solutions for your industry industrial

Meeting Profitability and Customer Expectations

Industrial manufacturers have seen a trend toward a greater share of supplier content in the products they manufacture as they seek cost savings in an increasingly global market. Many of the supplied parts can only be sourced from one, or maybe two, suppliers, often in a different region of the world, leading to high risk for the industrial manufacturer. And, growing global competition has elevated customer leverage and expectations.

While most industrial manufacturers operate relatively low-volume, non-commodity businesses, this doesn't prevent them from having demanding customers. A growing number of customers expect to make configuration and other changes right up to the last minute, often in conflict with component lead times and frequently jeopardizing their already aggressive delivery timelines. The result is a situation where profitability and customer expectations are often at odds. Increased buyer sophistication in emerging markets have driven up the need for product differentiation across markets, and hence the complexity of the supply chain.

To thrive in today's environment, industrial manufacturers need to shift from a role of controlling all aspects of manufacturing, to one of coordinating the activities of their virtual supply network. To do so, requires new business processes and tools to support them—tools that foster integrated demand-supply planning, monitoring and collaborative response to change.

Supply Chain Management for Today's Industrial Manufacturer

Global market leaders are using Kinaxis™ RapidResponse™ to

• compress process cycle times,
• drive lags out of the manufacturing process and
• optimize inventory management for better overall performance.

Greater supply chain agility and customer responsiveness help achieve and maintain competitive advantage through a real time supply chain.

RapidResponse helps industrial manufacturers regain essential supply chain visibility into their extended supply chains, ensuring that everyone in the organization has views into the current state of operations based on their role. This greatly enhances the industrial manufacturer's ability to coordinate the flow of information and goods through the extended supply chain. As a result, RapidResponse is helping industrial manufacturers realize breakthroughs in demand management, supply management, sales and operations planning (S&OP), supply chain risk management and lean manufacturing.

Armed with this information, supply chain professionals are able to simulate the impact of plan changes and identify and review the required course corrections to balance customer and profitability objectives. They are able to perform simulations in a collaborative and structured manner with their customers and suppliers, fostering trust between trading partners, the greatest "lubricant" to trade.

Success Stories

• Days of supply was cut by 70 percent
  — Leading measurement tools and technology company
• Clear-to-build process went from 2 days to 20 minutes. Reduced effective lead time from 6 months to 3 weeks
  — Designer and manufacturer of precision control components and systems
• Expediting fees reduced by a third and past due purchase orders cut in half.
  — Specialty vehicle manufacturer
• Reduced liability on high-dollar-value parts by between 25% and 30%.
  — Automatic Test Equipment Design and Manufacturer