Profiles in Supply Chain Enablement: Supply chain solution provider builds functionality and flexibility into its slotting system using business rule management system
Company: Catalyst International (Milwaukee, WI)
Company Size: Small
Company Sector: Non-Manufacturing (Transportation/Logistics Services)
Area(s) of Enablement: Fulfillment/Logistics, Supply Chain Integration & Infrastructure
Enabler: ILOG (Mountain View, CA)
Case Study:Catalyst International provides software and solutions to optimize the performance of enterprise supply chains. The company needed to find a way to build more functionality and flexibility into its slotting system, reduce the code that its programmers had to write, and give its business analysts the capability to make changes to the system without having to rely on programmers. To accomplish these goals, Catalyst turned to a business rule management system from ILOG.
The Challenge
Catalyst's supply chain execution solutions include application components designed to streamline the physical movement of goods, enable collaboration with customers and suppliers, and provide visibility and analysis into customers' supply chains. Companies such as Boeing, Saks, Sony Music, Abbott Laboratories, Castle Metals, Illinois Power and Brown-Forman have chosen Catalyst as a supply chain partner.
As part of its overall supply chain execution offering, the company provides warehouse management solutions that manage the physical movement and storage of goods and associated resources at or between locations. Catalyst employs a practice called slotting, which determines the optimal warehouse location for products based on demand, historical consumption trends, dimensions, weight and various other item and location attributes. Slotting ensures that new products that are in high demand are appropriately positioned within the forward pick area.
Positioning within the warehouse is critical because travel time accounts for more than half of pick/replenishment labor time. Optimizing forward picking locations reduces labor costs and increases fulfillment rates. The system is extremely complex and employs complicated algorithms in order to identify the best slot for a product.
Its warehouse management services offer customers opportunity to increase efficiency and reduce costs. Catalyst needed to find a way to build more functionality and flexibility into its slotting system and at the same time rely less on programmers to write code every time a change to the system was required. The company wanted to give its business analysts the capability to quickly and easily make changes to the slotting application — including specifying business constraints and business solutions — without having to rely on programmers.
The Solution
Catalyst found the solution to these challenges in ILOG JRules, a business rule management system (BRMS) that makes it practical for business and IT professionals to collaborate in managing business policies across the enterprise. JRules supports collaboration on several versions of a business application at the same time, providing features to support concurrent rule development by IT development teams and rule management by policy managers. This collaboration is possible because ILOG JRules includes support for repository merging through a combination of enhancements to the rule repository, query tool, and new best practices.
By implementing JRules, Catalyst provides its users with the capability of writing less code and still giving them the performance and flexibility they demand. JRules simplifies applications for the user and the developer and helps determines a series of potential stock movements that would optimize the picking process. A business analyst doesn't have to write code — or rely on a developer to write code — in order to change the system. This gives users flexibility in setting up conditions for an operation to occur. JRules gives users flexibility that a traditional "tabs, flags and textboxes" configuration dialog cannot provide. The solution keeps rule packages simple, especially when developing rules to be maintained by non-developers. The concept of using a rule engine as a business logic server is helpful; developers who aren't JRules experts can integrate JRules.
JRules has reduced development costs for Catalyst by allowing business users to make changes to the slotting system. At the same time, JRules added flexibility and usability — which are important to keep the learning curve low. Catalyst believes that JRules is faster than a hand-coded Java solution and is less costly to maintain. Catalyst anticipates that with JRules in place, it will reduce overall picking labor costs by 8-10 percent. These results have led the company to identify additional applications for implementing JRules.
For more stories of successful supply chain implementations, read the "2005 Supply & Demand Chain Executive 100" article in the June/July 2005 issue of the magazine. Also watch the Today's Headlines section of SDCExec.com every Tuesday and Thursday for more in depth best practices drawn from this year's Supply & Demand Chain Executive 100.
Company: Catalyst International (Milwaukee, WI)
Company Size: Small
Company Sector: Non-Manufacturing (Transportation/Logistics Services)
Area(s) of Enablement: Fulfillment/Logistics, Supply Chain Integration & Infrastructure
Enabler: ILOG (Mountain View, CA)
Case Study:Catalyst International provides software and solutions to optimize the performance of enterprise supply chains. The company needed to find a way to build more functionality and flexibility into its slotting system, reduce the code that its programmers had to write, and give its business analysts the capability to make changes to the system without having to rely on programmers. To accomplish these goals, Catalyst turned to a business rule management system from ILOG.The Challenge
Catalyst's supply chain execution solutions include application components designed to streamline the physical movement of goods, enable collaboration with customers and suppliers, and provide visibility and analysis into customers' supply chains. Companies such as Boeing, Saks, Sony Music, Abbott Laboratories, Castle Metals, Illinois Power and Brown-Forman have chosen Catalyst as a supply chain partner.
As part of its overall supply chain execution offering, the company provides warehouse management solutions that manage the physical movement and storage of goods and associated resources at or between locations. Catalyst employs a practice called slotting, which determines the optimal warehouse location for products based on demand, historical consumption trends, dimensions, weight and various other item and location attributes. Slotting ensures that new products that are in high demand are appropriately positioned within the forward pick area.
Positioning within the warehouse is critical because travel time accounts for more than half of pick/replenishment labor time. Optimizing forward picking locations reduces labor costs and increases fulfillment rates. The system is extremely complex and employs complicated algorithms in order to identify the best slot for a product.
Its warehouse management services offer customers opportunity to increase efficiency and reduce costs. Catalyst needed to find a way to build more functionality and flexibility into its slotting system and at the same time rely less on programmers to write code every time a change to the system was required. The company wanted to give its business analysts the capability to quickly and easily make changes to the slotting application — including specifying business constraints and business solutions — without having to rely on programmers.
The Solution
Catalyst found the solution to these challenges in ILOG JRules, a business rule management system (BRMS) that makes it practical for business and IT professionals to collaborate in managing business policies across the enterprise. JRules supports collaboration on several versions of a business application at the same time, providing features to support concurrent rule development by IT development teams and rule management by policy managers. This collaboration is possible because ILOG JRules includes support for repository merging through a combination of enhancements to the rule repository, query tool, and new best practices.
By implementing JRules, Catalyst provides its users with the capability of writing less code and still giving them the performance and flexibility they demand. JRules simplifies applications for the user and the developer and helps determines a series of potential stock movements that would optimize the picking process. A business analyst doesn't have to write code — or rely on a developer to write code — in order to change the system. This gives users flexibility in setting up conditions for an operation to occur. JRules gives users flexibility that a traditional "tabs, flags and textboxes" configuration dialog cannot provide. The solution keeps rule packages simple, especially when developing rules to be maintained by non-developers. The concept of using a rule engine as a business logic server is helpful; developers who aren't JRules experts can integrate JRules.
JRules has reduced development costs for Catalyst by allowing business users to make changes to the slotting system. At the same time, JRules added flexibility and usability — which are important to keep the learning curve low. Catalyst believes that JRules is faster than a hand-coded Java solution and is less costly to maintain. Catalyst anticipates that with JRules in place, it will reduce overall picking labor costs by 8-10 percent. These results have led the company to identify additional applications for implementing JRules.
For more stories of successful supply chain implementations, read the "2005 Supply & Demand Chain Executive 100" article in the June/July 2005 issue of the magazine. Also watch the Today's Headlines section of SDCExec.com every Tuesday and Thursday for more in depth best practices drawn from this year's Supply & Demand Chain Executive 100.
