Match Customers Orders To Dealer Inventory And Manufacturing Schedule In Real Time

Optessa MLS offers "real time order matching" capabilities to manufacturers and dealers. They can achieve greater customer satisfaction and more efficient movement of finished product inventory with Optessa's real time order matching capability. This is a significant benefit Optessa can provide large product manufacturers and dealers, and they will see a return on investment from day 1.

As an example let's look at an auto industry transaction that occurs thousands of times every day:  a customer walks into a dealership and requests a particular type of vehicle. The customer has a certain set of features in mind, such as model, color, interior and options such as rear view camera. The dealer may have this combination in stock, or they may check availability from another dealer or a distribution warehouse or they may have to order it from the manufacturer. There can be hundreds of such customer dealer interactions every minute.

What Optessa's order matching capabilities allow a dealer to do is to treat each customer request like an airline reservation request. After a customer enters itinerary details in an airline booking system, the system offers different choices at different prices and routes. Similarly, if a dealer enters a customer request, Optessa MLS will offer the dealer different options of how to fulfill the order and the time required to do it: it may be in the dealer’s inventory, other dealers may have it, it may be in a distribution center, or it may be in the schedule to be manufactured. The Optessa MLS computational engine has the capability to perform optimized matching in real-time based on an in-memory data model of the inventory at dealer(s), distribution centers and manufacturing schedules. The functionality includes locating exact and approximate matches and prioritizing the matches for presenting to the customer, as the image below illustrates.

This allows both the manufacturers and dealers the ability to reduce the friction - and the cost associated with it - between what a customer wants and what the manufacturer has available or will make available. At present, customer orders placed at dealers are matched to and consume the schedules by batch business processes. A real-time order matching process would operate in a manner similar to an airline reservation system. Benefits would be faster inventory and schedule turnover and better order fulfillment. 

Parallelized & In-memory Architecture for On-demand & Event Driven Planning & Scheduling Optimization

Optessa offers planning and scheduling optimization products for manufacturing companies, specifically the auto industry. These products are:

·      Optessa MLP: enterprise level planning

·      Optessa MLS: detailed scheduling and sequencing

·      Optessa RTS: real-time scheduling and sequencing in an automated environment

Optessa has been successful in developing business with global manufacturers. The functional and technical advantage that the company’s products have over competitors has been critical to obtaining these customers.

In the auto and consumer products manufacturing industries, there is increasing pressure to be flexible and reactive in terms of business processes. The ideal state would be to have complete flexibility in order fulfillment while maintaining business process stability.

Optessa sees new business opportunities in enabling and positioning Optessa MLP and Optessa MLS to meet this need. The new business challenges require on-demand planning and scheduling of business processes. With this aim, Optessa has embarked on a project to bring together Optessa’s optimization technology and a platform based on in-memory database technology and concurrent optimization to develop an on-demand and event driven planning and scheduling architecture for Optessa MLP and MLS.

There are two significant challenges to achieving near real-time planning and scheduling business processes based on Optessa MLP and MLS.

The first challenge is data marshaling: data base operations involving large data volumes are necessary to extract, map and transfer the data required by Optessa to generate optimized solutions. These are typically client-side processes. Up to 50% of the entire process time could be due to data marshaling.  In-memory databases offer the capability to significantly speed up data marshaling lead times. Optessa has released an in-memory data marshaling and parallelized version of Optessa products while preserving the generic platform independent nature of the products.

The second challenge is computational: Optessa algorithmic engines generally execute in a serial manner. Optessa is parallelizing the design of the computational engines to make use of the multi-threading capabilities offered by current multi-core CPUs.

By addressing these two challenges Optessa seeks to reduce solution generation times by 66% to 90%. Such speeding up will not only benefit existing customers but also enable new on-demand / real-time use cases that are presently intractable. Optessa will be able to offer a unique set of solutions, currently unmatched by competitors.

Optessa MLP on HANA: Big Data Manufacturing Planning

Optessa has completed a first port of its planning application Optessa MLP to the HANA platform. This is a pioneering effort in bringing together the power of HANA and Optessa optimization algorithms to address large and complex planning and scheduling problems faced by global enterprises.

The particular use case refers to a large scale planning and scheduling process at a major auto company. Sales orders, numbering in the millions, relating to multiple plants and vehicle lines have to be assigned to build weeks. In addition to a large set of material, plant and labor constraints, the planner has to consider rules relating to dealer and regional allocations. These constraints and rules number in the tens of thousands. Initial tests have shown that Optessa MLP on HANA achieves significant reduction in lead time to generate the solution. Benefits include better quality plans and the ability to conduct multiple iterations in the same time frame. This leads to improved flexibility and lower costs.

Such planning with big data sets is a typical problem and the HANA + Optessa solution will find wide applicability across manufacturing and non-manufacturing industries that face the challenge of optimally matching demand and capacity.

Would you like to know more? Benchmark results of the Optessa MLP+ HANA solution will be unveiled at SAPPHIRE NOW, and you can find out who the client is!

For more information on Optessa products, please visit www.optessa.com or email info@optessa.com. Please look for Optessa at SAPPHIRE NOW.

Respond to Manufacturing Challenges with Optessa Optimization on HANA

What are the big challenges for large manufacturers today? To stay competitive in the global market, they have to increase market share by offering product variety and volumes and exploring new markets. They need to control cost to stay profitable, yet fulfill demand in a timely manner. They have to achieve this in the face of unpredictable events such as the March 2011 tsunami in Japan. The auto industry, for instance, was affected across the world after the tsunami. That caused disruptions but did not stop the move forward. One of the new markets the auto manufacturers have focussed on is India. Twenty years ago, customers had a choice of three models and makes of cars in India; while today, dozens of choices are available because despite the challenges all the major auto manufacturers are actively expanding business in India.

Manufacturers need flexibility and speed to stay competitive. Business processes such as demand management and planning and scheduling have to be capable of near real-time response. To meet demand quickly and accurately, the response lead time at every stage of planning and production has to be kept short. Since there is huge product and feature variety, data volumes can be enormous. For instance, in the case of automotive manufacturing, a single vehicle can be offered in thousands of configurations with annual sales into millions. This is where optimization and big data come together.

Together, Optessa and HANA offer an optimal solution to manufacturers who deal with large amounts of data and yet need to optimize planning and scheduling of production. Optessa offers proven technology to model manufacturing environments at a high resolution and provides optimal solutions to complex planning and scheduling problems. HANA addresses the key challenge of marshalling big data from different sources and maintaining a live in-memory data model of the demand – manufacturing – supply chain. Optessa on HANA is a unique offering: it is on-demand optimization of live data models for the fast paced manufacturing environment.

For more information on Optessa planning and scheduling products please visit www.optessa.com or e-mail info@optessa.com. Optessa is part of the HANA Startup Focus program and will be at Sapphire NOW as one of the participants in the program. Look for us there.