Irvine, CA April 4, 2001 Jabil Global Services, the largest hub service provider in the United States, is seeking to improve its inventory visibility and reduce its purchasing costs by implementing a "reverse supply chain management" system from Kirus, according to an announcement Tuesday from the software provider
Reverse supply chain management (RSCM) involves the return path of a product from the customer through repair and redeployment to its final disposition.
The Kirus System is designed to manage the processes and business rules involved in the reverse supply chain while providing real-time visibility of inventory and operations. After evaluating more than 15 applications, Jabil selected the Kirus System as the application that would give the company real-time inventory visibility across the reverse supply chain and enable the execution of global operations.
"Kirus was designed to manage the reverse supply chain, whereas other solutions we considered were primarily manufacturing products that had repair modules [that] were not optimized for our business," said Andy Hatch, vice president of operations at Jabil Global Services (JGS).
JGS has been running its service operations on the Kirus legacy system for four years. Jabil is currently installing the new Kirus System to automate all of the process flows involved in the return and redeployment of goods.
"Using the Kirus System will enable Jabil to effectively expand our operations globally," Hatch added. "Kirus gives us ... visibility into our inventory, from receipt of the products to returns, so we can track customer-owned assets that are being repaired or refurbished. We can also monitor our perpetual inventory and tie inventory to actual shop floor usage. Being able to track this historical data helps us plan and forecast, and also allows us to better track the cost of goods."
JGS, a wholly owned subsidiary of Jabil Circuit, provides services from three U.S. facilities and one in Dublin, Ireland. Jabil's customers include leading high-tech manufacturers and service providers.
