Provider upgrades user interface, collaborative capabilities; adds KPIs, alerts wizard to Decision Manager offering
Mountain View, CA — August 19, 2004 — Timogen Systems has rolled out the latest version of the company's supply chain event management and decision support solution, upgrading the user interface and adding key performance indicators (KPIs), greater collaborative capabilities and an alert wizard.
The provider said that its Timogen Decision Manager (TDM) Version 3.5 is designed to help manufacturing companies identify and resolve supply chain problems across an extended-enterprise supply chain network.
Developed to resolve the challenges enterprises face as they struggle to meet customer demand and maintain their own financial objectives, TDM alerts users to "glitches" and unplanned events in the supply chain and provides them with the analysis and advice to apply the appropriate resolution, Timogen said. The solution offers optimization-based recommendations that are configured to meet the company's business goals.
"Resolving supply and demand exceptions is becoming even more critical among manufacturers as customer service becomes the last real measure on which to compete," said Rick Zipf, CEO of Timogen Systems. "The enhancements we have brought to TDM are designed to enable anyone in the company — from the CEO to the warehouse employees — to easily take advantage of the powerful problem solving capabilities of the product and to be involved in improving customer service and the bottom line."
Key among the new product features, according to Timogen, is an intuitive user interface (UI) that improves ease of use. The interface takes users through a logical sequence of steps to determine optimal solutions to unplanned supply chain events based on corporate objectives. A key UI feature is the ability to create different sandboxes or "virtual environments" that allow users to model a range of "what-if" scenarios and compare the various outcomes over time before initiating an action or resolution plan.
With TDM's new performance management features, users can monitor performance on their personalized "dashboards" to see the KPIs most important to them. For example, users may wish to view fill rate or inventory turns as their key metrics. The indicators provide users with up-to-date performance values (for example, 20 turns), as well as color-coded "lights" that indicate how this performance measures up against targets. The lights are displayed in a "stoplight" arrangement (red, yellow or green) and allow users to quickly see whether their company is meeting performance targets. The addition of the KPIs provides users with contextual performance information to help them resolve specific supply chain problems as they occur, Timogen said.
The KPIs and the addition of an alert wizard enable users to collaborate more effectively, according to the solution provider. The alert wizard allows any user of the TDM system to create individualized alerts, tailored to suit their areas of responsibility. This is an important feature, Timogen said, because it allows users to control the amount and quality of alerts they receive by adjusting the alert thresholds on different events, thereby reducing the amount of "noise" and non-critical problem solving and communication efforts.
"Timogen's solutions address the problems of the first generation supply chain event management tools," said Steve Banker, service director for supply chain management at ARC Advisory Group. "Timogen provides an optimization engine to optimally resolve exceptions, and the collaboration feature ensures that the optimal resolution is, in fact, executable. In addition, their analytics database tracks how well managers and employees do on resolving the 'to do' list that emerge as a result of the exception workflows."
Mountain View, CA — August 19, 2004 — Timogen Systems has rolled out the latest version of the company's supply chain event management and decision support solution, upgrading the user interface and adding key performance indicators (KPIs), greater collaborative capabilities and an alert wizard.
The provider said that its Timogen Decision Manager (TDM) Version 3.5 is designed to help manufacturing companies identify and resolve supply chain problems across an extended-enterprise supply chain network.
Developed to resolve the challenges enterprises face as they struggle to meet customer demand and maintain their own financial objectives, TDM alerts users to "glitches" and unplanned events in the supply chain and provides them with the analysis and advice to apply the appropriate resolution, Timogen said. The solution offers optimization-based recommendations that are configured to meet the company's business goals.
"Resolving supply and demand exceptions is becoming even more critical among manufacturers as customer service becomes the last real measure on which to compete," said Rick Zipf, CEO of Timogen Systems. "The enhancements we have brought to TDM are designed to enable anyone in the company — from the CEO to the warehouse employees — to easily take advantage of the powerful problem solving capabilities of the product and to be involved in improving customer service and the bottom line."
Key among the new product features, according to Timogen, is an intuitive user interface (UI) that improves ease of use. The interface takes users through a logical sequence of steps to determine optimal solutions to unplanned supply chain events based on corporate objectives. A key UI feature is the ability to create different sandboxes or "virtual environments" that allow users to model a range of "what-if" scenarios and compare the various outcomes over time before initiating an action or resolution plan.
With TDM's new performance management features, users can monitor performance on their personalized "dashboards" to see the KPIs most important to them. For example, users may wish to view fill rate or inventory turns as their key metrics. The indicators provide users with up-to-date performance values (for example, 20 turns), as well as color-coded "lights" that indicate how this performance measures up against targets. The lights are displayed in a "stoplight" arrangement (red, yellow or green) and allow users to quickly see whether their company is meeting performance targets. The addition of the KPIs provides users with contextual performance information to help them resolve specific supply chain problems as they occur, Timogen said.
The KPIs and the addition of an alert wizard enable users to collaborate more effectively, according to the solution provider. The alert wizard allows any user of the TDM system to create individualized alerts, tailored to suit their areas of responsibility. This is an important feature, Timogen said, because it allows users to control the amount and quality of alerts they receive by adjusting the alert thresholds on different events, thereby reducing the amount of "noise" and non-critical problem solving and communication efforts.
"Timogen's solutions address the problems of the first generation supply chain event management tools," said Steve Banker, service director for supply chain management at ARC Advisory Group. "Timogen provides an optimization engine to optimally resolve exceptions, and the collaboration feature ensures that the optimal resolution is, in fact, executable. In addition, their analytics database tracks how well managers and employees do on resolving the 'to do' list that emerge as a result of the exception workflows."
