Ability`s Scenario Planner targets supply chain variables for what-if analysis

Ability Solutions has unveiled the Ability Scenario Planner, a new product aimed at helping distribution firms to analyse the potential impact of changing supply chain variables on their inventories and financial performance.

Roger Koch, product manager at Ability Solutions, says: "Organisations in the retail, manufacturing and distribution sectors are starting to understand the close relationship between supply chain performance and financial performance. As a result, there is a growing demand for supply chain management solutions that are strongly geared towards financial output.

"The Scenario Planner allows companies to measure the potential impact of changing supply chain variables on all areas of financial performance, including capital utilisation, growth and profitability."

The separate Scenario Planner module expands the functionality of the Ability - Inventory Optimization product with a set of features that helps companies with supply chain capital projection (SCCP) and supply chain inventory planning (SCIP). The product allows organisations to conduct "what-if" scenarios on a range of factors that impact on SCCP and SCIP.

Koch says: "The product allows companies to project the impact changing the traditional variables in supply chain planning, such as carrying costs versus bulk-buying discounts, or reducing inventory holdings at the cost of decreasing customer service levels.

"However, for many distribution businesses, cash flow and capital utilisation are even more critical than inventory holdings. This product also allows companies to take into account factors such as insurance costs, debtors and creditors payment cycles, taxes and interest rates in their supply chain planning."

Customers can use the Scenario Planner to conduct what-if scenario tests on a range of variables such as:

• .         Inventory levels

• .         Replenishment cycles

• .         Lead-time variance

• .         Review periods

• .         Customer service levels

• .         Cash flow

• .         Bulk buying discounts

• .         Creditors

• .         Debtors

• .         Promotions

• .         Transport and logistics

• .         Taxes and duties

• .         Risk costs

Scenario Planner allows companies to analyse the potential effect on their business of moves such as slicing debtors from 60 days to 30 days, or increasing stock held in inventory to benefit from bulk discounts from suppliers. The product allows customers to drill right down to the income statement level to analyse the financial impact of changing supply chain variables in minute detail.

The new product is the first from Ability to be based on a three-tier architecture that separates the front-end, database and business logic layers of the application from each other. This new architecture will eventually replace the client/server model currently used in the Ability product range.

This approach eases deployment of the application over the Web or in a thin-client environment. Benefits of a three-tier architecture include faster and simpler deployment of the applications to end-users; tighter systems management and security; and reduced cost of ownership. The three-tier architecture is also more flexible than the client/server model because it allows companies to make changes to the database, business logic, or front-end without needing to modify the other layers.

The product is based on Ability`s neural network technology. Scenario Planner supports a wide variety of data formats for reports, including Excel, HTML and XML. This allows executives to view supply chain management reports in the format they are most comfortable with.

The product is designed to integrate tightly with the Ability - Inventory Optimization software, but has an open architecture that can be plugged into any back-office applications suite and database with minimal fuss.