Product Lifecycle Planning

Product lifecycles in many industries are shrinking. The rate of new products introduction is increasing to drive new technologies or replace aging products. In such environments, the ability to effectively plan the ramp of a new product introduction becomes a critical driver to overall product profitability. Conversely, managing the end of life forecast for a retiring product is critical to minimizing inventory exposure, discounting and write-off expenses.

However, new products introduction forecasts are often based on guess work, without a systematic approach for managing the forecast relationships between new and existing versions, product models and product lines.

The Steelwedge Product Lifecycle Planning (PLP) solution provides the ability to model new product forecasts and end of life forecasts based upon historical trends of like products, marketing programs and what-if scenarios.

Capabilities:

• Forecast development for new, unreleased products based upon Steelwedge’s Composite Curve Modeling Tool
• Couples looks-like, cannibalization, supersession and other traditional new products introduction (NPI) approaches with leading edge curvilinear analysis technique
• Assumptions and Market Modeling
• Create top-down macroeconomic and market-share driven forecast models
• Simultaneously leverage both time-series and causal analysis (multivariate non-linear regression) techniques
• Perform simulations and manage alternate forecast scenarios
• Automatically integrate to external causal information sources
• Provides Marketing, Sales and Product/Brand Management an assumption management tool to track, identify, and change underlying assumptions in a transparent manner.
• Product Lifecycle Planning (PLP) Analytics & Reports

Steelwedge’s customers have realized the following benefits from the Steelwedge Product Lifecycle Planning (PLP) solution:

• Improved new products introduction ramps
• Decreased excess & obsolete inventory write-offs
• Decreased end of life discounting costs