As supply chains extend around the globe, and product life cycles grow shorter, traditional inventory management processes have been rendered obsolete. New operational demands dictate that companies continuously manage inventory throughout multiple levels of global supply chains to optimize performance against business objectives.
This cannot be accomplished through one-dimensional strategies. Companies must synchronize their systems, processes, technologies, and services across inventory functions. Success requires a current view of on-hand inventory, established inventory policies, and the ability to rapidly respond to unplanned demand and supply changes.
Inventory Management from i2 provides a comprehensive range of supply chain technology and services that deliver quick results and lay the framework for ongoing incremental value. Through a combination of process, systems, people, and strategy, Inventory management enables companies to convert inventory from a cost center to a competitive differentiator.
“Everything we do here touches inventory, from scheduling and replenishment to customer service and financials. Cooper Tire didn’t just embark on adding an inventory system. We embarked on getting an inventory system off the mainframe and integrating all its ties to all of the other integrated supply chain pieces. With i2 Total Inventory Management, we now have a view into actual inventory as well as projected inventory. Today, when we have an inventory problem, we can figure out what caused it and implement processes to prevent it from happening again.”
—Bob Sager, Manager of Supply Chain, Research and Design, Cooper Tire & Rubber Company
Inventory Optimization
Supply chain excellence requires striking the most profitable balance among service levels, lead times, budgets, risks, and inventory costs. These metrics are largely determined by how a company's supply, production, and distribution network is configured and managed, where it positions its inventory, and what inventory stocking strategies have been implemented.
Inventory optimization is the discipline of continuously managing inventory policies to optimize supply chain performance against business objectives, changing market conditions, risks, and supply chain constraints. These policies include what inventories to carry, where, in what form, and how much across the procurement, manufacturing, and distribution network.
Demand Management
Understanding and managing demand throughout the enterprise is critical. Whether crafting new product and promotion strategies to increase sales, transforming the supply chain into a demand-driven supply network, meeting customers’ performance expectations, or reporting accurate financial projections to Wall Street–a continuously visible, accurate picture of demand is required for success. The importance of effective demand management is best reflected by the value it delivers. Companies that have focused their efforts on understanding and managing demand are proven to have significantly reduced supply chain costs, better supply chain responsiveness, and higher revenue and profit than their competitors.
i2 Demand Manager provides a continuous and tightly integrated process that not only gives organizations the ability to better predict demand but to also understand, communicate, shape, sense, and quickly respond to consumer demand. Some examples of this solution in action include providing visibility into consumer demand to the supplier level, understanding demand predictability to drive optimal inventory levels, or monitoring a new product’s consumer sales in real time so that product can be quickly repositioned to where it is selling the most or plans can be readjusted to meet unexpectedly high demand.
Inventory Forecasting and Replenishment
Inventory forecasting and replenishment modules (Inforem) is an application that tracks current demand, forecasts future demand, and develops recommended order quantities. Inforem has enjoyed a rich legacy through more than three decades of performance. Its highly scalable engine, user controls, and customizable interfaces have provided retailers, wholesalers, mass merchants, and grocers with the power and flexibility to routinely manage tens of millions of item/location records.
Performance Management
An efficient supply chain process relies on an effective method of finding potential gains and innovations in various functional areas including manufacturing, replenishment, capacity, operations, fulfillment, inventory, distribution, transportation, and financials.
i2 Performance Manager provides packaged business intelligence (analytics and reporting) for i2 solutions. Performance Manager is designed to provide a way to create a multi-perspective view of i2 planning and execution data, as well as the ability to “drill down” to a detailed level in order to do a root-cause analysis.
Supply Chain Planning
i2 Supply Chain Planner can provide a way to model the entire supply chain—from suppliers and outsourced manufacturers to factories, warehouses, and distribution centers. Supply Chain Planner can optimize a company’s inventories, production, distribution, and transportation.
Using manual spreadsheets and databases for demand planning and fulfillment, SSAB Oxelösund recognized the need to automate its processes to improve on-time delivery. After a thorough evaluation of solutions providers, SSAB chose i2 to help
it improve delivery performance. With i2 solutions in place and ROCE Partners as implementation partner, the steel manufacturer has increased on-time deliveries from 75 percent to 90 percent.
Video: 