operates in 11 countries across the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific. World headquarters are in Long Beach, California. Apriso's rapidly-growing customer base of more than 140 customers and over 350 installations worldwide includes such high-profile, global companies as General Motors, Honeywell, Microsoft, Merck, Lockheed Martin, ITT, Baker Hughes, Halliburton, International Paper, Rubbermaid, Matsushita Avionics Systems, Saint-Gobain, Pechiney, and British American Tobacco. A complete customer list can be found at: http://www.apriso.com/en-us/customers/customer_list.html.

The company has received a total of $20.9 million in two rounds of venture funding. Investors include 75 Wall Street Technology Partners, CMEA Ventures, LogiSpring Investment Fund, SAP Ventures, and Brentwood Venture Capital.

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