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News Release from: i2 Technologies
Edited by the Manufacturingtalk Editorial
Team on 12 November 2004
Award for Excellence winners announced
Regional manufacturing and supplier winners of the Ken Sharma Award for Excellence in the Americas and Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) regions have been announced.
Regional winners of the Ken Sharma Award for Excellence in the Americas and Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) regions have been announced i2 Technologies, a leading provider of closed-loop supply chain management solutions, and the i2 User Group has announced the regional winners of the Ken Sharma Award for Excellence in the Americas and Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) regions
This article was originally published on Manufacturingtalk on 8 Oct 2004 at 8.00am (UK)
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The winners were honored for ground-breaking best practices in their i2 software implementations at a ceremony held in conjunction with the i2 User Group Conference, Directions.
AMR Research judged the applications and selected winners on established criteria, including overall quality of the application, implementation depth and breadth, time to value, innovation, and overall value.
Named in honor of i2 co-founder Ken Sharma, one of the pioneers of supply chain management, the award recognizes companies and project teams involved in i2 implementations in all major industries around the globe.
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i2 customers in the Americas and EMEA regions with planned, in-progress or completed deployments were eligible to receive the award.
Winners in the Americas include CIBA Vision, GE Trailer Fleet Services, IBM, Southwest Airlines and Sun Microsystems.
Winners from EMEA include SSAB Oxelosund, Transnet and UPM.
"Through sponsoring these awards, it is the i2 User Group's goal to continue Ken Sharma's vision of honoring the collaboration and best practices of industry leaders.
Each year the bar is raised on the quality of the award submissions as businesses look for new ways to extract more value from their supply chain implementations throughout the ups and downs of economic climate changes," said Leanne Marshall, i2 User Group Chairperson.
"It is our goal to always recognize the most ground-breaking successes with the Ken Sharma Award for Excellence." "Ken Sharma was one of the true supply chain visionaries.
The submissions for this award would have made Ken proud," said Lora Cecere, Research Director with AMR Research.
"The competition was stiff, and the selection was difficult.
Each of the award submissions were compelling and thorough with significant value propositions and achievements in supply chain excellence.
AMR Research is honored to be a part of this selection process and wants to congratulate the winners.
It is great to see Ken's vision kept alive through the delivery of supply chain excellence through the use of i2 software." Ken Sharma Award winners from the Greater Asia Pacific Region were honored during i2 Planet Tokyo on November 2, 2004.
Global winners will be recognized during i2 Planet 2005 scheduled to take place in Phoenix, Arizona, USA, May 10 - 12, 2005.
"i2's mission is to drive supply chain excellence and value to its customer base and we are honoring Ken Sharma's vision for i2 through recognizing these companies," said Hiten Varia, i2 chief customer officer and president of the company's Greater Asia-Pacific region.
"Bringing together best practices at the Directions conference and sharing information between peers, our customer base is able to learn how the best in the business use i2 solutions to remain competitive, deliver better customer service and drive value to their company overall." Americas Winners: * CIBA Vision - implementation breadth and depth - as a global leader in the contact lens industry, CIBA Vision continually seeks ways to improve its competitive position.
The company's supply chain organization is charged with maintaining high levels of product availability while improving the efficiency of both working capital and costs.
The company leverages i2 Supply Chain Planner and Demand Planner across all business segments within the CIBA Vision lens supply chain.
CIBA Vision reports that better planning and execution using the i2 solutions has enabled it to improve customer service levels, reduce inventory costs, increase the speed with which new products are made available to markets and improve manufacturing and distribution efficiencies.
Prior to this implementation the company reports its customer service and availability numbers were unpredictable.
Today the company reports it has succeeded in achieving a 99.99 percent product availability rate in its Focus DAILIES brand and from 99.7 to 99.8 percent availability in the high volume and specialty business segments.
CIBA Vision also reports its inventory investment has been reduced by approximately 23 percent and that it is working toward further improvements by year end 2004.
CIBA Vision cites the availability of business data for reporting and analyzing as a major benefit resulting from the implementation.
GE Trailer Fleet Services - time to value - GE Trailer Fleet Services is an industry leader with one of the largest, most diverse fleets - more than 125,000 units - delivering customer-focused services centered on renting, leasing, selling and remarketing trailers.
GE Trailer Fleet Services operates an extensive network of more than 100 branches in Canada, the United States and Mexico.
Challenged to maximize profitable asset utilization and customer satisfaction, GE Trailer Fleet Services implemented forecasting and optimization tools to enable a business process for making decisions about which assets to move between branches to match supply with demand and obtain fleet readiness in advance of customer need.
By leveraging i2 solutions and a new consensus-driven demand management process, the company can now more effectively forecast and model the outbound and return flow of rental assets for a given customer while also considering future revenue potential at a branch to make smarter logistics and repair decisions for supply chain planning and execution.
The solutions are currently live in all six regions in the United States for nearly fifty asset types; the company reports significant benefits through process reengineering and system rollout.
* IBM - innovation - IBM operates one of the largest and most complex supply chains in a dynamic and challenging environment where it is not enough to be fast and efficient.
To meet the needs of its clients, IBM reports its supply chain must be flexible and responsive.
Capability like this takes a strategic focus to transform the supply chain and all its processes, including supply/demand planning and execution.
IBM reports it is using i2 Demand Fulfillment to integrate its planning and execution activities and support real-time order scheduling.
IBM reports the i2 solution has helped the company improve on-time delivery and shorten delivery cycle times by 20%.
Thanks to earlier visibility of supply shortages, IBM has more time to address issues and is more responsive to clients.
The solution is currently implemented across IBM's Personal Computer Division in the Americas and the company plans to roll-out the solution worldwide over the next 6 months.
* Southwest Airlines - vision - Southwest Airlines, a leading low-cost airline dedicated to the highest quality of customer service, has implemented i2 Service Parts Management (SPM) to enable the company's maintenance plan changes to be immediately reflected in its materials plan.
The company reports that implementing this solution was a significant step in developing its adaptive supply chain.
Southwest reports i2 SPM has enabled it to change its forecasting and planning processes for spare parts.
The company claims that by leveraging i2 SPM, it has realized a significant and sustained improvement in spare parts service levels and a reduction in inventory costs.
Specificially the company reports a dramatic increase in forecast accuracy from 30.6 percent to 60.8 percent, improvement in service levels from 93 percent to 95 percent, the identification of $25 million in excess and obsolete materials, repair cost avoidance at more than $5 million and carrying cost avoidance of more than $1 million.
Southwest also reports it has saved approximately $1 million by putting its spare parts procurement on long-term agreements.
The company has also consigned more than $18 million in excess and obsolete material and has been able to save more than $5 million in unnecessary repairs.
* Sun Microsystems - value - Sun Microsystems, a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software, and services that make the Net work, faced the challenge of balancing the requirements of its global customers for fast delivery of high quality, ready-to-deploy solutions against its own asset management objectives.
Extensive coordination with supply partners and third-party logistics providers added further complexity to its supply chain solution needs.
After completion of its eOperations initiative, Sun reported significant improvements in planning cycle time, reduced material costs and raw material inventory, and more accurate and consistent material plans.
EMEA winners: * SSAB Oxelosund AB: value - SSAB Oxelösund, a world leader in the manufacturing of wear plate and extra high-strength construction plate, implemented i2 solutions to improve its delivery performance for streamlined business processes, real-time planning and increased customer satisfaction.
The company implemented i2 SCM solutions including i2 Demand Planner, Supply Chain Planner, Profit Optimizer and Demand Fulfillment with real-time order promising.
SSAB reports the implementation was completed in just six months and has been rolled out to more than 60 users in the company.
As part of this project, SSAB redesigned its business processes to better enable collaborative forecasting of sales volumes and prices, master planning, profit optimization, capacity allocation planning, and web-based capacity reservation and order promising in real-time based on order-specific routings.
SSAB reports implementing these solutions has enabled improved delivery performance from 50 - 60 percent to 90 percent, more ability to determine future peaks in demand and corresponding bottlenecks in production, smarter resource allocation, more accurate and up-to-date forecasts, improved demand and supply plan visibility and faster more efficient order and delivery promises.
* Transnet: Innovation - Transnet, a dominant player in the South African transportation and logistics arena, operates and controls that country's major rail and ports transport infrastructure.
The company uses i2 FreightMatrix to enable and sustain the logistics collaboration process.
The technology architecture for this project centered on visibility across the company's transportation operations.
The company was looking to create the capability for all players to track the movement and whereabouts of freight at all times, online and in real-time.
By using i2 FreightMatrix, Transnet reports that it was able to reduce logistics costs and improve service levels while creating collaboration across its business.
Additionally, Transnet reports increased tonnages moved, improved asset utilization, reduced road transport, increased revenue, improved customer relationships, improved resource allocation and a better understanding of real demand.
Specifically, the company reports it has increased supply chain visibility from 3 percent to 90 percent and reduced return journey time from seven to four days.
* UPM: implementation breadth and depth - UPM is one of the world's leading producers of printing papers and claims to be the clear market leader in magazine papers.
UPM, as it is today, is a result of many mergers and acquisitions over the last 20 years.
Consequently, each of the 22 paper mills belonging to the company operated with their own individual processes, planned their own production schedules and organized their own distribution.
UPM decided to centralize its supply chain management activities in order to operate more effectively as a global organization.
The company set out to create global best-practice processes to reduce operating costs and improve customer service.
For sales planning and forecasting capabilities, UPM implemented i2 Demand Planner, Demand Fulfillment and Supply Chain Planner.
UPM reports that using these solutions in 22 mills and 43 sales locations worldwide enables a global view of its supply chain, leading to improved sales forecasting, reduced operating costs, increased reliability, and better alignment of supply and demand.
UPM reports that i2 solutions allow for a central view of plan production schedules for 52 separate paper machines worldwide, enabling the company to better match production output with market demand.
Additionally, UPM reports the increased capability to troubleshoot problems due to early warnings of constraint in supply and the ability to plan once a week instead of once or twice a year.
* About the i2 User Group - founded in 1997, The i2 User Group is a volunteer organization dedicated to addressing the issues and needs of the users of the entire suite of i2 products.
Through networking and educational opportunities, the i2 User Group provides members countless opportunities to share information and experiences on the selection, implementation and effective use of i2 products.
* About Ken Sharma - Vice chairman of i2 from 1988 until his death in 1999, Ken Sharma's impact on the development of supply chain planning and the future of e-business continues to resonate today.
Throughout his career, Sharma worked to define and refine the concepts of global optimization, multi-enterprise planning, master planning and supply chain planning.
His leadership and vision not only helped to make i2 a top provider of intelligent e-business solutions, but also to change the paradigms by which industries understand concepts such as supply chain planning and technology.
Most important, even as Sharma changed the face of business, he never flagged in his dedication to customers.
He said, "This work of mine has been a great source of satisfaction.
If I've been able to help at least one person, that will be enduring." About i2 - a leading provider of closed-loop supply chain management solutions, i2 designs and delivers software that helps customers optimize and synchronize activities involved in successfully managing supply and demand.
i2's global customer base consists of some of the world's market leaders - including seven of the Fortune global top 10.
Founded in 1988 with a commitment to customer success, i2 remains focused on delivering value by implementing solutions designed to provide a rapid return on investment.
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