Industry
The automotive industry is a highly competitive, global industry dominated by large car manufacturers offering a vast array of models and options. Because the industry is engaged in the design, production, marketing, sale, and servicing of vehicles, an understanding of the automotive industry requires an understanding of the supply chain, including the entire manufacturing and customer-delivery process.
Every step of vehicle production and sales process, starting with the very first stage of vehicle design and ending with its service and repair , is a part of its supply chain. Today customers demand to buy more options and to have the freedom to change their orders and also demand to pay low prices. OEM’s must be able to offer their customers the opportunity to buy unique variants of a vehicle on an individual basis.
Every step of vehicle production and sales process, starting with the very first stage of vehicle design and ending with its service and repair , is a part of its supply chain. Today customers demand to buy more options and to have the freedom to change their orders and also demand to pay low prices. OEM’s must be able to offer their customers the opportunity to buy unique variants of a vehicle on an individual basis.
So the agile supply chain that can respond quickly to changes in customer demand plays a crucial role. An agile supply chain is fast from end-to-end, but more important, it's flexible.
Automotive companies, along with their suppliers, are becoming increasingly aware of how effective supply chain management can provide significant top- and bottom-line advantages. In order to quickly react to market and product changes, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) require increased flexibility and responsiveness from their suppliers. Automotive suppliers must deliver highly-reliable parts, components, and systems at a low cost and with 100 percent delivery performance to OEMs.
Issues
Best suppliers are also focused on supplier integration, on what and how data are shared, up and down the supply chain. While an OEM will fully disclose order information and inventory requirements to a Tier 1, as soon as the OEM knows those requirements, the Tier 1 will then fully disclose that information to its Tier 2 suppliers. Companies understand the benefits of tight collaboration with their suppliers and customers, but are struggling to execute collaboration plans. Supply chains are becoming more global in nature, and they require more configuration planning to optimize the supply network. Today more and more organizations are implementing APS systems to optimize their supply chains to achieve cost reductions and improved customer responsiveness.Solution
ICRON helps automotive companies to answer these market challenges in ways that provide long-term advantage. ICRON provides a very flexible business modeling, planning and scheduling environment, which directly addresses the unique requirements of the companies in automotive industry:
- Simultaneous consideration of material and plant resources
- Ability to run ‘’what if ‘’scenario analysis
- Utilization of Assets
- Optimization algorithm comprising constraints and business goals
- Optimize production, transportation, distribution and material supply
- Optimize the planning, management of service parts
- Real-time plan and schedule creation with net change regeneration
- Production schedules based on constraints
- Visibility of problems
- Real-time decision support for:
- Plant production sources for products
- Plant capacity levels
- Sources for distribution centers
- Mods for transport
- Sources for purchased materials
- Inventory builds
- Real-time available promise
- Finished goods inventory management with production schedules
ICRON’s solutions have been experienced by the leading automotive companies for many years. Our solutions help these companies meet the unique challenges of the automotive industry.
Based on a unique enterprise model, and combined with the technological enablers of ICRON, ICRON solution is the only enterprise planning system, which supports:
- Distributed plan synchronization between business units within an enterprise, or between suppliers and manufacturers;
- Definition of planning logic based on customer requirements using algorithmic templates of ICRON GSAMS;
- Online responsive scheduling of shop-floor activities