SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT UPDATE

Information at Your Fingertips

By Irving Chernofsky

When you need timely, complete, and relevant management reports, where do you look? Not under your desk, we hope. Making sense of large amounts of data is a complex process, and you need the tools that will make that process work for you. Business intelligence tools can help you churn through vast quantities of data and forecasting based on past results, which can, in turn help you understand when and where to send all those products.

Oracle Daily Business Intelligence (DBI) for Supply Chain offers a collection of enterprise supply chain indicators, daily aggregated information with actionable details and trends, and multidimensional analysis and period-to-date comparisons that can put all this information into perspective. You also get comprehensive supply chain measures for actively monitoring shipping performance, cycle time, returns patterns, inventory investments, order execution, and customer service levels. Using Oracle DBI for Supply Chain, you'll have integrated and current information to improve your supply chain execution and you won't have to go searching for it.

What's in Your Toolbox?
Technology can help smooth the rough patches caused by today's high-velocity manufacturing environment, and the right intelligence tools make it even smoother. A manufacturing manager, for example, needs to know how her production volume compares to her planned production. With Oracle DBI for Manufacturing, you can meet your manufacturing goals with information on how to maximize throughput, manage and control costs, monitor resources, and quickly identify bottlenecks. In addition, you'll be able to compare manufacturing plans in terms of key performance indicators (KPIs) and track product gross margin as well as the impact on your bottom line.

Stay in First Place
In addition, greater consumer demand translates into shortened product lifecycles. That means most of the market share goes to the manufacturers that are first to market with the highest-quality, lowest-cost products. How can you ensure that you're that manufacturer? Oracle DBI for Product Lifecycle Management lets you analyze the financial performance of a product throughout its lifecycle. You can compare the daily revenue numbers and product margins for a product to its performance in a prior period, or compare the performance of one product line to another, so you can ensure your place in the competitive landscape. The right tools can help you make informed decisions, such as when to launch new products, when to move production products to maintenance status, and when to ditch products in favor of their successors.

Smart Shopper
The first step in saving money is to understand what you spend it on. Managing supplier relationships gives you that information at a glance, as well as the ability to see that high-quality goods are delivered on time and are purchased at the best price. Oracle DBI for Procurement provides comprehensive measures for actively monitoring spend volume, contract usage, supplier performance, and noncontract spend. It compares procurement measures for a period-to-date against the previous period or year.

Keeping House
A maintenance organization's work is never done. You must be able to respond to all work requests and complete them on time. It's essential to know how many work orders are in backlog and past due, because these can bring down the overall service level of your organization. Oracle DBI for Maintenance provides reports that analyze the number of work orders in backlog and past due, broken down by past-due dates and including trending information by period-to-date. To determine if things are improving or getting worse, these measures can also be compared with prior periods.

Irving Chernofsky is Oracle's Senior Director, Fulfillment, RFID & Supply Chain Intelligence

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