SAP Acquires Lighthammer To Beef Up Manufacturing Apps

Lighthammer provides Web-based software for monitoring and managing operations at manufacturing facilities. The company's 60 employees are expected to remain at its Exton, Pa., headquarters, and become a part of SAP America and SAP Labs. It's not yet clear whether Russell Fadel, Lighthammer's CEO, will keep that role.

The acquisition lets SAP make good on its plans to offer ISA-95-enabled manufacturing applications, such as Lighthammer's Collaborative Manufacturing Suite. The suite will be made available as an SAP xApps composite application on the SAP NetWeaver platform, according to the company.

Using ISA-95 standards for manufacturing interoperability, the Lighthammer/SAP manufacturing application will interoperate with the SAP manufacturing intelligence dashboards to deliver alerts, reports, key performance indicators, and decision support to production personnel.