Supply Planning

The last decade has brought significant advances in customer expectations of product choice and service, and improved sophistication and responsiveness from the network to supply those products. In the past, customers were happy to order products off the shelf or wait weeks for customizations. Today, customers are able to choose from a variety of models or options and expect prompt availability, or at least an accurate delivery date.

At the same time, product companies are under tremendous cost pressure to more efficiently utilize common and substitute materials, leverage outsourced manufacturing in low cost regions where possible, and achieve better coordination across internal and external operations.

Capabilities:

STEELWEDGE Supply Planning meets the following needs:

• Rough Cut Capacity and Materials
• Weekly Master Scheduling, External Build Planning, and Customer Commitments
• On-Demand Customer Order Commitments and Fulfillment Control

STEELWEDGE software solutions were developed and proven through a decade of collaboration with global industry leaders and innovators, including Hewlett-Packard, Sanmina-SCI, and Foxconn. STEELWEDGE solutions are typically implemented in three months and all customers are reference-able.

The Supply Planning and Demand Fulfillment Problem

The leading ERP and APS software solutions do not offer a top down pegging approach. Instead, they break the planning process into separate modules for demand planning, master scheduling, and materials planning. The result is no single point of control for independent demand fulfillment and uncoordinated, inefficient utilization of resources across different modules.

To compensate for the lack of a comprehensive, responsive and efficient planning process, policymakers often rely on fixed lead time-based order commitments supported by excess capacity and high inventory buffers. Without a new approach to planning, the need for these policies will only increase with industry trends toward increased use of outsourced suppliers and common and substitute materials in the Bill of Materials (BOM.)

STEELWEDGE Solution

With STEELWEDGE, there is a single integrated plan that controls how each line of demand efficiently utilizes specific network resources.
STEELWEDGE overcomes the real challenge with top down pegging to best balance inventory when shortages exist and/or when substitutions are available. STEELWEDGE is able to maximize overall shipments, but still ensures that higher priority orders with shortages fulfilled as soon as their shortages are resolved.

Key differentiators of STEELWEDGE Solutions are the ability to:

• Plan in 1 to 3 minutes vs. 2 to 5 hours for ERP and APS - for real-time response and simulations
• Manage one coordinated plan that most efficiently uses capacities and materials across sites
• Precisely control how each independent demand is scheduled – and align to strategic priorities
• Level load rough cut capacity over time while synchronizing across other related capacities
• Efficiently useup substitutes and phasein new parts
• Implement in 2 to 3 months and then maintain and expand the solutions with internal resources

Benefits

How Steelwedge Solutions Provide Competitive Advantage

The STEELWEDGE technology for Supply Planning and Demand Fulfillment provides substantial competitive advantage over ERP and Advanced Planning Systems (APS or SCM). The STEELWEDGE top-down pegging approach takes each independent demand and goes down the BOM and across sites to “peg” (i.e. reserve) rough cut capacity and materials to that demand. The planning result is that capacity and materials in the network are pegged to the same top level demand at the same time. This achieves highly efficient and tightly controlled pull-to-demand coordination across internal or external sites, inventories, capacities, and suppliers.

STEELWEDGE customers realize significant benefits in:

• Planning Efficiency – increase fulfillment by 10 to 20% or more from the same resources
• Planning Speed – plan 100 times faster than ERP or APS for real-time response
• Fulfillment Control – strategic priorities and rules control when each demand is to be fulfilled

The STEELWEDGE Supply Planning Value Proposition

1. Realize 10% to 20% more sales at higher margins:
   
   
   • More efficiently utilize constrained supply or resources to fulfill more sales at less cost
   • More quickly and accurately respond to customers to capture more sales opportunities
   • Consistently achieve higher customer service levels to generate increased sales
     
     
2. Reduce excess and obsolete inventory cost by 10% to 20%:
   
   
   • Pull inventory across a supply network to actual shipments rather than push to forecast
   • More efficient and systematic utilization of common and substitute inventory
     
     
3. Reduce planning efforts and cycle time by 50% to 75% by:
   • Automated planning of processes to eliminate manual efforts
   • Planning simulations and management-by-exception processes for faster planning cycles

Rough Cut Capacity and Critical Materials

Fully integrated sales and operations planning (S&OP) considers rough cut capacity and critical materials constraints across multiple sites/operations. Modules may be implemented individually or combined into a complete solution.

• Workflow:
  
  
  • Integrates sales, operations, and corporate planning into a common S&OP process
  • S&OP tasks come to the users via email notification and alerts
  • A routine and well-structured process that significantly improves data consistency
    
    
• Advanced Demand Planning:
  
  
  • Collaborative process to gather sales plans from across the extended sales network
  • Advanced statistical forecasting techniques
    
    
• Operations Planning with Rough Cut Capacity and Materials:
  
  
  • Rough-cut capacity modeling across multiple sites with level loading over time
  • Critical materials constraints at any level of the BOM or at any site
  • Top down pegging controlled by demand priorities and business rules
  • Extremely fast and responsive multi-site planning and simulations
  • Operations plan maximizes demand fulfillment by efficiently utilizing available constraints
    
    
• Performance Reporting:
  
  
  • Measure key performance metrics
  • Report metrics on various hierarchical levels such as per SKU or per product line
  • Flexibly design metrics that matter for your particular business
    
    

Weekly Master Scheduling / Build Planning and Customer Commitments

Allows demand planners to manage high level rough-cut constraints and create a level-loaded build plan that maximizes demand fulfillment based on priorities. Also provides commitments to each demand.

• Optimized Master Scheduling / Build Request Planning:
  
  
  • Rough-cut capacity modeling across multiple sites
  • Critical materials constraints at any level of the BOM or at any site
  • Top-down pegging controlled by independent demand priorities and business rules
  • Extremely fast and responsive multi-site planning and simulations
    
    
• Customer and Channel Commitments
  
  
  • Accurate customer commitments for each independent demand based on top-down pegging to in-bound module or component supply
  • Flexible prioritization for each independent demand to control fulfillment
  • Commit- to-customer forecasts and previously committed forecasts are always met first
  • Enable partial shipments and squared sets across related order lines
  • Immediate shortage-by-order visibility for faster shortage resolution
  • What- if simulations
    
    

Real-Time Customer Order Commitments and Fulfillment Control

Provides on-demand customer order commitments and clear-to-build control over actual order fulfillment. Also, may control purchase and material transfer orders.

• Customer Order Commitments
  
  
  • On demand, real-time customer commitments against customer orders
  • Each commitment planned via top down pegging to the most up-to-date materials supply
  • Highly efficient utilization of common and substitute materials to increase fulfillment
  • Compare orders to a weekly commitment plan, and filter for exceptions where commitment is exceeded
  • Enables partial shipments and shipments in squared sets across related order lines
  • Immediate shortage-by-order visibility to faster shortage resolution
  • What- if simulations
    
    
• Order Fulfillment Control
  
  
  • Customer order release function to directly control order fulfillment, may be integrated to ERP
  • Materials transfer order release function to control inventory movements, may be integrated with ERP or warehouse system