JRG said more than 25 factories use its solution to reduce production costs, streamline inventory
San Mateo, CA — March 7, 2005 — JRG today announced the launch of an on-demand supply chain planning solution for the consumer-packaged goods (CPG) industry. JRG's hosted service connects all organizational silos into a single planning system. JRG customers include Carvel, Ghirardelli Chocolates, Monterey Gourmet Foods, See's Candies and Wise Foods.
JRG, commenting on the difference in their on-demand solution as compared to other CPG supply chain planning solutions, said first-generation advanced planning and scheduling systems (APS) often require investments in implementation, maintenance and upgrade fees, as well as implementation and upgrade cycles. In contrast, JRG said its on-demand model offers the connectedness that is necessary to achieve business benefits, but only requires a flat monthly subscription fee and no implementation costs, and the solution is live in 10 weeks or less.
"Over the past five years, there's been a power shift from manufacturers to the new 'power retailers,' including Wal-Mart and Costco, who's demands now require manufacturers to be more flexible," said Jonathon Knight, JRG's CEO. "JRG's on-demand solution enables manufacturers to free their factories by aligning production to demand on a daily basis."
JRG said its on-demand supply chain planning solution helps manufacturers connect their factories directly to retailers to schedule and re-schedule production daily based on retailer demand. The solution also delivers forward-looking performance management to anticipate supply chain disruption before it occurs, and team planning to eliminate organizational silos and create a more responsive organization. System components include the JRG Factory Scheduler, JRG Enterprise Planner and JRG Performance Manager.
"Our goal for the first season within the JRG environment was to maintain high inventory levels but impose more rigid shelf-life controls on our highly perishable product," said Eileen Duag, director of Product Support at See's Candies. "Using Factory Scheduler as a tool, we saved over $200,000 in production overrun costs, while achieving better than 99 percent fulfillment rates to our shops."
Mike Kopetski, director of Logistics at Wise Foods, added, "We're on track to see three times the return on investment in the first year. It used to take 10 hours to build a schedule — three hours of preparation, five hours to build and two hours to create a materials plan. Now with JRG, scheduling — from beginning to end — takes one hour."
JRG said it is starting off 2005 with three new CPG customers — Carvel, Farbest and Westfarm — and two recent multi-plant expansions within their customer base —Pilkington, Weetabix. Many of these customers have bought or implemented multi-factory solutions, including Carvel, Pilkington, See's Candies and Weetabix.
