Oracle Production Scheduling helps manufacturers to optimize process, semiconductor and discrete manufacturing shop floor operations through out-of-the-box integration with Oracle Discrete Manufacturing, Oracle Process Manufacturing, and Oracle Shop Floor Management. Customers can create highly detailed shop floor schedules that automatically detect floating bottlenecks, simulate corrective actions and measure shop floor performance improvements. This gives companies the ability to pre-empt supply chain disruptions and maximize shop-floor efficiency and throughput while minimizing cost.

Oracle Production Scheduling and Oracle Strategic Network Optimization can be leveraged as part of the Oracle E-Business Suite or as a stand-alone product.

Source: Oracle 27-NOV-2006

At the Microsoft TechEd: IT Forum in Barcelona, Spain, Microsoft and SAP announced Nov. 16 the next edition of Duet, the joint software application the two companies developed to enable users to access SAP business processes through Microsoft Office applications.

Version 1.5 of Duet, targeted for a summer 2007 release, will include tools for configuring and customizing Duet scenarios to more closely match the user’s work situation.

Version 1.0 of Duet comes with five prepackaged scenarios: Leave Management, Time Management, Organization Management, Reports & Analytics, and Budget Monitoring. The new scenarios expected in 1.5 include processes for purchasing management and recruiting.

Oct. 12, 2006 — Sales of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) applications are expected to grow an average of 10 percent over the next five years according to a report released this week by Boston-based research and analysis firm AMR Research. As has been the case in recent years in the ERP market, the category is dominated by two companies, SAP and Oracle, at least in terms of revenue share, and AMR Research is forecasting that this trend will continue in 2006. The report indicates that SAP captured 42 percent of the ERP market’s revenue share in 2005 and that the software company’s share will increase to 43 percent in 2006. Oracle comes in a distant second, but still commanded 20 percent of the ERP revenue share in 2005, with it too projected to grow its share even more in 2006, to 23 percent. After those two companies, there is a sharp dropoff in revenue market share captured by other ERP vendors. For example, the company with the third highest revenue share in 2005 was the Sage Group (6 percent), and AMR Research forecasts Sage’s share to decline slightly to 5 percent in 2006. Microsoft came in fourth, with 4 percent ERP market share in 2005 and projected 4 percent in 2006.

Around the year 2000, ERP in general was considered by most analysts as offering substandard supply chain capabilities for managing such activities as complex warehouse management, order management, advanced planning, and more. The ERP concept originally came up through the manufacturing world, and many ERP packages were initially focused on financials with human resources, and basic (infinite, not capacity-based/finite) planning and scheduling and warehouse management. But since then, most ERP companies have improved their supply chain functionality, with some extending their reach into manufacturing execution, Customer Relationship Management, Web portals, and more. That meant the ERP vendors started encroaching into the domain of so-called Best of Breed supply chain software vendors such as Manhattan Associates, EXE, Provia Software, and others. “The integrated versus best-of-breed debate still goes on in some organizations, but the [ERP] suite advocates are clearly winning,” says Jim Shepherd, senior vice president of research at AMR Research.

Indeed, a report issued last month by AMR Research about the supply chain management application market shows that SAP was the top SCM (Supply Chain Management, which includes warehouse, transportation, network design, inventory control, and more) vendor in terms of revenue, with 12 percent of the market in 2005. Oracle was second in 2005 SCM revenue share with 10 percent, followed by i2 Technologies with 5 percent, Manhattan Associates with 4 percent, and infor with 3 percent.

ERP sales are also benefiting from a widespread acceptance of the idea that businesses must have integrated information systems to be competitive, and the most effective way to satisfy this need is to purchase an ERP package that features broad functionality and pre-built integration. AMR Research forecasts that the global ERP market revenue will reach $29 billion in 2006.

RedPrairie Corporation, the world’s leading consumer-driven optimization company, announced today that it has taken a leadership position in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), and is a finalist for the Best IT Supply Chain Solution in China award by the China Supply Chain Council.

According to Greg Aimi of AMR Research, “After returning from RedPrairie’s first international user conference in Brussels where more than 200 companies from across the globe convened to discuss topical supply chain issues and present technology-enabled improvements, it was apparent that, with the acquisitions of Alta A/S, LIS, MARC Global, and RangeGate, RedPrairie has taken a leadership position in EMEA, given the number of existing installs and local presence there.”

RedPrairie was selected as a finalist for the second annual CHaINA Awards by the China Supply Chain Council. Finalists were selected based on outstanding performance for supply chain practitioners operating in China. The awards will be presented on November 9, 2006, during China’s largest supply chain event, the CHaINA Summit, taking place in Shanghai.

Comments John Jazwiec, RedPrairie Company Leader, “RedPrairie has a long legacy of international success, which has been enhanced by the acquisition of LIS in 2004 and the more recent acquisitions of Alta A/S, MARC Global and RangeGate. We offer a true end-to-end solution that can carry companies from the initial order all the way to end consumer delivery. The fact that we’ve grown to be the premier SCE solution provider in EMEA and China is a testament to our E2e supply chain capabilities and proven technologies.”

Martin Hiscox, President and Managing Director International, adds “Our local EMEA and Asia Pac presence provides service and support in over 26 different languages and in 35 countries which allows our customers to execute flawlessly in an ever expanding global trade economy.”

About the China Supply Chain Council
The Council promotes the growth and success of supply chain management by connecting ideas, knowledge, technology and people in China. With a community of over10,000 supply chain, manufacturing and logistics professionals, the CSCC aims to become the point of reference and the center for supply chain knowledge, resources and contacts in China. Visit www.supplychain.cn.

About RedPrairie Corporation
RedPrairie is the world’s leading consumer driven optimization company. Built on an advanced Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) developed over the past 10 years, the RedPrairie integrated suite of end-to-end (E2eTM) solutions offers on-demand capabilities to over 25,000 sites worldwide for many of the world’s largest companies. With 21 global service sites and standard service methods that have been validated over the last 30 years, RedPrairie provides unparalleled service and support.

There were no surprises in AMR’s latest revenue rankings. SAP AG was once again the top SCM vendor in 2005, chalking up 6-percent market growth. Its revenue share notched up from 11 percent to 12 percent, the same number that AMR is forecasting for SAP in 2006. In second place was Oracle Corp., growing its market share from 5 percent to 10 percent, where AMR expects it to remain for the rest of this year. The last three of the top five vendors were more closely bunched: i2 Technologies, holding steady with a 5-percent market share; Manhattan Associates, with 4 percent, and Infor, going from 2 percent to 3 percent. This year, AMR expects i2 to drop to a 4-percent share, equal to the projected shares of Manhattan and Infor. The top area of growth within SCM in 2005, according to AMR, was the inventory configuration and policy technology category, which posted a 35-percent growth in licenses. That was due largely to the increasing complexity, interdependency and globalization of supply chains. Supply chain network design showed growth of 21 percent, AMR says. The fastest-growing aspect of SCM was application hosting and subscription, evidence of companies’ desire to shed on-premise systems and software.

Global Logistics & Supply Chain Strategies, October 2006

Frost & Sullivan (http://www.healthcare.frost.com) finds that among Solutions Supporting Pharmaceutical Distribution Channel in Europe, ERP and SCM solutions will together earn revenues of $1,188 million in 2006 and is estimated to reach $1,835 million in 2013, as the market potential for these applications is high in the European pharmaceutical sector.

“With these IT solutions, manufacturers and other participants in the distribution channel can track the flow of drugs from pharmacy shelves and replenish accordingly to avoid stock outs,” says Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst Rahul Philip Mampallil. “Moreover, companies can monitor the movement of stocks and detect the illegal intrusion of batches into the distribution channel.”

While undoubtedly beneficial, the implementation of these supply chain solutions should meet particular business needs of companies. At the same time, they should allow easy integration across various functional areas.

“The challenge here is that solutions provided by various ERP vendors might have certain modules that do not involve business requirements of organisations for which they are intended,” says Mr. Mampallil. “The implementation of an add-on ERP module without understanding specific business compulsions would constitute an imprudent and reckless investment.”

Close partnerships between manufacturing companies and IT solution vendors would enable the latter to suitably assess the company’s business processes and identify the functional areas that require ERP or SCM solutions.

If you are interested in a virtual brochure, which provides manufacturers, end users, and other industry participants with an overview of the latest analysis of the Solutions Supporting Pharmaceutical Distribution Channel in Europe (M023 – 48) then send an e-mail to Radhika Menon Theodore- Corporate Communications at rmtheodore@frost.com with the following information: your full name, company name, title, telephone number, e-mail address, city, state, and country. We will send you the information via email upon receipt of the above information.

Solutions Supporting Pharmaceutical Distribution Channel in Europe is part of the Healthcare IT Subscription, which also includes research in the following markets: clinical decision support systems markets in Europe, European patient e-booking systems markets and healthcare applications of smart cards in Europe. All research included in subscriptions provide detailed market opportunities and industry trends that have been evaluated following extensive interviews with market participants. Interviews with the press are available.

Frost & Sullivan, a global growth consulting company, has been partnering with clients to support the development of innovative strategies for more than 40 years. The company’s industry expertise integrates growth consulting, growth partnership services, and corporate management training to identify and develop opportunities. Frost & Sullivan serves an extensive clientele that includes Global 1000 companies, emerging companies, and the investment community by providing comprehensive industry coverage that reflects a unique global perspective and combines ongoing analysis of markets, technologies, econometrics, and demographics. For more information, visit www.frost.com.

They frequently happen without warning: canceled orders, delayed shipments, sudden changes in demand. The greatest difficulty in managing the supply chain is that so much is out of your control. And most enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are not designed to fully address such issues as demand forecasting, capacity planning or storage optimization.

In Summary:
• Supply chain niche applications can help your company make smarter decisions about inventory, capacity and demand.

• These applications are meant to add functionality to your existing ERP system in critical areas, especially warehouse management and transportation management.

When the service level you’re trying to provide involves continuous visibility from the time you receive an order to the time you ship it out, [a supply chain application] can make all the difference in the world.

When companies grow to where they need additional supply chain management features, they often find that a comprehensive supply chain management solution from a vendor such as Manugistics or Oracle is far more than they require, says Stephen Scott, director of Syncresis Ltd., a supply chain and manufacturing consulting firm in Kingston-upon-Thames, England.

The practical answer might be to invest in niche applications that integrate with your ERP system to provide just the specific functionality you need.

Consider warehouse and transportation management
Experts say that almost every midsize company, regardless of your industry or operational requirements, should consider adding warehouse management (WMS) and transportation management (TMS) solutions to their ERP systems. Both have an almost immediate impact on the bottom line, explains Tom Singer, a principal at Raleigh, N.C.-based Tompkins Associates, an international supply chain consulting firm.

Warehouse performance directly affects customer service, and transportation costs are rising so quickly that optimizing them is the only way to keep them from cutting too deeply into profits.

In general, WMS allows companies to receive, store, “pick and pack,” and ship inventory in the most efficient way. Other features can include space optimization, shipment verification, or bin replenishment prioritization. TMS offers functionality like route planning, load optimization, shipment scheduling, and package tracking.

By expanding their systems to include this advanced functionality, midsize companies can provide more real-time information about product availability and order fulfillment to their customers, says Bob Parker, vice president of research for Manufacturing Insights, an IDC company based in Framingham, Mass.

A success story: Distributor adopts warehouse management
Hy Cite Corp., which has 350 employees, is one company that dramatically improved its supply chain operations by adding warehouse management capabilities. Main operations for the wholesale distributor of Royal Prestige brand housewares were crammed into a 60,000-square-foot warehouse in Madison, Wis., with other small warehouses scattered throughout the city.

Hy Cite’s ERP system did what it was meant to do: track the number of units available for each product and the financial value of available inventory. However, it could only update inventory records after someone manually input shipping manifests at the point of dispatch.

“The distribution center people had to sort pick tickets by hand, pin them to a box and send the box down the line,” says Arin Brost, Hy Cite’s vice president of information systems. “We couldn’t tell where products were, how many were allocated to specific orders, where an order was in the pick process or if [it] was fulfilled until it was shipped.”

In early 2005, Hy Cite found an opportunity to plug this gaping hole when it consolidated its operations into a single, 200,000-square-foot warehouse. First, it installed warehouse equipment with scales, bar-code scanning and automated container routing on the floor, and deployed handheld computers so employees could refer to pick lists in electronic format. Then it began shopping for a supply chain application to integrate with its ERP system.

HighJump Software, a 3M company and Microsoft Gold Partner in St. Paul, Minn., provided a warehouse management solution. It was chosen in part because, like Hy Cite’s ERP system, it is based on Microsoft technologies. A team of Hy Cite employees from purchasing, procurement, distribution and IT spent six months customizing the HighJump software. In the end, the warehouse management solution interfaced with the Hy Cite ERP system, as well as its accounting and procurement systems, and a UPS shipping application.

The ERP system continues to track inventory levels and values, while the WMS module follows materials as they move through the newly automated warehouse.

After 15 months, the business benefits are clear, Brost says. The warehouse management system releases orders directly to workers with handheld computers on the floor for faster fulfillment. Employees can see and track orders from the time Hy Cite receives them to the time they are delivered to vendors, which can check their progress on the company’s extranet at any time. Hy Cite has also doubled its daily shipping volume, from 900 boxes to 1,800, without hiring more employees.

“When the service level you’re trying to provide involves continuous visibility from the time you receive an order to the time you ship it out, [a supply chain application] can make all the difference in the world,” Brost says.

Analyze your supply chain gaps to consider further enhancements
If your company has already optimized its warehousing and/or transportation, you will want to work closely with the business side to solve other problems in the supply chain. Your pain point will be wherever unpredictability causes the most problems, Parker says.

• Variable demand. This tends to be a particular issue for consumer packaged goods. For example, a fruit juice distributor realizes that overall demand rises in the summer, but it cannot predict heat waves or a sudden fad for apple juice in a particular city. Companies that need to be sure they have the product customers want, in the locations where they want it most, should shop for a demand planning and inventory optimization application.

• Fluctuations in production. When companies manufacture a broad mix of products in a single facility, the demand is stable, but the processes and tools necessary to meet it shift rapidly. These companies, which tend to be in the automotive and industrial machinery sectors, should consider software like a factory scheduling application.

• Supply inconsistency. A common issue in consumer electronics and technology companies, this refers to the inability to get enough of a specific component necessary to build and deliver a high-demand product. Parker advises companies in this situation to adopt a procurement application — for example, a Web-based supplier information hub.

The question for many midsize companies is not whether they will need to add supply chain management applications, but when, Scott says. IT must continually discuss with the business side where the supply chain needs to be improved and examine legacy financial and business applications to find the gaps. Finally, look at applications that can bridge those gaps without requiring a complete ERP upgrade.

Fawn Fitter is a freelance writer in San Francisco, specializing in business and technology. She has written for publications including Fortune Small Business, Knowledge Management and Computerworld.
Source: Microsoft.com

For example, new capabilities in PeopleSoft Enterprise eProcurement 9.0, such as amount-only requisitions and off-catalog requests, simplify the procure-to-pay process for both procurement organizations and their suppliers, saving time and increasing efficiency. New features in PeopleSoft Enterprise Services Procurement 9.0 extend efficiencies beyond the enterprise by providing functionality directly to service coordinators in supplier organizations, reducing administrative overhead and simplifying payment. For direct materials categories, this latest release provides new mappings for key supply chain transactions needed to simplify document exchange formats for manufacturers and distributors.

Improving Supplier Relationships

With this latest release, organizations can improve supplier relationships through objective and timely measurement of supplier performance. PeopleSoft Enterprise Supply Chain Management 9.0 and PeopleSoft Enterprise Supplier Relationship Management 9.0 provide a rich set of key performance indicators in the Supplier Relationship Management dashboard. The embedded role-based metrics align information with job function in order to provide the right information, to the right supply manager, at the right time.

For example, PeopleSoft Enterprise 9.0 includes monthly business unit- level summaries of requisitions, purchase orders and receipts, which make it easier to manage approvals and track spending. In addition, PeopleSoft Enterprise Supply Chain Management 9.0 delivers new features to help proactively manage supplier Service Level Agreements (SLAs). Enhanced SLA monitoring capabilities and automated SLA violation notifications help to ensure service levels remain within acceptable levels, maximizing operational efficiency and improve margins.

Simplifying Regulatory Compliance

Organizations face increasing pressure to comply with complex industry and government regulations from Sarbanes-Oxley, to Federal Acquisition Requirements (FAR), to new Federal regulations from the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). PeopleSoft Enterprise Supply Chain Management 9.0 and PeopleSoft Enterprise Supplier Relationship Management 9.0 provide a portfolio of tools to help organizations comply through tighter controls and documentation of partner and supplier relationships.

For example, PeopleSoft Enterprise 9.0 enables organizations to automatically screen customer, vendor and partner data against the OFAC Specially Designated Nationals list to ensure business is conducted only with compliant parties. In addition, PeopleSoft Enterprise Order Management 9.0 includes a new holds management workbench that facilitates Sarbanes-Oxley compliance and mitigates risk with enhanced credit management capabilities that govern and document who can access, edit and release credit holds.

Next Generation Technology Improves Usability and Extensibility

To help customers maximize existing software investments, PeopleSoft Enterprise Supply Chain Management 9.0 and PeopleSoft Enterprise Supplier Relationship Management 9.0 have been integrated with Oracle Fusion Middleware including Oracle Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) Process Manager and Oracle XML Publisher. These integrations give customers a comprehensive, standards-based platform to address the challenges of disparate technologies and applications.

“Our user group is delighted to see Oracle continue to invest in the PeopleSoft product lines. We also find great value in the opportunity to engage directly with the same development team that we have collaborated with for many years,” said Larson Manufacturing, Director of MIS and DMUG President, Ted Weinrich. “These applications are critical to our business, our supply chain operations and our bottom line.”

Posted on : Tue, 14 Nov 2006 13:07:00 GMT | Author : Oracle Corporation

Austin, TX — November 9, 2006 — Herbalife, which sells weight management, nutritional supplement and personal-care products in 62 countries, has implemented ClearOrbit’s Xtended Process Control (X.PC) suite to manage its global supply chain and order fulfillment operations.

To maximize operation of its global supply chain, Herbalife has implemented a range of ClearOrbit’s X.PC supply chain collaboration software solutions. One key module within the X.PC suite is PO Collaborator, which allows users to synchronize replenishment among various parties in real time, based on purchase orders for required materials.

ClearOrbit’s X.PC ties all order visibility and process control in real-time directly to Herbalife’s Oracle enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. ClearOrbit enables automation of procurement across Herbalife’s extended supply chain, as X.PC provides purchase order visibility and replenishment to all suppliers while enabling selected suppliers to implement vendor-managed inventory (VMI) from a common, real-time data platform.

The company can track supplier metrics and performance scorecards, load planning and event management, increasing its ability to respond to changing conditions. Inventory reductions, reduced warehousing and administrative costs are all driven by process controls at the supplier’s shipping dock, tied directly to Herbalife’s enterprise data model.

John Reece, president and CEO of ClearOrbit, said, “Herbalife is an innovative company that has been a fantastic partner in the implementation process. We are pleased to be playing a critical role in enabling Herbalife’s supply chain systems for high velocity transactions and global collaboration.”

ATLANTA, GA — November 14, 2006 — After spending millions on enterprise resource planning systems (ERP), many manufacturers are still chasing performance improvements at the plant level. This is according to the results of a survey of more than 1,500 manufacturers conducted earlier this year by Invistics, a developer of manufacturing performance optimization solutions for complex, asset-intensive industries. The survey indicated that only a little more than a third of the respondents felt that their ERP systems have delivered their expected ROI. Respondents cited lack of visibility, lack of support for Lean principles, and no awareness of variability as key issues.

According to Tom Knight, founder and chief strategy officer of Invistics, “While ERP solutions work well as corporate business information systems, critical gaps remain in their ability to improve manufacturing performance. Chief among these gaps is that ERP systems are designed for manufacturing in a ‘perfect world’ that does not exist for complex manufacturers awash in variability and constantly changing dynamics.”

“Virtually all manufacturers have invested heavily in an ERP solution as a platform for running their business, yet few feel like they’ve achieved the manufacturing performance gains they expected,” continues Knight. “This is especially true for factories characterized as being highly complex as opposed to high volume — those with hundreds or thousands of products, dozens of work centers, and significantly more process and demand variability. These manufacturers in particular are recognizing the need for a solution that can address their unique challenges and translate the vast amount of ERP data into improved decisions that optimize plant performance.”

For example, plants that employ a variety of manufacturing processes and shared equipment to generate a broad mix of products face fluctuations in customer demand, supplier lead times, and machine reliability. ERP software is limited in its ability to manage waste and cycle time, and it tends to push products to market regardless of demand. Even with advanced planning systems (APS), ERP solutions do not take these different sources of variability into account when planning inventory and capacity levels driving up significant costs in excess inventory.

ERP Needs Help Getting Lean

AMR Research has noted that “2007 technology investments are fueled by initiatives to employ Lean practices through continued investment in ERP and renewed interest in next-generation manufacturing operations.”(1) Invistics MachSixâ„¢ is part of a new class of software that enables performance improvements like Lean in highly complex environments. Built on Lean and Six Sigma principles, MachSix integrates with and extends existing ERP investments, allowing manufacturers to account for critical variability.

MachSix optimizes manufacturing operations, modeling around both supply and demand variability and enabling a flow path-based approach to manufacturing — one that aligns processes around a value stream and supports sustainable performance improvement initiatives. The solution provides visibility into critical manufacturing metrics such as throughput, cycle time, customer service and inventory levels and allows managers to plan and execute to reach desired performance targets for each metric. MachSix also includes simulation and optimization tools that support “what if?” planning scenarios to assess the impact of a change on operations, before the change is applied.

Using Invistics MachSix, customers have been able to cut cycle times and inventory in half, while achieving on-time delivery rates of over 99 percent. Invistics is making available a white paper, entitled “Supercharging ERP for Manufacturing Performance in Complex Environments.” To download the free white paper, go to www.invistics.com/Library.aspx.

To attest to the success of its solutions, Invistics has received $1.7 million in National Science Foundation grants to support its research on manufacturing performance optimization. Additionally, the Invistics Advisory Board includes operations research experts from MIT and Georgia Tech.

About Invistics

Invistics helps manufacturers in complex, asset-intensive industries such as consumer packaged goods, chemicals, metals and pharmaceuticals achieve sustainable operational excellence in an often overlooked, yet core, element of their supply chain — production operations. Built on Lean and Six Sigma principles, its manufacturing performance optimization solution, Invistics MachSixâ„¢, is specifically designed to redefine complex plant-level tradeoffs between inventory costs, customer service, production, throughput and cycle times. Companies use Invistics’ methodology and software to identify and manage sources of variability while breaking down organizational silos. Invistics’ customers have achieved dramatic, sustained results including over 99 percent on-time deliveries, an average reduction of 50 percent in inventory and reduction in cycle times by more than half. MachSix integrates with, and enhances, ERP, supply chain and manufacturing execution applications by providing more accurate data, while accounting for variability and improving visibility into plant floor operations. More information is located at www.invistics.com.

(1) Fenella Sirkisoon, “U.S. Enterprise IT Spending Profile, 2006-2007,” AMR Research, 2006.

Source: MARKET WIRE