One of the most widely installed applications on HP 3000s is scheduled for a customer-driven update, IT managers learned at regional user group meetings of the Computer Applications for Manufacturing User Society (CAMUS).

MANMAN Version 12 carries a long list of enhancements, and Computer Associates’ Jim Trost said the forthcoming release that goes to beta at year’s end consists entirely of customer requests.

“This is a great response to the users and the user group community,” Trost said at the Austin, Texas meeting of CAMUS. “You won’t see that with the other products.”

Trost and CAMUS officer Michael Campbell hosted half-day road show user group meetings in Sunnyvale, Calif., Arlington, Va. and Austin, Texas during May, working to expand the reach of the MANMAN-focused user group. Analysts estimate that between 400 and 600 companies are using MANMAN on HP 3000 systems, making it one of the most widely installed applications in the e3000 community.

Computer Associates briefed customers on supplemental products to keep MANMAN working at those sites, as well as detailing a list of 30 enhancements coming in Version 12 .

CA is attaching the Warehouse Boss product to its other ERP products, Trost said, renaming it Advanced Warehouse Management. The program features interleaving, to let workers put away materials close to where they’re picking up others.

Scott Johnson, manager of special projects and MIS for Hi-Port, said he was attending the road show to get advice on whether staying with MANMAN made sense for his firm.

“The company is now growing, and we have to make decisions about upgrading the hardware and upgrading the user counts, to make more of an investment in the product,” he said. “It either has a short lifetime, or we’re going to get a return for putting money into it.”

Trost told customers of the InterBiz Front Office Suite, software that enables ordering of parts or products from the Internet. An ODBC link from the HP 3000 database connects it to the NT server where Front Office is hosted. An Executive Desktop puts key performance indicators on a CFO’s PC, such as inventory turns, cash availability and requirements.

“It’s anything you might need to measure your company’s success,” Trost said. Parameters set by 3000 managers determine when the Executive Desktop icons change colors. “It allows you to put an application over the top of MANMAN, pulling information from all types of sources to evaluate your business.”

CA is creating wrappers for its own add-on products, and for some of its competitors’ products, to interface with MANMAN information. The design exposes the data in real time to the graphical interface, instead of creating a secondary database that must be synchronized.

Updates like Web commerce packages and Front Office desktops help MANMAN, more than two decades old, look more modern to users encountering the application for the first time. Roberta Peake, IT director for HP 3000 MANMAN user T.D. Williamson, said her users like the system’s reliability and performance. But its interface looks years behind Windows programs, making it difficult to know how to operate. T.D. Williamson users didn’t know enough about MANMAN operation after years of customization to get information they needed.

“People started to say that we needed to get off the system, that it’s old and doesn’t have the pretty screens they see on other systems,” Peake said. “It’s a matter of identifying what people’s gripes are, and showing them how the system can do what they want.”

HP 3000 help remains difficult to locate for her company, too. “If we do have an HP 3000 administrator leave, it is a nightmare to try and find one,” she said. Attendees at the meeting said that Oracle administrators were no easier to find.

Campbell said that CAMUS got five new members in the last year that weren’t current MANMAN customers, and all were on HP systems. Terry Floyd, founder of MANMAN service organization the Support Group inc., said the ultimate vote of CA confidence in MANMAN is its sales efforts.

“I believe the highest level of commitment is when you go out and try to sell the product into new accounts,” Floyd said. Trost said CA is actively in sales cycles to place MANMAN into new companies. Floyd replied that was a good answer, and an indication of how much ground CA has made up to keep MANMAN up to date.