We’ve recently announced the release of a ground-breaking solution for improving the speed, flexibility and ease of implementing and adopting the Steelwedge Cloud-based S&OP solution.

The Steelwedge S&OP Service Delivery Platform dramatically enhances the ability of our clients, partners and users to rapidly configure, integrate, implement and train users on a process-driven collaborative Steelwedge S&OP solution.

S&OP has quickly become a management necessity for companies operating complex, global supply chains in today’s climate of uncertainty and risk.  Executives facing pressure to manage volatility and risk have embraced Steelwedge to align demand and supply decisions with revenue, margin and customer service goals.  Companies that have rolled-out best-in-class S&OP practices have realized big gains, including a year-over-year gross profit margin increase of 48 percent, according to a recent study published by Aberdeen Group.

“In today’s volatile world, companies need to rapidly respond to changes in supply and demand as never before.  The Steelwedge S&OP Service Delivery Platform is truly a breakthrough for companies desiring to rapidly implement and adopt a flexible S&OP solution that drives corporate agility.” explained Glen Margolis, CEO of Steelwedge. “This new technology platform enables companies to quickly and cost effectively adopt globally collaborative S&OP processes.”

To learn more about our cool new technology, visit our web site.

Photo: Comparison of the ship sailed by Christopher Columbus with the giant ships sailed by Zheng  He in 1405 (source:Wkikipedia)

The world of global sourcing, manufacturing and distribution is rapidly turning upside down.  Just a short time ago many pundits relegated India as a place filled with IT genius and broken infrastructure totally inhospitable to manufacturing.  After all, China was the place for manufacturing.  However, with each passing day history is moving in full circle.

It was very precisely 606 years ago that Zheng He, representing the Ming Dynasty, made his first trading voyage from China to India. He visited Calcutta, Cuchin, Sri Lanka and other well know places during his journey, traveling in a fleet of ships in 1405 that dwarfed in both size and number the ships that Christopher Columbus later sailed in 1492.  With these enormous ships Zheng He established a brisk trade between India and China in a twenty-five year period.  At the time it was the world’s largest sea trade.

European ships would not surpass these enormous Chinese vessels in size, sophistication or capacity for another 400 years.   Zheng He also managed to clear the seas extending all the way to the Horn of Africa and Somalia of pirates that had long plagued traders.

Today, analysts predict that the volume of trade in manufactured goods between China and India will surpass that of any other global trade route by the year 2020.  And just a few months ago China surpassed every other country in the world other than the United States in terms of economic output.  Anyone intrigued by the world of maritime shipping is aware that the biggest “post-panamax” ships were recently built by Chinese shipyards and are now operated by Chinese shipping concerns.  Those in involved in…

by LORA CECERE, Altimeter Group, www.altimetergroup.com

In the movie Snow White, the Queen possesses a magical mirror that answers any question, to which she often asks: “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who in the land is fairest of all?” …to which the mirror always replies “You, my queen, are fairest of all.”

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Companies want to know “who has the best supply chain?” Unfortunately, there is no supply chain magic mirror;  however, each June we can get summarized financial data.  While not a perfect mirror, it is a partial reflection. It is definately more accurate than mistakenly believing that each supply chain is as good as it gets (e.g. the Queen’s magic mirror in Snow White).

The normal cycle of financial reporting makes June a perfect month to review the past year.  So just as students gather around bulletin boards at the end of the school term and check their grades, in June, I scour websites to understand how supply chains stack up. Luckily, two articles –the CFO Magazine’s Working Capital Survey (http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/14499542) and the CSCMP Annual State of Logistics Report (http://cscmp.org/memberonly/state.asp)– are published in June to serve as year-over-year guideposts to answer the question, who does supply chain best?

2009. A Year in Review

2009 was a true litmus test.  It was the height of the recession. Aggregate volume declined 23% and fundamental demand shifted.  Despite investments in technology, in aggregate, the supply chain response was slower in this recession than in the prior 2001 recession.  There is a growing gap between leaders—companies that really understand and practice the concepts of supply chain management—and laggards.  Companies that excelled at supply chain management sensed demand changes 5X faster  and realigned network decisions than their peer groups (http://www.supplychainshaman.com/category/supply-chain-economic-recovery/).

For many, 2009 was a working capital…

Early in 2007, during the high tech industry downturn a major supplier of networking and bandwidth management solutions for telecom service providers, launched a global forecasting initiative to more accurately predict future demand for its equipment. The goal was to better align the operations plan with a more accurate picture of customer demand to improve service levels and reduce potential inventory write-offs.

Historically, company planners had cobbled together forecast data from multiple systems — a problem compounded by mergers and acquisitions— using unwieldy spreadsheets, manual processes spanning multiple departments, and only a minimal amount of analysis. The resulting forecasts were often inaccurate. In the post-boom economy, flexible and accurate planning would not only be critical to stabilizing current operations, but would play a center-stage role in strategic decision-making across the entire organization.

However, solving this problem was no easy task. Like many technology companies, the company begin outsourcing in late 2003. With this business model, forecasting and planning product sales became an even greater challenge– 11 major product lines, 50 product families and more than 10,000 SKUs to forecast for hundreds of customers across the globe. In addition, their products were highly configurable and customized, ever-changing with constant updates. And, many of these configurations had a very short lifecycle—additional creating forecasting complexity.

Further, the company had independent planning processes through various departments: Sales created revenue forecasts; finance created revenue targets; and operations did product forecasts–all different processes usually with different measurements that did not tie together. They were manual processes with no timelines, all managed through a combination of SAP r/3 and Excel spreadsheets. It was difficult to maintain any consistency and data integrity. With minimal feedback between the groups, there always were differences in the numbers.

The Global Demand and Order Management team had to manage day-to-day consensus planning…