"Our focus is on minimizing customer downtime," says John Hally, multinational logistics project manager. "We have some printers that can print 135 copies a minute. Our service engineers have to have the parts they need to repair the machine in the shortest time possible."

Xerox has to provide that rapid response in a cost-effective manner. It met the challenge through an inventory forecasting, planning and deployment system from LPA Software, Fairport, N.Y.

"The LPA software has allowed us to maintain a balanced performance between inventory, service level and logistics costs. It also provides us with a system that brings all the data our planners need from multiple systems around the world into a single worksheet at their desktops," says Hally. "It has automated fully 60 percent of our planning decisions, maximized service levels, substantially reduced our inventory, and allowed us to support even greater numbers of products — at lower inventory levels and improved levels of service — with the same number of planners," Hally says.

A typical scenario for Xerox involves a planner in one of its organizations supplying spare parts to another part of that same organization.

"The planner will receive an order request and the request will appear on the screen," Hally says. "If the system analyzes the request and sees it doesn't have an impact on other orders already placed, or enough stock is available to satisfy the requirement, it deals with the request automatically, including generation of the order."

The majority of all requests are handled that way. If the system does detect a problem — like an adverse impact on stock, or a problem with maintaining service levels with another customer through a competing order — it highlights the request for the planner to investigate.

"When there is an exception and the planner has to decide what to do with the order, they are presented with a screen that shows all their outstanding customer orders and all the orders they have placed with their suppliers," Hally says.

"This shows them the net effect on their inventory alongside their target inventory. And it all takes place in real time — the system provides updated figures on what the effect on stock will be, as well as highlights days of supply."

All the information the planners need is made available to them in a single on-screen workspace.

"The concept of bringing all the data to a single worksheet is tremendous," Hally says. "The worksheet lets you see 12 months of all forecasts and actuals. You can see customer orders, orders you have placed on your suppliers, and the resulting inventory."

He says the planners really appreciate the graphical interface.

"Our planners always knew what kinds of calculations they needed to make, they just never had the simple interface, the speed of response, and the work queue of prioritized exceptions that is presented to them for their attention."

Those exceptions are based on parameters that Xerox has entered into the system.

"The parameters are very easy to enter and very flexible," Hally says. "They let us create what we call 'review reasons.' These are the triggers that say yes, to allow an automatic order, or no, to block it because such-and-such a situation has arisen."

The system also provides Xerox with an early detection system for problems.

"If the system shows a surge in demand, that may be the first identification of a problem with a particular part," Hally says. "The planner can then drill down into usage and demand history to see what the previous requirements have been from that customer and why this order is perhaps double what they feel it should be."

The on-screen planner worksheet is constantly receiving information from inventory, MRP and warehousing systems all over the world. Hally reports that the software performs well in the very heavy-duty transaction environment — planners using the system are supporting 13,000 service engineers in the U.S. alone, with each service engineer using, on average, three parts a day.

"I would say that on a worldwide basis we are dealing with 100,000 transactions a day," he says. "When you account for the part-usage transaction as well as the effect of that transaction on inventory, a total of probably 200,000-300,000 transactions are being fed into the system daily."

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