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Author: Özgün Aydın
As a presales consultant for ICRON, I have had the opportunity to speak with numerous prospective customers from all over the world, to listen to their supply chain planning and operational challenges and learn about what capabilities they need to succeed.
My conversations with these companies’ planners and other key stakeholders have given me a clear idea of what they want and need from their supply chain planning and optimization solution.
Lack of flexibility
Many of these companies have already invested in ERPs or algorithmic supply chain planning and optimization solutions (besides ICRON). When talking to them about their experiences using these solutions, the most common issue that they complain about is the system’s lack of flexibility.
In many cases, the solutions are simply not capable of producing 100%-accurate, feasible plans that into account all their company’s constantly changing operating conditions and constraints and shifting strategic priorities. Furthermore, their planners are not able to update the system in real time to reflect these new changes and constraints – as the framework of the solutions is often just too rigid.
Usually what happens is that planners have to adjust and adapt their way of working to planning solution – rather than the other way around – as the planning solution is not able to translate and accommodate their needs and produce optimal plans for them.
A better way
At ICRON, we think that there’s a better way to approach supply chain planning and optimization software implementations.
At ICRON, we believe that our solutions should deliver complete, customized optimization of our customers’ supply chain planning and decision making processes – and to do this, they must take our customers’ organizational inputs, structures, and practices into account.
It is essential that – starting with our initial discussions with prospective or current customers – we take the time to listen and learn about their operational and financial issues, pain points, and constraints, and conduct a deep dive analysis into their data, systems, and processes.
This deep dive analysis along with our state-of-the-art graphical algorithm modeling framework, which is called GSAMS (Graphical Scheduling Algorithm Modeling System), enable us to efficiently devise a solution that will provide a 100% fit for the customers’ needs – with their company-specific logic, KPIs, and processes modeled and embedded in the system.
Then, after implementation, our solutions have the robustness and flexibility to enable planners and other key stakeholders to dynamically and rapidly make adjustments to their plans to reflect changing operating conditions and constraints and shifting priorities.
One-size-fits-all vs. perfect fit
Many major software vendors are simply not concerned with providing such a flexible, perfect fit solution for their customers – as theirs is a one-size-fits-all solution.
The problem is that, in many cases, these one-size-fits-all solutions fail to truly satisfy individual customer’s needs, and don’t deliver the operational benefits and business value that they are supposed to.
ICRON’s solutions do have a powerful standard software core, but our algorithms also have the flexibility to be customized (via GSAMS) to fully integrate our customers’ data and incorporate their unique organizational processes. This results in a 100% fit solution for our clients that gives them the capability to create the best possible plans and make the best possible decisions for their business.
Indeed, the purpose of implementing a supply chain planning and optimization solution is to not only enable companies to automatically produce optimized plans and schedules, but also (and more importantly) to make optimized strategic, tactical, and operations decisions that propel them to the highest levels of productivity and profitability.
If you would like to see ICRON in action, please contact us. If you have enjoyed this blog, you can find more content that you might enjoy here.
