IT and electronics leader deploys software from Kinaxis to meet the challenges of a competitive marketplace
Ottawa, Canada — July 13, 2005 — Kinaxis Corp., formerly Webplan, a provider of response management solutions, said that Toshiba Europe GmbH has deployed Kinaxis RapidResponse to manage volatile demand and supply to increase customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.
Toshiba Europe GmbH, located in Neuss, Germany, is the European headquarters for Toshiba Corp. Toshiba, with 161,000 employees and revenues of $53 billion, is one of the largest Information Technology and Electronics companies in the world, and Toshiba Europe GmbH, employs more than 900 with revenues of ¬1.95 billion in the 2003-2004 fiscal year.
Toshiba has sold over 10 million notebooks in Europe to date, and its broad-based product portfolio includes high-performance mobile PCs for professional use, ultra-portables and tablet PCs, notebooks as multimedia or entertainment centers, as well as pocket PCs.
In order to maintain its leadership position in the highly competitive marketplace with product life cycles of three months, shifting market demands and aggressive competition, Toshiba is continuously improving its supply chain processes.
Toshiba Europe GmbH chose Kinaxis RapidResponse to improve the company's ability to respond to changes in demand and supply. In doing so, Toshiba set out to reduce the time required to respond to changes and align demand and supply; reduce the operational workload of processing an increasing number of stock-keeping units (SKUs); share information online across many organizations and functions; and enhance the granularity of information to a higher number of sales territories.
The ability to respond rapidly to change has become a competitive necessity, said Toshinari Sato, vice president of Information, Toshiba Europe. With RapidResponse, we were up and running quickly and have seen strong user acceptance. The flexibility and rapid response times have empowered our staff to collaborate and quickly make the right decisions that align with our corporate goals.
Kinaxis said RapidResponse enables manufacturers to anticipate potential problems, review multiple action alternatives, and align operations to respond to changes at the point-of-action. The software's architecture also connects directly to front- and back-end systems and supports the flow of information across multiple sites.
The key to driving manufacturing performance is in responding to change, said Randy Littleson, vice president of Marketing for Kinaxis. Decisions must be made quickly and, most importantly, be aligned with corporate objectives to be effective. We're pleased we can help Toshiba lead the marketplace by enabling the company to respond to the ever present changes in the IT and Electronics market.
