Planning & Forecasting
ILOG, Shanghai FirstTech Co. Help Top China Steelmaker with Its Supply Chain Planning Needs
Baosteel, a major China steelmaker, has deployed an enterprise master planning (EMP) solution based on ILOG CPLEX to help with enterprise-wide supply chain planning, according to Shanghai FirstTech Co. and ILOG.
FirstTech says the planning solution helps Baosteel to shorten order-to-delivery cycle time significantly and decrease the order confirmation time from days to seconds. Additionally, the planning cycle time has been reduced from three weeks to one week.
ILOG CPLEX's mathematical optimization technology is designed to enable better decision-making for efficient resource utilization. With CPLEX, complex business problems can be represented as mathematical programming models. Advanced optimization algorithms allow one to rapidly find solutions to these models, according to ILOG.
The EMP solution handles more than 10,000 products, which Baosteel provides to more than 1,000 customers over a 90-day planning horizon. Previously, the planning method was manual and used Microsoft Excel spreadsheets — an approach that was no longer workable given Baosteel's rapid business growth and changing customer demands. The solution allows Baosteel to perform demand planning, enterprise master planning, order promising and capacity allocation, while considering multiple parameters, such as profit goals, customer tiers, product lines and different factory capacities.
With this planning system, FirstTech says, Baosteel can improve the efficiency of its processes, can make reliable customer delivery promises, utilize key assets optimally, and reduce the order-to-delivery time. Since the system provides a unified platform, sales distribution and production departments of Baosteel can collaborate more easily to better fulfill the customer demands.
FirstTech (ww.firsttech-soft.com), a key ILOG partner in China for more than two years, provided development and consulting services for the project.
ILOG is based in Paris and Mountain View, Calif.
www.ilog.com
GXS, China Entercom Enhance Production Planning in Chinese Automotive Industry
GXS of Gaithersburg, Md., which provides business-to-business e-commerce solutions, and China Enterprise Communications Ltd. (China Entercom) have launched China e-Auto Hub, an e-commerce solution for more than 5,000 companies in China's rapidly expanding automotive sector.
China e-Auto Hub will enable original equipment manufacturers, parts and raw materials suppliers, automotive dealers, aftermarket retailers and third-party logistics providers to quickly and easily exchange information related to production planning, design specifications, and materials management in electronic format.
Parties should be able to connect to e-Auto Hub directly from their ERP systems or an integration broker. E-Auto Hub will offer transaction delivery of electronic documents, such as electronic orders, shipping notices and billing notes in industry standard formats, including ANSI EDI, EDIFACT, VDA and XML. Medium and small-sized businesses can connect using Web-based forms, a desktop translator or other integration technology. A full lifecycle of support services, including community ramping, implementation, technical and change management will be available through the partnership.
The China e-Auto Hub will interoperate with GXS Trading Grid for international B2B transactions with trade partners outside of China. The Trading Grid enables seamless data exchange among more than 40,000 businesses worldwide.
www.chinaentercom.com.cn
www.gxs.com
i2 Acquires RiverOne Interactive Software
A subsidiary of i2 Technologies of Richardson, Tex., has acquired the assets of RiverOne, specifically the software designed to help high-tech companies manage and control partner-based business operations. RiverOne's customers, focused in electronics, ranged across all supply chain roles and sizes from small subsystem OEMs to the largest EMS providers.
“Supply chain management today is a multi-enterprise challenge. The next generation of supply chain solutions must address multi-enterprise business processes,” says i2 Chief Executive Officer Michael McGrath. “By acquiring RiverOne's software, i2 adds a multi-enterprise execution platform that extends our supply chain collaboration capabilities. This is also strategic for i2 because it allows us to further expand our customer base in electronics manufacturing where i2 has a significant market share.”
RiverOne's software solution, called Interactive, is designed to deliver integrated execution, multi-tier planning, and shared metrics through a single, multi-company business application.
RiverOne's multi-enterprise control systems establish shared processes, metrics and data among trading partners to plan and execute supply chain programs.
www.i2.com
Axxom Promotes Planning Technology
Munich-based Axxom Software says its Orion-PI technology uses so-called Cost Scaling Algorithms (CS-Algorithms) to enable highly complex business scenarios with several hundred sites and thousands of products and customers. Optimization of processes is done end to end, from suppliers to production and distribution sites and all the way to the customer, Axxom says. The “high efficiency of the approach” also enables integration of all planning levels - from operative to tactical as well as strategic scenarios - in a single consistent data model.
Axxom says that due to the automatic balancing of conflicting objectives, the system finds the actual global optimum for the entire supply chain instead of selective improvements.
“Companies which aim to increase the value-add of their supply chain as a whole cannot be content to improve the processes in sub-areas only,” says Christoph Plapp, Axxom Software CEO. He says a transparent system structure allows planners and supply chain managers to better evaluate individual business processes and their impact on other areas within the chain.
www.axxom.com
Vision Chain Collects, Cleanses Data for Mead Johnson Nutritionals
Mead Johnson Nutritionals is using Vision Chain to support the supply chain planning decisions in the sale of its infant formula and related products through multiple retail chains.
Vision Chain says its technology platform will collect the POS data from these retailers, cleanse it, and integrate it with internal product data in a consistent format “that will increase the ease and ability of the supply chain and category managers to analyze it in order to make timely, more accurate decisions.”
Vision Chain enterprise software should enable users to identify where consumer demand outpaces product flow in the supply chain, discover inadequate or inefficient shelf-space allocations, and compare product forecasts to actuals. Such analytics will help drive critical marketing and replenishment decisions.
“Mead Johnson Nutritionals is taking a true demand-driven approach to its forecasting, replenishment and marketing decisions with the Vision Chain platform,” says Shawn Dolley, Vision Chain CEO.
www.visionchain.com
Aberdeen: Most Retailers Moving To Planning, Replenishment Solutions
Out-of-stocks, markdowns and spoilage from excess inventory of perishable items plague retailers around the world, regardless of segment and size. The cost of lost sales, dissatisfied customers, and inaccurate inventory forecasts can bring even the seemingly best-run retailer to its knees. Better planning can ease the problem, and most retailers are looking for automated systems to help alleviate the problem, says a report from Aberdeen Research.
Throughout the autumn of 2005, in an effort to understand retailers' perception of the problem and to understand the solutions they employ to solve it, Aberdeen conducted a primary research study with more than 60 retail participants around the world.
While most retailers recognize that there are major differences between the variety of advanced planning and replenishment offerings, a significant plurality believe that some tweaking of results will be always necessary, regardless of the quality of the math. However, more retailers than ever, most notably in North America and EMEA, recognize that the best advanced planning and replenishment applications can solve a baseline problem without tweaking, even as they uncover other issues that were not previously visible.
There is little doubt that, given the pressures retailers face and the strategies they contemplate, the need has been recognized to move past spreadsheets as the tools of choice for advanced planning and replenishment operations. Within the next 24 months, over 80 percent of retailers surveyed will have implemented automated systems to support virtually all aspects of their planning, allocation and replenishment operations.
Visit www.aberdeen.com for a copy of “The Business Benefits of Advanced Planning and Replenishment” report.
Printing Solutions Provider Relies on SmartForecasts
Smart Software of Belmont, Mass., which provides demand forecasting, planning, and inventory optimization solutions, says that Printronix, which supplies industrial and back-office enterprise printing solutions, has purchased SmartForecasts to strengthen its sales and operations planning process.
Printronix, Irvine, Calif., plans to integrate SmartForecasts with its SAP ERP system and use the software's results to support worldwide operations. The company operates four manufacturing facilities and 27 sales and support offices that serve customers around the globe.
Printronix's “same day or next day” shipping policy led to excessive inventory on many of its 3,500-plus SKUs. With SmartForecasts, Printronix expects to improve the way it manages inventory by getting more accurate estimates of lead time demand, as well as minimizing the amount of inventory necessary to meet the service level needs of same-day shipping. Additionally, the company is interested in using SmartForecasts to better integrate forecast data into its sales and operations planning process, including the use of input from sales and marketing personnel to build a consensus forecast.
“SmartForecasts provides us with a path for growth with the right balance of cost and functionality,” says Gary Inscore, director of master scheduling at Printronix.
www.smartcorp.com
Australia, N.Z. Publisher Uses Demantra's Planning Solution
John Fairfax Holdings Ltd., reportedly the largest newspaper publisher in Australia and New Zealand, has selected Demantra's Real-Time Sales & Operations Planning solution to help improve the company's demand forecasting and supply allocation capabilities.
“In choosing Demantra, we selected the partner that we believed had the best demand forecasting and supply allocation solution in the market based on our in-depth assessment of other products,” says Tom Gerstmyer, Fairfax general manager, Circulation Operations, New South Wales. “Our demand forecasting and supply allocation initiative is strategic for Fairfax and we look forward to Demantra helping us improve our ability to forecast high-level sales demand and allocate supplies to our retailers and distributors.”
Demantra says its product enables store-level forecasting and planning with dynamic links to Excel spreadsheets — giving businesses the ability to continuously monitor performance to plan and make timely adjustments to close the gaps between the current plan and financial goals with predictable promotion events.
www.demantra.com
SmartOps Solutions Get SAP NetWeaver Certification
SmartOps Corporation, Pittsburgh, Pa., says that two of its retail and distribution industry software solutions—Adaptive Structural Forecasting 3.0 and Replenishment Planning and Optimization 3.0—have received Powered by SAP NetWeaver certification.
ASF is designed to help achieve quantum-leap improvements in causal, multivariate, store-level, and item-level forecasting. RPO determines optimal multi-item, multi-vendor ordering policies, enabling customers to manage and optimize net landed cost, according to the developer.
SmartOps customers can seamlessly utilize ASF 3.0 and RPO 3.0 through the SAP Enterprise Portal 6.0, manage data and reports, and run ASF 3.0 and RPO 3.0 on SAP Web Application Server Release 6.40.
"In all areas of technology, the emergence and adoption of standards like SAP NetWeaver accelerate innovation and customer value attainment,” says Sridhar Tayur, CEO of SmartOps. “As the retail and distribution industries continue to adopt the SAP NetWeaver platform and implement the SmartOps super-scale retail and distribution planning and optimization solutions, a Powered by SAP NetWeaver certification assures our customers that our software solutions complement and leverage their SAP investments.”
www.smartops.com
Jelly Belly Is Suite on Intentia Movex
Jelly Belly, known for its signature Jelly Belly jelly beans, recently licensed a full suite of Movex applications, including the Movex Business Engine, Advanced Planning Tools, Plant Maintenance, Sales and Marketing and e-Sales, from Intentia, which provides software for the manufacturing, distribution and maintenance industries.
"We looked at what we had and what we saw was a lot of patched-together applications that were missing functionality essential for a modern business," says Ryan Schader, vice president for business development at Fairfield, Calif.-based Jelly Belly. "We were throwing a lot of people at processes we thought should be done by computers. It became clear that it was time to update our ERP system to meet the needs of our complex manufacturing process."
Jelly Belly makes 50 flavors of its signature Jelly Beans, as well as numerous other confectionery products, at two U.S. manufacturing facilities. In 2007, the company will add another production plant in Thailand. Two warehouses provide distribution capabilities.
The process of manufacturing a Jelly Belly jelly bean varies in length from 14 to 21 days. This combined with the long lead times for some raw materials, and over 1,500 different finished good items, makes for an extremely complicated supply chain.
"We are a mid-sized company that competes against some large companies," says Schader. "Some of our customers are large retailers who levy fines if our shipments are late or incomplete. Expedited freight deliveries and moving candy between distribution centers, what we jokingly call 'product frequent flier miles,' reduce profitability."
To update the company's technology, Jelly Belly began a 12-month evaluation that would include 35 managers from all aspects of company operations.
"To come out on top after such an exhaustive evaluation by Jelly Belly confirms that Movex is the leading solution for food and beverage manufacturing," says David Rode, CEO and president of Intentia Americas. "Intentia, with strengths in process manufacturing, offers food and beverage makers functionality tailored to fit their needs. With our industry-specific focus, Intentia provides mid-sized manufacturers an ideal solution."
www.intentia.com
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