JDA Software Group, Inc. and i2 Technologies, Inc. announced the signing of a definitive merger agreement for JDA Software to acquire i2 Technologies, Inc., a leading global provider of supply chain solutions, for an enterprise value of approximately $396 million. The combination of the two companies creates a global leader in the market for supply chain planning and optimization. On a pro-forma trailing 12-month basis, the combined company has annual revenues of approximately $617 million, including over $275 million of annual maintenance and recurring subscription fees.
According to JDA Chief Executive Officer Hamish Brewer, the i2 acquisition will firmly establish JDA as a leading enterprise software company with a deep focus on supply chain management and a full complement of managed and hosted services offerings.
For details: http://www.jda.com/i2-acquisition.asp
Demand planning is going to be key without a doubt, but equally important will be demand responsiveness – acting quickly to the unexpected - and overall supply chain agility. Even before the recession, companies struggled with demand volatility because of increased competition, decreasing customer loyalty, constant new product introductions etc. But in today’s grave economic climate with major demand swings and declining spending overall, planning for future demand based on historical data is now virtually impossible. With inventories at an all time low, retailers and suppliers will need to respond rapidly to actual demand. Companies need the ability to detect demand trends early so that they can ramp up production accordingly in order to avoid the situation Nokia described in the article.
Solving the rapid response challenge will require:
Accurate and timely demand sensing to quickly understand demand shifts
Collaboration: both with customers to gain consensus on true demand, and with internal colleagues and supply partners to develop and analyze resolution alternatives; and
Decision support that drives profitable responses through shaping demand and allocating finished goods supply as appropriate
I believe achieving excellence in responding to changing customer demands has become the number one challenge facing enterprises today and can represent the largest opportunity for companies to increase customer service, enhance margins and attain more predictable revenue across the entire value chain.
Regards
Mihir Kumar Jhaveri, PMP, CSCM
Senior Manager
http://supplychainimprovement.com/
Tags: Demand Forecasting, Demand Sensing
The latest recession has gotten a profound impact on many supply chains and forced rethinking strategies. In a quest to reducing costs, many have diminished safety buffers, established lean thinking, and redesigned their flows. In that process they have made themselves more vulnerable to variance, while their objective is to maximize sales. Doing so implies a much closer relationship with ecosystems partners. Cross Supply Chain collaboration is critical to gain visibility, address issues early and improve agility.
What is needed to build a culture of collaboration throughout an ecosystem. Obviously, there are technologies out there that facilitate the sharing of information, the interaction and the visibility. Private and public hubs, unified communication, supply chain visibility, are all tools that can be used to develop supply chain communication and collaboration. Definition of Cloud, introduces the concept of Community Cloud. This is probably the next technology that addresses ecosystem collaboration.
But my point today is not so much on the technologies to be used, but rather on the intangibles that need to be in place to foster the collaboration. I’d like to highlight following elements:
Building Collaborative Relations. It may sound obvious, but there must first be a willingness to collaborate. In the late 20th century, the principle of squeezing suppliers to the last nickel has been promoted and presented as the only way business could be done. Such approach has benefited some companies and pushed many of them to bankruptcy. As a side effect it has inhibited collaboration amongst suppliers and customers, as there was a fear that any information shared would be used to squeeze a little more. So, changing the paradigm and approaching the supplier relationship from a more collaborative angle is mandatory for developing the visibility, communication and collaboration required. Procurement departments may have to adjust to such approaches and move to collaborative sourcing, but they should do so, as it will help the ecosystem becoming more responsive at a lower price point.
Trust. Sharing information, collaborating, adding value to the community, requires trust to be developed amongst the partners. According to the definition provided by the Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary, trust is the assured reliance on the character, ability, strength or truth of someone or something, one in which confidence is placed. This very much corresponds to the trust that needs to exist between partners in the supply chain. They need to be willing to hear the bad news, to have confidence in each other, to understand that they both will act for the common good etc. Building such trust between ecosystem partners takes time. This is why I would advocate it can only be established with a small amount of partners.
Win-Win. This is an overused term, but the essence of it is critical. If the partners do not have the impression they all win from working more closely together, they will not pursue the relationship. It is often counter intuitive for companies to think about how a particular action may benefit their supplier. They are in business to make money, isn’t it? But helping the partner and ensuring he also gains benefits, has demonstrated over and over again as a wining proposition in the long run. Despite the fact Wall Street pushes us to focus on this quarter’s revenues, looking at long term benefits, ensures the viability of the enterprise. And this should never be forgotten.
When looking at implementing communication & collaboration tools along the supply chain, the above 4 aspects should never been forgotten. The technology is there, but alone will not provide full advantage. Combining technology and the more intangible aspects are critical to gain full return from a unified communications & collaboration project.
To gain a clearer picture of the current situation in Asia-Pacific, The Conference Board is launching a revised survey of senior supply chain executives from around the region. To take part in the survey, simply click here. If you would like to know more about this survey or The Conference Board programs, you can visit them at www.conference-board.org.
Tags: Survey
Hi Friends
I have put across simple planning promotion personal thougths :
Promotion Planning Environment:
Promotion planning environment empowers you to analyze historical and new planned promotions. You can create new promotions, see their impact on sales, spending and profitability, while reviewing corresponding sales quota.
Demantra provides standard worksheets like “Planning Environment” & “Promotion Comparison”, which serves as the platform for various activities:
- Create new promotion
- Modify existing promotion
- Compare promotions
- Delete promotions
Activity browser in the worksheets gives you a visual of events calendar, showing events hierarchy and their planned execution period.
Typical high level Promotion Flow in Demantra:
1. Load historical promotions
2. Run Engine in Promotion Effectiveness mode
3. Create new promotions in Demantra Promotion Planning environment
4. Run Simulation for newly created promotion
5. Analyze promotion details and it’s impact
6. Approve promotion
Tags: Demantra
Hi
Based on the interest shown on Demantra Sales and Operational Planning, have put across my thougths with which various process involved, feel free to add your thougths.
S&OP process involves and/or interacts with following processes:
- Sales Planning
o New Product Planning
o Revenue, Margin & Profitability planning
o Enterprise Goals
- Demand Planning
o Sensing Demand
o Forecasting Demand
o Demand Collaboration(sales, marketing and operations)
o Shaping Demand(events, promotions, causal factors etc)
o Consensus Forecasting
- Supply Planning
o Capacity Planning(supplier, resource)
o Inventory Planning(Safety stocks, postponements)
o Material Planning
- Demand/Supply Balancing
o What if Analysis - simulations
o Collaboration(internal as well as external)
o Constraint based planning
- Review
o Key Performance Indicators(KPI) measurements
o Plan vs Actual
o Margins
o Inventory Turn
o Forecast Accuracy
o Exceptions & Alerts
Regards
Mihir Kumar Jhaveri, PMP,CSCM
Demantra’s PTP & TPMO module focuses on Consumer Good industry’s requirement for trade promotions and account planning, sales forecasting, and promotions optimizations. The module is build on top of basic Demand Management module and utilizes various components of Demand planning function. Few of the important features can be listed as:
- Lift generation on top of Baseline forecast when engine is run in Promotion Effectiveness (PE) mode
- Promotions Planning & Analysis, with easy scenario wise comparison of expected incremental lift and trade spending
- Promotion optimization, to simulate promotional scenarios for decision making assistance on the basis of ROI, Revenue or Profit targets.
Oracle has already released seeded integration between PTP module with Enterprise One (JD Edwards) and Siebel.
PTP Integration Flow with Enterprise One(E1):
- Load master data(product and customer hierarchy) with historical sales data from E1
- Load history of promotions (can come from legacy TPM system)
- Generate Baseline forecast & Lift by executing Engine in Demantra
- Create promotion plans and scenarios in Demantra
- Load future promotion plans/pricing information to E1
- Process sales orders against new promotions in E1
- Load actual trade spending from E1 to Demantra
- Generate volume forecast in Demantra and Submit back to E1
PTP Integration Flow with Siebel: This integration supports two scenarios in which Demantra can be used by a business. First, Promotion planning done inside Siebel with Demantra being executed in back end. Baseline forecast with Lift information is fetched into Siebel on regular basis for usage during planning. Second, Promotion planning being done in either of the systems and results are synchronized on near real time basis.
- Load data extracts for Product, Account, Promotion, Planning hierarchy with sales and promotion activity details into Demantra from Siebel
- Generate Forecast with lift in Demantra
- Load data extracts from Demantra for Baseline Volume Forecast, Lift and Promotions to Siebel.
The objective behind these integrations is to make Demantra’s advanced Forecasting technology available to all. Using the best of breed technology for various business processes is the strategy which Oracle is following as a path towards Fusion. With PTP & TPMO module’s seeded integrations, customers on JD Edwards(E1) or Siebel can benefit themselves from Demantra’s offering with ease.
Demantra - S&OP (Sales & Operational Planning)
High Level Data Flow in S&OP:
Demantra
Data flow in S&OP can vary based on whether ASCP or SNO or Both are used in the process. We will go through one of the possible scenarios here and will then later focus on integration with ASCP & SNO separately.
- Collection of Shipment & Booking history (old DM feature)
- Download History data into Demantra using seeded workflow “EBS Full Download”
- Demand Review:
- Generate Forecast - Shipment & Booking
- Generate Consensus Forecast
- Submit Consensus Forecast to Planning applications (SNO/ASCP/IO etc.)
- Supply Chain Planning
- Generate Assignment Set(sourcing rules) from SNO Plan based on Consensus Forecast
- Generate Safety Stock plan from IO, using Consensus Forecast and Accuracy
- Create ASCP Plan with Assignment Set from SNO, Safety Stocks from IO and Demand Schedule from Demantra - Demand Review process
- Make ASCP plan available for S&OP (new check box in ASCP plan options)
- Supply Plan Review
- Download Supply Plan names/members into Demantra S&OP using seeded workflow “Load Plan Scenarios”
- Download Supply Plan data using seeded Level Method “Load Scenario Plan Data”
- Exceptions are detected automatically as part of Load data workflow and S&OP users are intimated with Tasks/Alerts
- In case for removal of Exceptions Supply plan needs to be re-launched after making recommended changes, then Supply plan is re-run and re-downloaded into Demantra
- Once Exceptions are handled and are taken care of, then next step is taken
- S&OP Executive Review
- Review Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) as per the S&OP plan/scenarios
- Review Supply plan scenarios and Exceptions
- S&OP committee finalizes S&OP Plan
- Publish the Final Plan and archive it, for future references
Regards
Mihir Kumar Jhaveri, PMP, CSCM
Senior Manager
Hi All
As we all our going thro this recession, one thing is becoming clear ” 2009 will be ROI year”
Few of the points crossing my mind from various research reports and talks of leaders are as follows:
% Companies will exploit well-performing existing tangible and especially intangible supply chain assets to ride out the financial crisis and prepare for recovery.
% Modern supply chain organizations will put expenditure budgets under greater scrutiny and new investments will be cost savings focused, requiring shorter payback periods; expenditures will be made through the lens of cost/value.
% Companies will “right size” their supply chains for profitable proximity and take a total landed-cost approach to product sourcing; standard corporate platforms Will seek to configure, calibrate, and control increasingly complex scenarios.
% Supply chain technology initiatives will have to support the standard business platform and focus on modernization and decision making.
% Economic uncertainty, particularly for smaller suppliers in emerging economies, will cause manufacturer “brand owners” to consider strategic investments at critical supply points and financial support for key suppliers.
% Customer relationship management (CRM) and consumer-centricity efforts will continue to grow across the modern supply chain as manufacturers attempt to provide the right kinds of innovation and new products; The sale is just the start.
% The high 2008 year-end inventory levels will cause manufacturers to look at supply/demand rebalancing, focusing on strategic network optimization and multiechelon inventory optimization tools and price and trade promotion management/optimization.
% Compliance-driven RFID initiatives will continue to wane in favor of ROI-driven asset-tracking and security applications as manufacturers increasingly look at radio frequency identification as “just another tool in the toolkit.”
% As global economic pressures mount, outsourcing opportunities proliferate, and global supply networks become more complex, risk management will become an increasingly significant capability and a key differentiator for the modern supply chain.
% Sustainability will discover metrics; no longer a feel-good public relations proposition or even a regulatory compliance mandate; emerging standard measures and a desire to benchmark will impact sustainability initiatives.
Regards
Mihir Kumar Jhaveri, PMP, CSCM
Senior Manager
http://supplychainimprovement.com/
Tags: 2009, Strategy, Supply Chain
Hi All
Green Supply Chain buzz is around for long now, but still there are few questions always asked, were to begin?
Have put across few of my thoughts, kindly fill free to add more.
Production planning: Need of the hour is to provide accurate forecasts and deliver reliably so as to help reduce over-purchasing, over-production, and waste.
Manufacturing: The adoption of techniques such as lean process improvement should result in less over-processing as well as reduced energy intensive storage and waste.
Distribution: Network redesign, smart routing, backhauling, fill optimization and mode switching — all are likely to result in fewer freight miles.
Green design: The electronics and related high-tech industries practice collaboration as a means of optimizing the green aspects of their components and end-products; proactive and/or influential members of a supply chain can promote/pursue similar collaboration/innovation.
Packaging: The greenest firms seek to minimize the environmental impact of packaging, not only by using less, but also by evaluating the energy, waste, recovery and other life cycle impacts of their packaging choices.
Recycled content: Companies score green points by maximizing their use of these materials as well as by using materials in products that are in turn easily recyclable.
Warehousing: Challenge existing assumptions in light of higher energy costs and the need to reduce carbon footprints.
Green energy: More green points are available by using green or renewable energy sources — although this can be difficult in regulated energy markets (and a factor in future location decisions).
IT: Videoconferencing and remote servicing can reduce business travel; Energy Star rated PCs along with optimized power consumption settings can significantly pare energy costs.
Server farms: Energy efficient servers arrayed according to state-of-the-art cooling practices can generate enormous energy savings.
Ridesharing/telecommuting: A growing number of companies are working with municipalities to better optimize public transportation to their facilities. More companies are also enabling more workdays “at home” as well as providing incentives for carpooling.
Estates: Investments in building air tightness, insulation and energy efficient heating, cooling, lighting, plant and equipment can significantly reduce carbon footprints.
Green procurement: It is possible to reduce your carbon footprint by paying more attention to your own procurement.
Regards
Mihir Kumar Jhaveri, PMP, CSCM
Senior Manager
http://supplychainimprovement.com/
Tags: Green Supply chain, Where
