August 1997, Volume 3, No. 8 News in Brief

TI Licenses i2's Rhythm Texas Instruments (Dallas, Tex.; http://www.ti.com), a manufacturer of semiconductors, has signed a licensing and joint development agreement for the use of the Rhythm intelligent solution for planning, optimization and decision support from i2 Technologies (Irving, Tex.; http://www.i2.com). This multi-year contract, valued at $24 million, includes software license, services and support. Key to the implementation will be the use of i2's Rhythm Intelligent Available-To-Promise (ATP). Through Rhythm ATP, TI will be able to provide real-time Available-to-Promise commitments to customer demand. Rhythm ATP is based upon the Supply Chain Planner engine and uses advanced allocation and priority analysis, key requirements to the semiconductor industry. Rhythm Demand Planner will enhance forecasting and demand management capabilities, while Rhythm Factory Planner will provide improved sourcing capabilities on the factory floor. Concurrent with the Factory and Demand Planner tools, TI will utilize Rhythm Supply Chain Planner to coordinate their transportation, distribution and manufacturing functions across the company's international and national channels. Schlumberger Standardizes on QAD's MFG/PRO QAD (Carpinteria, Calif.; http://www.qad.com), a provider of manufacturing software, has signed a multi-million dollar enterprise resource planning (ERP) software agreement with Schlumberger (New York, N.Y.; http://www.schlumberger.com), a supplier of oil field measurement systems and services. The contract establishes QAD's MFG/PRO as the standard ERP solution at Schlumberger Resource Management Services (RMS) and Test & Transactions (T&T) divisions. The extension calls for Schlumberger to install MFG/PRO at 11 additional international sites in its RMS and T&T divisions. After implementing these additional sites, RMS and T&T will have MFG/PRO running at 50 sites, serving 4,000 users in 20 countries. The effort includes integration of financial management, manufacturing, sales and distribution systems, as well as field services where applicable. RMS and T&T supply measurement and transactions-related products and services. Pharmavite Implements Planning Software from Logility Pharmavite (Mission Hills, Calif.; http://www.pharmavite.com), a manufacturer of vitamins and nutritional supplements, has selected Logility Planning Solutions from Logility (Atlanta, Ga.; http://www.logility.com), a supplier of intelligent supply chain planning software, to improve its manufacturing planning and to expand employee involvement in forecasting. Pharmavite will be using Logility's Demand Planning, Replenishment Planning and Manufacturing Planning modules. Demand Planning reconciles demand history, orders and other data to produce comprehensive overviews of demand. Replenishment Planning enables continuous replenishment policies such as Efficient Consumer Response (ECR) and Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) with constraint-based, time-phased plans. Manufacturing Planning is a constraint-based planning and scheduling tool that optimizes capacity plans and determines production sequencing. FASTech Teams Up with AutoSimulations FASTech Integration (Lincoln, Mass.; http://www.fastech.com), a supplier of manufacturing execution system (MES) solutions, has integrated its FACTORYworks MES software with the AutoSched Productivity Family from AutoSimulations (Bountiful, Utah; http://www.autosim.com), a developer of simulation and scheduling products. The goal of the integration project is to help users increase throughput, reduce in-process inventory, and improve equipment and personnel utilization by providing rule-based dispatching and scheduling. MK Group Partners with Thru-Put The MK Group (Islandia, N.Y.; http://www.mkgroup.com) has formed a partnership with Thru-Put Technologies (San Jose, Calif.; http://www.thru-put.com), a supplier of planning and scheduling software for use in discrete manufacturing operations. The partnership will give MK Group customers the option to include Thru-Put's manufacturing planning and scheduling software as a part of their business solution. Thru-Put's Resonance TOC-scheduler will allows MK Group users to identify bottlenecks or constraints, exploit those constraints, and synchronize all other jobs to maximize a plant's throughput. Available as an add-on module to MK Group's enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, Resonance uses the Drum-Buffer-Rope approach (the application of constraints) to manufacturing. Planned delivery will be as a fully integrated extension of both MK Manufacturing and MK Enterprise. IMI Signs Deal with Frontec Industri-Matematik International (IMI) (Tarrytown, N.Y.; http://www.imi.se), a supplier of demand chain management solutions for manufacturers, has formed a strategic alliance with Frontec AMT (Stamford, Conn.; http://www.frontec.com) to integrate IMI's System ESS integrated order fulfillment software with Frontec's AMTrix-based Intelligent Messaging Solutions. Together, these products are designed to deliver customer order information and accelerate business processes across the demand chain, as well as automatically notify companies of non-routine events using electronic commerce to enable fast response. Teaming with Frontec will enable IMI to provide demand chain messaging services that include intelligent message-handling capabilities to support information sharing across disparate demand chain environments. System ESS enables manufacturers to leverage product, pricing, promotion, packaging, delivery and other customer information to create externally-focused order fulfillment processes across the demand chain. Frontec's AMTrix provides intelligent message capability to secure, authenticate, route and translate electronic messages, as well as interpret the message content and execute processes based on that content, according to user-defined business rules. IMI is developing its demand chain messaging services based on the Supply Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) model developed by the Supply Chain Council (see following item). Supply Chain Council Incorporates as a Nonprofit The Supply Chain Council (SCC) (Boston, Mass.; http://www.supply-chain.com) has incorporated as a nonprofit organization to provide services and support for its membership. This initiative will facilitate the continued expansion of the Council, and the active promotion of the Supply Chain Operations Reference model (SCOR), a cross-industry standard for improved supply chain management. SCOR can be used as a basis to evaluate the effectiveness of supply chain management and to target and measure specific process improvements. Creating a language for communicating among intra-company functions and inter-company supply partners, the model defines common definitions of supply chain management processes that can be matched against "best practices," benchmarking performance data, and optimal software applications. SCOR 2.0 is scheduled for later this summer. Fuji Film Chooses CBR Software Fuji Film Electronic Imaging (FFEI) (Elmsford, N.Y.; http://www.fujifilm.com), a manufacturer of pre-press equipment for the electronic imaging industry, has chosen case-based reasoning (CBR) software from Inference (Novato, Calif.; http://www.inference.com), a provider of knowledge management solutions, to enhance its customer support services. The software will be applied in two separate phases. Fuji's distributors worldwide will use Inference's "case bases" via the World Wide Web, through a proprietary graphical user interface, to access fault diagnostic information. This will be used to deal with customers and their field engineers by telephone. Using laptops and modems, field engineers will have the option to access the information directly from the customer's site. In a second phase, Fuji will make all of this information accessible to its end users via the Web. Customers will be able to type their queries into Fuji's Web site, where they will be guided to a solution by a series of questions.

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