MG Industries, SAP and ILOG cited for project to optimize production, transportation planning at gases supplier
Las Vegas — October 16, 2003 — Production and inventory control society APICS has honored MG Industries and solution providers SAP and ILOG with the association's 2003 Corporate Award of Excellence in the Technology Partnership category.
The award, announced at the APICS conference last week, recognized the successful collaboration between the two technology providers and their corporate customer in a project that advanced the customer's success.
MG Industries is a subsidiary of the Messer Group and a supplier of industrial, medical and specialty gases. As a company working in a specialized industry, MG Industries found that supply chain planning solutions were not fulfilling its specific needs. The company utilizes a fleet of specialized tank trailers to deliver products, creating a vendor-managed inventory environment that is characterized by complex truck routing requirements that must be addressed in the delivery process.
MG Industries deployed ILOG's Application Extension — a combination of ILOG ODF (Optimization Development Framework) together with ILOG professional services — to extend the functionality of SAP Advanced Planning and Optimization (SAP APO), an application component of mySAP SCM. The result was a tailored solution that has helped MG Industries simultaneously optimize both production and transportation planning to better meet customer needs, according to an announcement on the award.
As a result of the deployment, MG Industries increased its operational effectiveness and reduced operational costs, the award announcement stated.
"This honor recognizes not only an important technology partnership, but also the increased capabilities MG Industries is able to employ in servicing our customers," said Matthew Brown, vice president for supply chain management at MG Industries. "By capitalizing on SAP's strategic partnership with ILOG, we were able to build and deploy a complex demand planning and production planning system and an integrated vehicle-routing optimization extension which has in turn enabled us to significantly improve forecasting and provide the highest level of customer service at the lowest landed cost."
