Optiant offers solution to let top execs weigh impact of initiatives, make better supply chain decisions
Boston — November 14, 2003 — Supply chain design and optimization specialist Optiant this week took the wraps off a new analytics product designed to help top executives boost business performance through better supply chain decisions.
Optiant said that its PowerChain Summit solution, which will ship later this year, will move the power of supply chain design from operations to the leadership team, giving residents of the executive suites at Global 2000 manufacturers the ability to tie critical decisions to overarching business objectives.
By identifying key supply chain leverage points, determining the impact of different strategies and delivering unbiased recommendations, PowerChain Summit is designed to give executives the ability to select and implement strategies that improve performance while minimizing risk common to execution, the solution provider said.
The new offering is intended to let executives understand how a particular supply chain initiative will support broader business objectives, such as speeding time-to-market, expanding into new markets, capturing market share and increasing profit margins. Visibility across the supply chain lets executives make decisions and implement strategies that weigh interdependencies and benefit overall business goals, eliminating the "silo mentality" that plagues many large organizations, according to Optiant.
Specifically, Optiant said that the solution can be used to:
- Uncover and identify major supply chain "levers" like procurement, assembly and delivery lead times and stages that contribute most to such key metrics as overall supply chain cost, customer service level requirements and cash-to-cash cycles.
- Provide visibility across complex, global supply networks, highlighting interdependencies and potential negative ripple effects caused by departmental decisions.
- Weigh and prioritize multiple supply chain initiatives within such real-world constraints as shared resources, budgets and service level agreements.
- Develop recommendations for the most desirable and profitable supply chain opportunities.
"PowerChain Summit gives us fact-based data about the business impact of individual supply chain improvement initiatives," said Herbert Wolf, vice president of supply chain at Illinois-based CNH, a manufacturer of agriculture and construction equipment. "With that we can select the most advantageous initiatives to implement, understanding how the interdependencies will impact the metrics that drive our success."
"Manufacturers realize that supply chain excellence is no longer an operational issue — it's a business issue," said Jim Lawton, vice president of marketing at Optiant. "PowerChain Summit empowers companies to implement the best possible strategies and turn today's most pressing supply chain challenges into opportunities that improve bottom-line results."
