San Antonio October 30, 2001 Optiant has introduced PowerChain Architect, an application that was created to enable manufacturers to design and develop complex supply chains, whether a company decides to reconfigure its supply chain for improved performance or bring a new product to market.
The solution assesses the critical trade-offs that influence how supply chains ultimately perform and then recommends to the customer the ideal combination of suppliers, manufacturing processes, distribution methods and supporting inventory strategies.
In addition, its optimization capability aligns decisions with the critical business issues, such as how to reduce cycle time, how to select suppliers, how to best implement a postponement strategy, and the right mix of make versus buy. More specifically, PowerChain Architect lets manufacturers perform such tasks as determining the total supply chain impacts of both supply and demand variability, and understanding how those uncertainties affect profitability; and testing multiple what-if' scenarios to preview how making a single supply chain choice would affect overall performance.
"Optimizing a company's supply chain strategy, sourcing decisions and inventory policies can reduce working capital and improve profit margins by as much as 5 percent of sales a major advantage in the highly competitive markets in which our customers compete," said Marcus Ruark, co-founder and CEO of Optiant. "PowerChain Architect gives them the ability to intelligently examine the hard questions about designing a supply chain and get the best answers for their business."
PowerChain Architect extends the capabilities of the PowerChain suite, which was launched in April, with a proprietary, multi-stage optimization engine and a collaborative, intuitive user interface. According to a statement released by Opiant, an international computer peripherals manufacturer using PowerChain solutions reduced inventory by more than 30 percent in under a year, while simultaneously increasing service levels by identifying optimal inventory strategies, saving more than $9 million. The company also cited a Fortune 500 industrial manufacturer that improved inventory turns by 50 percent.
