i2 Blowing the Doors Off Planning Limitations:(Meet APS)
Something I picked up while mining for information.
[Source:Excerpts Aberdeen Group]
i2 Exploits Compaq's Digital Alpha 64-bit VLM
Preface
Today's manufacturing and distribution enterprises are tasked with transitioning their organizations from a make-to-stock push strategy to a more customer-centric make-to-order pull strategy. Intensified pressure on margins is forcing enterprises to seek business process improvements and cost reductions - working smarter. Improved control of material flow and inventory levels is a major goal to be realized by correctly matching production output to consumer demand. By better managing the flow of raw materials to finished goods, enterprises can increase inventory turns, reduce cycle times, and improve product quality - enhancing customer satisfaction.
Exacerbating the transition to a "make to order" strategy is the increasing market reality that shorter product life cycles are necessary to field products that meet "current" customer expectations. Time-based competition is the next frontier of the competitive edge. The new is becoming old faster. Supply chain velocity calls for planning speed - speed that can only be realized with in-memory processing.
The Aberdeen Group has taken a long-standing position on the criticality of Advanced Planning and Scheduling technology (APS). Aberdeen contends that for manufacturing and distribution enterprises to achieve marketplace success today, APS must be regarded as a priority component of any re-engineered Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) or business-defining legacy system.
This Aberdeen Profile presents compelling issues and strategic advantages afforded enterprises utilizing APS technology especially when delivered on a 64-bit Very Large Memory (VLM) operating environment. Aberdeen will examine the benefits and challenges associated with the convergence of function, technology, and experience - looking at the combination of the RISC-based Alpha chip and its companion 64-bit Digital UNIX in conjunction with i2 Technologies' RHYTHM in-memory APS suite.
Executive Overview
Billions of dollars in potential savings are held captive in inefficient, ineffective supply chains. Excess inventory buffers of raw materials, work in process, finished goods, and unused production capacity are all maintained to smooth event spikes caused by unanticipated circumstances or altered customer demand in an attempt to have the goods and materials available to meet volatile product delivery schedules. Intelligent supply chain management represents a significant untapped opportunity for increasing cash flow, operating margins, and market share.
With the accelerating trend of decreasing product life cycles and reduced product lead times, management of hyper-competitive enterprises must increase the velocity of information flowing through its supply chain. A new perception of time is evolving, from the 5-day-week to a more fine-grained 120-hour-week. This mindset is significant when tasked with getting newer and more innovative products to market faster than the competition - thinking outside box.
In-memory APS solutions provide exceptional speed for planning, re-planning, and "What-If"-scenario exploration. APS is a proven substantive factor in ERP transactional systems and is a key enabling technology for Supply Chain Management (SCM) decision support systems. The velocity of an in-memory APS technology provides the requisite underpinnings for developing an effective order promising system - whether that system is based on the principles of Available to Promise (ATP), Available To Capacity (ATC), or Capability to Promise (CTP).
Aberdeen contends that many enterprises can benefit from the implementation of APS technology in a 64-bit world. The combination of the Digital 64-bit UNIX operating system and i2 Technologies' native 64-bit RHYTHM applications promises to thrust the planning environment into a new era - an era of ultra high speed VLM computing. VLM will be a critical starting point for rapid response for complete modeling scenarios that span a multi-enterprise supply chain of trading partners.
Where The 64-Bit In-Memory Processing Technology Will Be Most Useful
APS systems based on a 32-bit operating environment have been obliged to make certain tradeoffs with regard to response time, total amount of data, or simulation completeness that can be worked effectively within the limited data file size and addressable memory of a 32-bit server. 32-bit systems must use less specific aggregated or summarized data when requirements exceed the 2 GB mark. Because this is an operating system limitation, it can only be addressed with more processor speed and expanded file and memory capacities of a 64-bit operating environment.
In collaboration, i2 Technologies and Digital Equipment Corporation have astutely applied their combined technical knowledge to tear asunder the former (32-bit) APS limitation boundaries - delivering processing velocity that exploits all the data. These collaborators provide a new and essential level of detail and speed for rapid and precise planning and optimization of a company's chain of supply and value.
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i2 Technologies - The Company
Since i2 Technologies' inception in 1988, the company has experienced a monumental first decade of growth - growth of the Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) market and the company's role as the established leader in that market. The company catapulted from a startup 10 years ago to the $200M leading provider of global supply chain management software solutions.
i2 Technologies' was among the early pioneers of in-memory technology and has applied its decade worth of that in-memory experience to the company's RHYTHM product set. The RHYTHM solutions suite provides end-to-end supply chain management - from sourcing and manufacturing to distribution, logistics, and transportation planning. It is currently used in numerous industries, such as consumer goods, automotive, metals, high tech, and electronics.
With the goals of decreased supply inventories, greater number of turns, and reduced inventories of WIP and finished goods - i2 RHYTHM provides the essential insight to help prevent inventories from potentially sitting on shelves until obsolete. i2 Technologies has been instrumental in establishing the APS solutions market, driving supply chain management initiatives that are continuously fitting customer demand to production supply.
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Transitioning From Push To Pull - Requires Planning
Planning is a fundamental process that occurs across an enterprise's supply chain(s). It affects the demand fulfillment process - from purchasing raw materials and transforming them into a finished product to delivering the product to customers. To significantly benefit from planning, enterprises must deploy intelligent decision support tools to effectively manage the complexities along and within a supply chain.
i2 RHYTHM - Implementing Make-To-Order Manufacturing/Distribution
The i2 RHYTHM solution supports the shift in manufacturing philosophy from a traditional make-to-stock, push strategy to a highly responsive customer demand-driven pull strategy of make-to-order manufacturing - a strategy that permits clients to greatly improve customer service and reduce operating and inventory costs. The i2 solution replaces the traditional physical buffers with technology that leverages rapid dissemination of information so planners can devise optimal plans with more complete visibility to real-world supply chain constraints. The result: reducing the need for those physical buffers such as raw material, work in process (WIP), finished goods inventory, and excess capacity.
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Good News, Better News - The good news is that 64-bit technology will soon become part of the mainstream and that 64-bit endowed APS will provide a quantum leap improvement in fine-grained planning detail. The better news is that Compaq is supplying production-quality 64-bit technology today and i2 technology is already exploiting the VLM potential for planning and scheduling of the supply chain.
Experience - The Sum Total Of Knowing What Not To Do
Within the next few years all suppliers will be offering 64-bit technology. Intel is currently expected to release the IA-64 Merced chip in the mid 2000 time frame. All of the usual suspects, including Digital, have signed up to port their version of UNIX to this newest 64-bit technology offering. The newcomers to "64-bitness" will be challenged, as Digital was, to find solutions to problems that are simply nonexistent in a 32-bit world. New 64-bit entrants will be inhibited from embarking on this IA-64 porting odyssey in earnest until at least a near-production version of the intended IA-64 endowed hardware is available. Just based on the year 2000 delivery of the Merced chip, it will be at best several months beyond the millennium mark before the "newcomers" can field a production version of their 64-bit operating system. It follows that it will be considerably beyond that Y2K point before would-be competitors can close the gap to production-hardened 64-bit systems matching Compaq's Digital UNIX of today.
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i2 RHYTHM - The Solution Suite
The RHYTHM suite provides a full supply chain decision support solution set to aid in managing the end-to-end supply chain that includes RHYTHM Demand Planner, RHYTHM Factory Planner, RHYTHM Supply Chain Planner, RHYTHM Transportation Planner, RHYTHM Sales and Operations Planner, and the RHYTHM Global Series applications for multi-enterprise collaboration. Aberdeen's understanding is that at this writing only a few of these modules are still being developed for 64-bit availability.
As the scope of planning continues to expand from within the enterprise to outside and to multiple enterprises, the current implementations of 32-bit technology are facing certain limitations - an enterprise's supply chain model must fit within the addressable space. This, as previously stated, has caused users to occasionally make tradeoffs with respect to the scope or detail of their supply chain model.
To date, i2 has used three approaches to deal with the 32-bit system constraints:
to distribute the supply chain model;
to improve the efficiency of how the supply chain model is represented thereby reducing the needed memory the objects require; and
to leverage 64-bit technology that allows use of a larger addressable memory space and increased file sizes - things in memory must reside on disk at some time.
Aberdeen sees i2's strategy as pushing the envelope on all three fronts. However, the real benefits of the soon-to-be-required multi-enterprise supply chain model can only be realized with 64-bit technology.
And The Services And Support To Make It Happen
IT buyers tell Aberdeen that a major differentiator for them is the ability of a prospective application supplier to provide services and support that is based not just on technology but on an understanding of their industry-specific business needs and challenges. To that end, i2 Technologies' professional services organization works closely with clients to understand their business objectives.
i2's global sales and support organization provides software, training, and technology transfer. These services are manifested in the following i2 business practices that are designed to get results:
Sound Methodologies - short, structured multi-phased implementation that addresses key customer supply chain management problems first;
Understanding Your Business - domain experience allows i2 to identify and focus on the key business drivers that determine success; and
Industry-Specific Solutions - i2 is organized into industry groups that are responsible for delivery of focused solutions for each industry.
Aberdeen Conclusions
As industry trends to a mass customization marketplace, APS is a powerful, strategic weapon that can be used for improving competitiveness, profitability, productivity - and in the end - customer satisfaction.
Aberdeen finds that i2 Technologies is leading the way with fully integrated mission-critical supply chain management solutions that are interactive and high performing. The company's APS technology, for example, delivers effective decision support solutions for optimizing planning and scheduling across the enterprise and outward to trusted trading partners in a chain of supply and value. Moreover, i2 has a full decade of in-memory-application technology experience - an area that many competitors have only recently realized to be the basic block and tackle for providing exceptional benefits of application processing speed and data manipulation agility.
Aberdeen holds that enterprises with APS solutions - especially those that do not have 20% to 30% excess processing capacity in their current memory-processor environments - need to look closely at moving their enterprise planning to Digital's proven 64-bit technology. Look at it this way: the move to 64-bit Alpha will not be a path to obsolescence nor is it the technology adaptation risk normally associated with a next generation architecture. Rather, it is a competitive business-advantage leap ahead for those enterprises longing to have the computing capacity to more appropriately plan their entire supply chain.
More detailed data means an enhanced ability to embrace ALL of the influencers in the planning and scheduling process. Reaching out to "touch" trading partners' data increases the amount of available time to make strategic plans rather than tactical, "knee-jerk" adjustments in the event of an unplanned or unforeseen circumstance occurring within or along the supply chain.
Those enterprises challenged to incorporate more data into the planning process and accelerate the overall system responsiveness would be well-advised to seriously consider the powerful combination of the industry-leading APS from i2 Technologies, Digital Equipment's Alpha-based hardware, 64-bit Digital UNIX operating system, and its five years of solid production experience.
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