Pittsfield, MA and San Francisco February 12, 2002 ChemConnect, an online marketplace for chemicals and plastics; and GE Operation Services, a division of General Electric, announced a joint agreement to provide enterprise resource planning (ERP) inventory tracking and management tools and services for ChemConnect Members.
"At OxyChem, our use of GE Ops to remotely manage inventories and to execute order fulfillment electronically is an easy and seamless process," said Stacy Palmatary, Occidental Chemical Co.'s vice president of e-business. "Now, by driving all this activity through ChemConnect, we will be able to reduce the number of connections we need."
Together, ChemConnect and GE Operation Services will implement a full suite of Chem eStandards, the inventory, forecasting and collaboration electronic messages developed by the Chemical Industry Data Exchange (CIDX), for the transfer of eXtensible Markup Language (XML) documents between ERP systems. Buyers and suppliers will be able to view inventory positions and automatically generate replenishment orders, according to predefined inventory management rules.
"This is a hands-off inventory and management solution that will save chemical and plastics companies time and money," said Kenneth Sherman, GE Operations Services General Manager. "We're automating what was a manual and error-prone system and integrating this solution with other business processes ChemConnect has already instituted to increase efficiency and data accuracy," added Michael Kenny, GE Operations Services Regional Manager.
Combining ChemConnect's supply chain connectivity services with GE Operation Services' vendor-managed inventory (VMI) and collaborative planning forecasting and replenishment (CPFR) services, the integrated service solution will provide companies linked through ChemConnect's connectivity hub with a complete view of inventory status, including in-transit, planned shipments and receipts data.
ChemConnect will collect in-transit data from logistics providers and planned shipment and receipts data from trading partner ERP systems. Global VMI algorithms and replenishment tools will determine optimal shipment requirements, as well as allow customers and their suppliers to view, share and manipulate demand data.
