Improve your resources and inventory with Supply Planning software

Plan­ning soft­ware — Infor Sup­ply Plan­ning is a pow­er­ful tool. Designed to opti­mize pro­duc­tion, dis­tri­b­u­tion and pro­cure­ment, it improves the per­for­mance of your glob­al sup­ply chain.

Thanks to its abil­i­ty to syn­chro­nize the resources of your entire sup­ply chain, this soft­ware enables you to opti­mize pro­duc­tion, pur­chas­ing and inven­to­ry for medi­um and long-term hori­zons, based on unique cri­te­ria such as : 

• pro­duc­tion resources 
• stor­age and dis­tri­b­u­tion capac­i­ties and costs
• crit­i­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing and/or pur­chas­ing rout­ings and BOMs
• fluc­tu­at­ing needs over time
• resource capac­i­ties and open­ing times
• lead times and costs for man­u­fac­tur­ing, pro­cure­ment and distribution
• the car­bon costs of transport

Infor Sup­ply Plan­ning is also known as Advanced Plan­ning, Baan Plan­ner or Sup­ply+. It is part of Infor’s Sup­ply Chain Plan­ning suite.

Opti­mize your finite-capac­i­ty lines by mod­el­ing your var­i­ous costs and con­straints, using an opti­miza­tion solver.

A powerful tool for controlling your supply chain

This medi­um-to-long-term plan­ning tool is essen­tial for com­pa­nies wish­ing to assess their sup­ply chain vari­ables and the result­ing trade-offs in order to make opti­mal tac­ti­cal deci­sions.

By sim­pli­fy­ing the imple­men­ta­tion of an opti­mized plan that sat­is­fies con­straints and makes the best use of assets, Infor Sup­ply Plan­ning reduces pro­duc­tion costs while :

• opti­miz­ing the load on pro­duc­tion equip­ment over the medi­um and long term,
• sim­u­lat­ing excep­tion­al sit­u­a­tions to find the best solutions,
• cal­cu­lat­ing sup­ply chain and pro­duc­tion costs,
• graph­i­cal­ly visu­al­ize alerts in the sup­ply chain net­work quick­ly and easily

Theadapt­abil­i­ty ofInfor Sup­ply Plan­ning to the evo­lu­tion of your orga­ni­za­tion is anoth­er major advan­tage :

• mul­ti-site plan­ning: in-house pro­duc­tion, sub­con­trac­tors and warehousing
• take into account shelf-life con­straints in antic­i­pa­tion strategies,
• bal­ance the prod­uct range,
• choose the best recipe or prod­uct for­mu­la based on fore­cast­ed avail­abil­i­ty of mate­ri­als and demand.

Meeting supply chain challenges and minimizing their impact

Effec­tive man­age­ment of your sup­ply chain is essen­tial to meet the chal­lenges you face.

Among the chal­lenges cit­ed by suppliers:

• ris­ing costs
• effi­cien­cy of the pro­duc­tion sys­tem and lack of capacity
• lack of vis­i­bil­i­ty and col­lab­o­ra­tion through­out the chain
• insuf­fi­cient response time and inef­fi­cient man­u­al processes
• ris­ing cus­tomer expectations
• exac­er­ba­tion of volatil­i­ty, com­plex­i­ty and uncertainty
• envi­ron­men­tal risks and criteria 

These chal­lenges are a real headache. 

They also have a sig­nif­i­cant impact on com­pa­nies’ costs and sales oppor­tu­ni­ties , includ­ing :

• late deliv­er­ies and penalties 
• dis­rup­tions lead­ing to loss of cus­tomers and mar­ket share 
• fluc­tu­at­ing lead times result­ing in lost sales
• exor­bi­tant ship­ping costs for all modes of transport
• an increase in inven­to­ries of cer­tain prod­ucts to cov­er uncer­tain­ty, lead­ing to more low-mar­gin pro­mo­tion­al cam­paigns or obso­lete stocks
• reduced opti­miza­tion of the pro­duc­tion tool: vari­abil­i­ty and volatil­i­ty are the causes 

Infor Sup­ply Plan­ning meets these chal­lenges by offer­ing a com­plete solu­tion for opti­miz­ing your capac­i­ty, mate­ri­als, inven­to­ry and prod­uct distribution.

Supply Planning software features

Infor Sup­ply Plan­ning fea­tures are designed to mod­el an ide­al sup­ply chain that adapts to the chang­ing vari­ables and unique char­ac­ter­is­tics of your organization. 

Now you can orga­nize an effi­cient, cost-effec­tive sup­ply chain that makes the nec­es­sary pro­duc­tion trade-offs.

The tool pro­vides opti­mized sup­ply chain plan­ning for:

• sup­plies,
• pro­duc­tion
• trans­porta­tion,
• stor­age,
• dis­tri­b­u­tion. 

This means you canopti­mize your sales fore­casts and trans­form your orders into oper­a­tional plans for your entire val­ue chain, all in a sin­gle tool. 

At the same time, the capac­i­ties (CRP) are :

• agree­ment with sup­ply man­age­ment for trad­ing prod­ucts or raw materials/packaging com­po­nents(MRP)
• with a max­i­mized dis­tri­b­u­tion plan(DRP)

Harmonize production and demand over flexible horizons

With Sup­ply Plan­ning, you can effi­cient­ly syn­chro­nize pro­duc­tion with demand over vari­able time horizons. 

In fact, the soft­ware plans on mul­ti­ple, par­al­lel cycles rang­ing from :

• strate­gic plan­ning in years,
• to tac­ti­cal plan­ning in months,
• tooper­a­tional in days. 

These plans can be auto­mat­i­cal­ly rec­on­ciled in the tool to visu­al­ize costs over sev­er­al time horizons.

Optimize costs and constraints throughout your supply chain

Infor Sup­ply Plan­ning takes into account costs and con­straints through­out your sup­ply chain. 

The tool’s native con­straint-based analy­sis engines and algo­rithms take into account :

• pro­duc­tion capacities, 
• the var­i­ous exist­ing sites, 
• trans­port routes, 
• hours of avail­able human resources,
• as well as alter­na­tive sources of supply. 

Also tak­en into account: 

• tar­get stock levels, 
• desired ser­vice rates,
• prod­uct lifespan, 
• sup­ply times.

This glob­al opti­miza­tion makes it pos­si­ble to direct the use of raw mate­ri­als accord­ing to the con­straints of pro­duc­tion resources. It also sim­pli­fies thesyn­chro­niza­tion of pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion to meet demand . 

Evaluate and adjust your plans with integrated scenario modeling

Infor Sup­ply Plan­ning’s inte­grat­ed sce­nario mod­el­ing lets you eval­u­ate and revise your plans. 

Thanks to a what-if sce­nario sim­u­la­tor, you can com­pare dif­fer­ent strate­gies and bud­gets.

A reli­able tool to sup­port deci­sion-mak­ing, using a vari­ety of levers such as inven­to­ry, over­time, alter­na­tive sources of sup­ply and “make or buy” arbi­tra­tion: the soft­ware ensures that demand is met.

Rapid re-plan­ning, reac­tions to con­tin­gen­cies, com­par­i­son of strate­gies to bal­ance sup­ply and demand… all these fea­tures are avail­able. The same goes for work­ing with alerts or excep­tions.

This fea­ture facil­i­tates informed deci­sion-mak­ing at all lev­els of plan­ning: from strate­gic to operational.

A word from the integrator

ALOER, inte­gra­tor of the Cloud­suite SCP solu­tion and Sup­ply Plan­ning mod­ule, explains the mod­ule’s pos­i­tive points.

Functional adequacy

Fac­tors such as : 

• capac­i­ty opti­miza­tion based on fore­casts and demand, 
• inven­to­ry man­age­ment functionalities, 
• pro­duc­tion plan­ning,
• andseam­less inte­gra­tion with exist­ing sys­tems to meet spe­cif­ic orga­ni­za­tion­al require­ments and process­es.

Com­plete visu­al­iza­tion of the sup­ply chain net­work with alerts highlighted

Easy to install 

ALOER believes that the mod­ule’s ease of inte­gra­tion into a cus­tomer’s exist­ing IT infra­struc­ture is opti­mal . 

The avail­abil­i­ty of native inte­gra­tion tools in the Infor Sup­ply Chain Plan­ning suite, data com­pat­i­bil­i­ty and the need for cus­tomiza­tion or con­fig­u­ra­tion all meet the needs of organizations.

User experience

ALOER has received good feed­back from users for its user-friend­ly, intu­itive inter­face . 

The ease with which plan­ners and users cannav­i­gate the sys­tem, enter data, gen­er­ate reports and access rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion to make informed deci­sions is assured.

Performance and reliability

ALOER notes that the mod­ule’s per­for­mance in terms of speed, respon­sive­ness and sta­bil­i­ty is excel­lent in many inte­gra­tion con­texts . 

The benefits of Supply Planning software

When you use Infor’s Sup­ply Plan­ning soft­ware, you ben­e­fit from a num­ber of advantages.

Improv­ing pro­duc­tion effi­cien­cy by opti­miz­ing sup­ply chain plan­ning is one of the ben­e­fits expect­ed by sup­ply plan­ners, plan­ning man­agers and sup­ply chain man­agers, who are behind the intro­duc­tion of this ded­i­cat­ed software. 

Early detection of problems and shorter implementation times

The pre­scrip­tive work­flow engine makes spe­cif­ic rec­om­men­da­tions based on data and prob­a­bil­i­ty-weight­ed pro­jec­tions. 

It cre­ates noti­fi­ca­tions based on :

• work­flows,
• tasks and events.

The soft­ware uses the solu­tion’s pow­er­ful excep­tion man­age­ment capa­bil­i­ties to improve employ­ee effi­cien­cy and ensure com­pli­ance with estab­lished busi­ness process­es.

The col­lab­o­ra­tive plat­form of the Sup­ply Plan­ning tool can be extend­ed and shared up to :

• remote offices,
• part­ners, sup­pli­ers and con­trac­tors,
• and cus­tomers.

Solv­ing prob­lems before they slow down or inter­rupt the smooth flow of the sup­ply chain is made much eas­i­er with sup­ply plan­ning software. 

Reducing costs and carbon footprint for responsible management

Thanks to theglob­al opti­miza­tion car­ried out by Sup­ply Plan­ning, cost reduc­tions , par­tic­u­lar­ly in prod­uct scrap and waste, are mea­sur­able at all lev­els:

• from raw mate­r­i­al to fin­ished prod­uct.

Pro­cure­ment becomes more effi­cient , with orders as close as pos­si­ble to the quan­ti­ties need­ed. These improve­ments result in de fac­to low­er inven­to­ry, ware­hous­ing and trans­port costs.

What’s more, these reduc­tions are sus­tain­able, even in the event of rapid changes, thanks to the tool’s inte­grat­ed glob­al optimization.

In addi­tion to sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduc­ing costs, the solu­tion sup­ports efforts to reduce the com­pa­ny’s car­bon foot­print.

Significant increase in profitability 

Increased prof­itabil­i­ty is anoth­er ben­e­fit of Sup­ply Plan­ning software. 

Thanks to opti­mized inven­to­ry and pro­duc­tion man­age­ment, you can opti­mize capac­i­ty uti­liza­tion and reduce costs, result­ing in improved prof­itabil­i­ty.

Dash­boards let you see all your data at a glance.

Efficient inventory optimization

The lat­est tech­nol­o­gy cal­cu­la­tion engine exe­cutes the desired secu­ri­ty stock policies:

• by cal­cu­lat­ing stock cov­er­age lev­els
• by adjust­ing both depen­dent and inde­pen­dent demand

Quick to implement and easy to set up

Whether installed in a mul­ti-ten­ant cloud or on-premise, you ben­e­fit from rapid imple­men­ta­tion and easy inte­gra­tion with the oth­er mod­ules in the SCP suite:

• In cloud or SaaS ver­sions, IT teams are freed from man­ag­ing hard­ware and soft­ware archi­tec­ture. Tech­ni­cal instal­la­tion is faster and less costly
• In the on-premise ver­sion, IT retains con­trol of the infor­ma­tion sys­tems. More flex­i­ble pos­si­bil­i­ties for cus­tomiz­ing the tool through spe­cif­ic developments

Sup­ply Plan­ning soft­ware can be imple­ment­ed quick­ly and cus­tomized to your needs. 

All SCP Suite mod­ules are native­ly con­nect­ed to Sup­ply Plan­ning . 

Final­ly, the project costs asso­ci­at­ed with inte­gra­tion and con­fig­u­ra­tion remain the same regard­less of the type of instal­la­tion chosen. 

Infor’s measurable software benefits

The ben­e­fits announced by Infor are remarkable.

Accord­ing to their sta­tis­tics, using Sup­ply Plan­ning soft­ware can lead to :

• 5 to 30% reduc­tion in inven­to­ry
• an increase in ser­vice rates of 1 to 5 points 
• Capac­i­ty uti­liza­tion increased by 10 to 40%. 
• and last­ly, a 20% to 50% reduc­tion in plan­ning time.

In con­clu­sion, Infor’s Sup­ply Plan­ning soft­ware is the ide­al tool for opti­miz­ing your sup­ply chain over the medi­um and long term, improv­ing pro­duc­tion effi­cien­cy, cut­ting costs, reduc­ing your car­bon foot­print and increas­ing your profitability. 

With its advanced fea­tures and abil­i­ty to take into account con­straints and chang­ing vari­ables, the soft­ware helps you make informed deci­sions and achieve your plan­ning objec­tives.