Infosys-Oracle Blog

Two years back I attended a workshop on Advanced Planning Command Center. I was impressed with the rich features it had to offer, but a lot of them would work only if APS was on R12 platform. The very same day I was convinced that my client should upgrade VCP (APS) to R12 before rolling it out to Americas. Not that we were planning to roll out APCC any time soon, but it would bring us on a higher platform form where it would be easy to add on other VCP products like APCC. Believe me, it wasn't an easy task convincing the client to upgrade to R12 , but eventually the client got convinced and today we are seeing the benefits of being on R12 platform.

The biggest considerations were

• This upgrade would bring us on R12 platform from where we can easily plug in any new VCP products like APCC, Demantra and use all the features offered.
• Performance was another major aspect. We were planning to run Global ASCP plan for Americas, Europe and Middle East and Asia Pacific regions. Plan availability becomes a major factor in this and hence the plan performance. Oracle had promised 20-30% performance improvement with R12.
• We weren't too keen on using any new features or functionalities offered in R12, but Item Simulation set in ASCP was an exception. Using this feature would let us implement item attribute changes on planning with immediate effect till permanent updates are made in Item Master.

Only EMEA was live on VCP and we decided to upgrade it to R12 before rolling it out to other geographies. While we are already seeing benefits in the areas of performance and new features, other benefit of being on the R12 platform will be seen in future when the client decides to embrace other VCP products. 

Posted by Satish Devani at 7:31 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

Every country is making its Food and drug administrative control laws more and more stringent. Each country has a different requirement to get the products in specific labels formats, label colors, holograms, compositions etc. Issue is more challenging if item life cycle is short and old SKUs are getting replaced by new SKUs

Organizations with central procurement/manufacturing and global distributions are finding it challenging to manage these requirements in its end to end supply chain. Many companies have decided to have different SKUs for each requirement for specific countries whereas many organizations have decided to create SKU revisions local to each country.

Creating different SKUs helps in identifying/addressing each unique requirement separately whereas it poses a challenge in effective data management, forecasting and planning. Creating different SKU revisions helps in effective planning and forecasting but poses challenge in effective execution of transfer of required revisions in desired destination countries.

Deciding one way or another has its own challenges and it also depends on IT infrastructure and systems capabilities. Different ERP packages have their own solutions and challenges to address these requirements. Keeping discussion focused on Oracle ERP, any thoughts/benefits of handling these requirements one way or another?

Posted by Kishor Pawankar at 5:59 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

In my earlier blog I had talked about why businesses will have to port ERP applications to mobile platform as smart phones populations and popularity increase and so will demand for mobile based ERP apps driven primarily by on-demand mobile workforce. However, once a business decides to go ahead with this initiative, it would be equally important to prioritize where to start and drawing up a roadmap. It would not be unusual to have conflicting perception of priority across various business units within the organization. In fact the biggest challenge could be to get buy in of senior executives including CXOs especially those who are answerable to the board.
I think the best way to get the buy in is to address needs of CXOs and senior executives themselves first. One of the primary IT tools this group uses are the business intelligence reports. Therefore porting BI reports to mobile and demonstrating how this could make job of this user group happier could be a good way to prioritize and make a start to the initiative.
Though this doesn't sound like a strategy on mobile, it could very well serve as a tactical move on the part of group within a business organization that is actually evangelizing to mobile-enable ERPs. At the same time this group of evangelizers needs to be cognizant of the fact that CXOs would always like to know the roadmap or strategy before going ahead with any initiative even if that serves their interest first. Which means there has to be a mobile strategy as well as roadmap that start with BI reports on mobile. This strategy might not be detailed, but at least should contain so-called next steps that could lead to a strategy.

Though any business unit could have power users who could be capable of evangelizing, the group that is in a better position do this is the IT organization as supposedly they are least likely to be partisan to any operating unit within the organization.

Resourcing is the next step that will need to be decided early on for this initiative. Since an IT organization is not operations-aware sufficiently to create powerful and compelling BI reports, they could or might even need to co-opt power users from other operational groups to come up with a tactical plan and business requirements of the proposed ERP solutions. Obviously, CIO or his/her trusted hands within the organization would be the best person to sponsor such initiative.

Once the right team has been assembled, the actual work would start to create strategy, roadmap, and tactical plans, which eventually will be followed by actually building the applications. Following are some of the questions that this group would need to answer for creating the strategy and plans:

• Mobile Platform: Should the solution be platform agnostic or platform centric? Deciding this could not only be contentious but crucial for the program to succeed in the long term.

• Platform Centric: If the solution is platform centric, the apps will be created for popular mobile platforms e.g. iPhone, Android etc.
• The upside with this approach is that these applications could be made to look pretty and user friendly. Apps are the current trend in mobile phones and could be more readily acceptable by the user community who are already tuned to multitude of apps from Apple's Apps Store and Android marketplace.
• The downside could be the need to select platform early on and stick to it. Even with iPhone's stellar lead, it is not given that it is going to be the leading mobile platform. In fact, Android has gained lot of market share and analysts highly rate its future success. Windows 7 is also out and its approach and layout has been widely praised by the critics.
• Another question that arises is how to deal with Blackberries, which have been the stable of the executives over the years but are mediocre at best when it comes to their mobile apps in terms of availability and developer base. Blackberries, just because of the user base and their perceived superior security are likely not to go away that soon. Asking an executive to carry another mobile device for ERP apps in addition to their Blackberries might not be very tempting from the perspective of budget and convenience.
• If more than one platform is chosen from amongst iPhone, Android, and Blackberry; it would increase TCO, as the solution will have to be re-written multiple times for each platform plus the attendant long term issue of software maintenance.
• Platform Agnostic: apps will be mobile equivalent web based apps in PCs, unlike user interfaces that were created earlier using proprietary technologies such as Visual Basic, Oracle Forms etc.

• The upside of this approach is that most applications will work across mobile platforms using their native browsers, albeit with few tweaks that might be browser specific, somewhat similar to PC landscape where apps working across Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari etc might sometimes need similar tweaks.
• The biggest downside with this approach is that browser based apps on smaller screens are not that pretty and might not be user friendly. User community, which is used to platform centric apps might reject the solution.

• Tablets: There is also another angle to platforms, which is the form factor that comes with semi-mobile (not pocket friendly) devices such as iPad and other tablets that are being planned to be rolled out starting 2011. While smart phones are already well entrenched in the corporate world, predominantly the Blackberries, for now, it is not sufficiently clear if an when corporates will embrace such devices.

• Prioritizing the Reports: While platform is being debated, another group will have to work in parallel to come up the preliminary list of BI reports that could get the most brownie points once deployed from the target CXO user group. Prioritizing is a very importance point for the BI team to consider as it is prone contention depending on who owns it and whomever has a stake in its success (or even failure).

Once the above two steps are in place, the key task to get CXO buy-in would start.

In the next blog post, I will focus on creating newer model of BI reporting.

Posted by Srinivas Iyer at 5:21 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 3 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

Imagine you sitting in your dentist's office waiting to be called in despite the appointment on a weekday, your mind preoccupied with all the pending work that piled on to your desk while you were away on this appointment. In olden days you would probably flip through some useless and dated magazines that the dentist makes available to you on your dime. In today's scenario, if you were like me, you would either take out your employer supplied Blackberry and pound through email trails pretending to work, or take out you iPhone, Android, or other smartphone to browse through personal email, Facebook, twitter or doing multitude of other things that your device allows you to do.
Now let us look at an alternative scenario. While I wait, I use my mobile device to start where I left off at work using my PC before heading off to my dentist. I could send out few more purchase orders, post few more journals in the financial accounting system, schedule few more store delivery in the supply chain system and perform multitude of others functions that ERP application are designed to perform. I won't be losing my hair and sanity while away from work during working hours. This is just one example of the possibility - more of this later.

This means that the smartphone device that I carry needs to be not just social-smart, which it already is with availability of umpteen number of personal apps, but also business-smart - and within this context ERP-Smart - in the sense that I could pretty much do everything with it that I would otherwise do only by using my corporate PC (desktop or laptop) connected either through corporate LAN or VPN.

The moot question however is whether enterprises should go for mobile ERP apps just because it is technically possible? Here are the reasons why. The biggest factor going in favor of smart phones is convenience of having tethered to one's body all the time, almost. There is increasing evidence that substantial population of smart phone users stay connected 24 x 7 on a given work day and even during weekend and vacations. In the late 80s, the 9-5 work regime changed to flex hours that allowed one to come earlier or later than the usual and go back accordingly. The flexibility of working remotely got added around late 90s with the arrival of laptops and remote connectivity. At about the same time, businesses setup operations in multiple countries thereby requiring employees in these various parts of the world to coordinate their activities.  This led to the conference call culture where it became common for coworkers across multiple time zones to call into a virtual conference room to discuss business matters. When Blackberries came in the new millennium it not only allowed workers to make and receive calls but also perform some of their official duties without necessarily having to be in their offices or in front of their computers. The need for instant collaboration via conference calls and emails with geographically distributed coworkers has made the term 'work day' insignificant. Now I could be at the grocery store in the evening while periodically browsing my Blackberry for emails and may even join a conference call. Smart phones are pushing this trend much beyond collaboration by commingling work and personal computing using the same tool and UI such as Facebook and Twitter.  This has given rise to new work regime, which for lack of better word could be called Flex-and-Mix (FAM) regime whereby one could be flitting back and forth between work and personal tasks throughout the day. Imagine the increase in productivity that would be unleashed by providing ERP tools to FAM workers.

Despite the arguments in favor of porting ERPs to mobile platform each organization would have to deal with following questions:

   1. What are the compelling arguments important for them to port an ERP App on a mobile device?
   2. What should be the security setup and cost of managing it?
   3. Cost of maintaining the mobile applications
   4. Should it be mobile app or mobile web app?
   5. What about development cost and ROI?
   6. What about operational cost?

Posted by Srinivas Iyer at 5:08 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

Cross Docking is the balancing fulcrum between the Dock to Stock and Direct Store Delivery approach as we have discussed earlier. There are certain tenets of successful cross docking implementation and its best fitment.

Each warehouse has a mélange of products that range from high->medium->low variability in demand. In SMART terminology, we will call them, HML products. It has been observed that cross docking for products with high, stable demand yields great results. If demand of a given product is fairly constant, the product is considered to be a good candidate for cross docking. If demand is highly variable or the cost of a stock out for a retailer tends to be high, then traditional warehousing (Dock to Stock) is probably a more suited approach. Medium demand variability product would falls midway in this spectrum. Also goes along with this hypothesis, is the customer's willingness to wait for the product for a few days. If such be the nature of products that their stock outs don't result in loss of sales and revenues for the customers then they are perfect candidates for cross docking strategy.

Also Push distribution systems are ideal to adopt cross docking strategies. In a few business scenarios inventory costs could be a concern. One school of thought could be to delay the allocation of incoming products until they arrive at the cross dock from the vendor. The other school of thought is to allocate at the vendor premise to reduce material handling costs.  The governing principle in these kinds of situation is that the lead time in a cross docking system is longer than in a traditional warehousing system. Therefore demand at stores during the lead time could result in stock outs. By aggregating orders to a vendor from several stores, and then making a final allocation at the last possible moment, replenishment quantities will be accurate, and inventory costs are reduced.

Cross docking comes with its own set of challenges. It is a moon with a scar. No moon for that matter is without one.

Poor material handling practices could be detrimental to the potential cross dock savings. Operational excellence can be achieved only with keen management acumen. The level of automation especially for cross docking at the carton level and handling dock congestion are some of the key decisions to de made by the senior management. Believe it or not vendors play an essential role in making cross docking successful at a retailer's warehouse. Understanding each vendor's technology capabilities, VAS, and overall distribution capabilities is essential to avoid many costly and unpleasant surprises late in the game.

Cross docking should not be understood as a panacea for all retail warehousing problems. SMART retailers would carefully analyze their operations and external relations to strike this balancing act. If implemented carefully cross dock can turn the mundane processes and operation in the warehouse to produce magical results.

Posted by Amit Sinha at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

In recent years, OEMs have faced pressures from all directions to evolve innovative business models. Let us talk about some such challenges that relate to subcontracting:

[A] STRATEGIC PRESSURES ON OEMs

1. Evolve from 'vertical integration' to 'strategic specialization':  Most OEMs started with all activities done in-house. In the recent years, this model of "full vertical integration" has lost its relevance with the emergence of specialist companies catering to specific parts of the value chain. What makes sense today is a mix of in-house activities in which the OEM chooses to specialize and outsourced activities which are not the focus of the OEM.
2. Adjust production levels to variable market demand: The older model padded the manufacturing processes with inventory and overheads to meet demand dips and upsides. In the new world, the challenge is to adjust production capacities dynamically without incurring extra costs.
3. Reduce lead times for delivery to a global customer base: With the opening of markets in many emerging countries, the customer base has expanded multifold. The challenge lies in serving this customer base with competitive fulfillment lead times.
4. Reduce needs for fixed and working capital: Every lever of cost reduction has come under examination recently. The challenge is to free up capital from non-strategic activities to focus on higher value add activities.
5. Manage shortening product lifecycles and gain access to latest technologies faster: In some verticals (like electronics manufacturing), products and associated technologies become obsolete very quickly. The challenge for OEMs is to ensure immediate access to the latest manufacturing technologies without incurring huge costs.
6. Reduce production cost and make it a variable component: Traditionally, production costs have had a variable (dependent on production volume) and a fixed (independent of production volume) component. With fixed costs coming under the scanner, the challenge is to convert the entire production cost as a variable component.

The pressures described above have elicited innovative responses from OEMs. Though the responses differ by industry, company size, and strategic priorities among other factors, the common theme seems to be an intense focus on the core.

[B] RESPONSE FROM LEADING OEMs

The response from leading OEMs can be summarized in one statement:

"Outsource non-core value chain activities to external partners to focus on core activities that build competitive advantages"

While this statement talks about a general direction for all non-core activities, the observations specific to manufacturing function are:

1. Standardize production processes and components and modularize product designs: Standard processes (for example - the burn-in process in electronics manufacturing that tests components and finished products by turning them on for a while and observing failures) and components (for example, the standardization of memory chips or plastics) ensure common understanding with manufacturing partners. This helps in sourcing the right raw materials with options to aggregate purchases to get the maximum quantity discounts. Modular product designs - along with concepts like "Design for Manufacturability" (DFM) - ensure the design considers the details required for manufacturing and offers opportunities to produce multiple modules simultaneously (potentially at different locations in the world).
2. Leverage product design, manufacturing, and supply chain execution capabilities of external partners: Today, contract manufacturers offer a variety of value added services along with the core service of outsourced assembly. Leading players have developed product design capabilities (For example, Original Design Manufacturers or ODMs in electronics manufacturing). They also offer advanced services like procurement, quality control / testing, forward and reverse logistics, and repairs, to name a few. In the electronics sector, production labor usually accounts for less than 10% of the product cost, while materials account for about 70-80%. Since contract manufacturers cater to multiple OEMs and have a larger aggregated quantity to procure, their increased bargaining power can help OEMs in shaving material costs.
3. Focus on the core: Brand Management, Demand Generation, Product Lifecycle Management, Supply Chain Coordination, Sourcing, and Customer Service: OEMs now focus on the activities they consider core (defined as activities that provide a competitive advantage) in their value chain. Brand Management, Demand Generation, Product Lifecycle Management, Supply Chain Coordination, Sourcing, and Customer Service are typically seen as core activities, with external partners filling in the voids in the value chain. Everything that is seen as a 'commodity' is typically outsourced!
4. Shift production closer to customer and supplier hubs: OEMs now have a globally spread customer base, while contract manufacturers now have production sites all across the globe. This is a win-win situation for both parties! Contract manufacturers reduce costs and increase flexibility by locating plants in low-cost regions like East and South East Asia, Eastern Europe, and South America. These regions now have the bulk of the world's production capacity. The spread of manufacturing capacity enables OEMs to cater to customers with production facilities located in the same region. This cuts down the lead time for customers and provides opportunities to localize products and processes as per customer expectations and regulatory requirements.

Key enablers provide a supporting infrastructure to make these best practices viable.

[C] KEY ENABLERS FOR CONTRACT MANUFACTURING MODELS

1. Emergence of low-cost regions specialized in outsourced production (Enables rational and low-risk outsourcing decisions) In addition to this, as each contract manufacturer matures in handling increasing responsibilities, the OEMs have broader choices and lower overall risk.
2. Reforms in international trade and regulatory barriers(Enables international outsourcing of production activities) With overall reduction in protectionist measures like tariffs and controls and with formation of special trade groups (like NAFTA and ASEAN), outsourcing relationships have become more viable and cost effective.
3. Maturity in international telecom infrastructure (Enables real time collaboration between value chain partners) New technologies based on the Internet and social media enable real time enterprise collaboration through portals, web services, and standardized message exchanges. This increases the value chain visibility - which in turn alerts the OEMs of operational risks in advance.
4. Establishment of standards in international transport (Enables free flow of goods with short lead times) The transport industry now offers many guaranteed service levels (like overnight shipment) at optimized costs. The emergence of specialized external providers in the transportation sector provides opportunities to access value-added services like transportation spend optimization, shipment consolidation, shipment tracking, border clearance, and denied party control to name a few.

Posted by Deepak Wankhade at 6:19 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

A recent article defined third party logistics (3PL) as:
"That part of the supply chain process that plans, implements and controls the efficient flow and storage of goods, services and related information from the point of origin to the point of consumption, in order to meet the customers' requirements." Successful 3PL implementations have proven to reduce logistics related costs including capital spending, working capital, labor, warehousing and transportation by 15-20 percent.
I see one key trend that has accelerated the logistics industry's growth and expansion more than any others: Outsourcing.
Companies in particular outsource distribution and logistics to 3Pl providers because they have:
• High Transportation and warehousing expenses
• Limited Logistics Competencies
• Inadequate Technologies
• Fragmented and global supply chains
• Changing customer requirements that demand greater supply chain efficiency
But, what are the key challenges companies face by outsourcing to 3PLs? How satisfied are the companies and their end customers? Studies show that 50% of the 3PL contracts are cancelled within three years. WHY?
Here are a few reasons why 3PL relationships fail:
Provider Evaluation: Companies rush the process and choose the providers before defining the clear cut objectives and business requirements.
Poor Implementation: Many times the work required to transition functions is under estimated. The operational and Business requirements are not clearly established which results in strained customer relationships and internal organizational confusion.
Ineffective relationship management and performance evaluation: Companies often tend to ignore the importance of managing the 3PLs relationships after the initial integration. Many failed cases also can be attributed to vaguely defined performance metrics.
What more?

Posted by Sujatha Guthikonda at 12:26 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

Traditional CRM tools could previously claim to capture most of the customer interaction channels, whether it was a face to face sales visit or a call center call to the 1-800 number. This data was then used in forecasting and analysis on front office effectiveness analysis.

Posted by Sean Leo Ryan at 4:50 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

Guest post by
Prasad Jayakumar, Technical Lead, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd

 

One Less, One More™ -  "one less negative thought or action, and one more positive thought or action, and soon our lives will be less stressful, and if practiced as a community [...]  would move in the direction of our collective goals, dreams and desires" by Robbie Vorhaus,  Communications, crisis and reputation advisor.

Oracle acquired many best-of-breed products on SOA landscape may be for architecture excellence or for concept/idea or for market share or to fill the void or based on some other strategy which only acquisition experts know.  But, what's interesting is how Oracle managed to unify all the acquired products and paved a path to Success as a corporate and for Oracle SOA practitioners.

In my personal opinion, I believe Oracle adopted "One Less, One More™" to build less stressful Oracle SOA 11g.  To me, I see the transition from Oracle SOA 10g to 11g as follows-

Oracle BPEL & Mediator

One less negative - Oracle BPEL and ESB in 10g had different engine, different console, different error handling framework, different deployment strategy and few more.  One good aspect was both complemented each other.  In an over-simplified way, I could tell Oracle BPEL and Mediator (ESB) is unified in Oracle SOA 11g. Unified console, Unified exceptions handling, end-to-end instance tracking and many more.

One more positive - Oracle SOA 11g has been re-architected based on Service Component Architecture (SCA) standards.  By this Oracle had taken a major step towards aligning to standards and simplifying SOA.  Service Data Objects (SDO), Event Delivery Network (EDN), Meta Data Services (MDS) and few more have been introduced in Oracle SOA 11g. Extreme performance and scalability has been provided based on the default JEE infrastructure which includes Weblogic Server, JRockit and Coherence.

Oracle B2B

One less negative - Oracle B2B 11g shows phenomenal transition from not so good user interface in 10g to the more intuitive one in 11g.  Sometimes I feel Oracle B2B 10g user interface is like a maze and most often I get lost without manual.  Oracle B2B 11g is a smooth sail.  I could complete the entire work end-to-end without much external help.

One more positive - With Oracle B2B 10g already supporting an extensive set of protocols and standards, 11g provides few notable features which mainly revolve around operations, security and performance.

Oracle BAM

One less negative - Oracle BAM 10g was an odd-man out being .NET application running on Microsoft IIS. Probably Oracle acquired for sheer architectural excellence.  Oracle BAM 11g is based on JEE, a complete rework.  How else Oracle can tell SOA practitioners about their commitment level in achieving unified and simplified SOA? Kudos

One more positive - Rich data source integration, better security, improved internationalization and localization, enhanced real time alerting & action and many more

There are similar radical changes in Business Rules, Oracle Web Services Manager, Oracle Human Workflow and few more.  Wish list for a radical change in terms of unification and simplification goes for Oracle Service Bus, Oracle Data Integrator and Oracle Enterprise Repository + Oracle Service Registry.

Hope you wish Oracle to succeed.

Posted by Guest Blogger at 9:21 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 1 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

Businesses where Installations are a significant portion require a high degree of integration, alignment and trust between Project Management and Supply Chain Management. 

Businesses where Installations are a significant portion require a high degree of integration, alignment and trust between Project Management and Supply Chain Management.  Some of the key design considerations for this integration are as below:
1. Project Milestone Visibility - Supply and Demand planning processes should have real-time visibility into project milestones dates allowing supply chain planning to adjust to changing priorities across projects.
2. Commit / Re-commit Visibility - Project management should have real-time visibility of supply plans and be able to identify accurate availability of required material. This supply availability should be based on current firm supplies as well as on supply chain's Capability to Promise 
3. Project Warehouse Inventory Accountability:  A proper incentive structure is necessary for aligning individuals' efforts with overall business objectives.  Therefore, clear accountability and an incentive structure based upon inventory levels of the Project Warehouse(s) should be established.  This will encourage Project Managers to request the material only when needed and minimize inventory levels in the Project Warehouse(s).
This is turning out to be a key requirement for the Hi-Tech industry.  With this background I would like to initiate a discussion on how we go about designing an IT solution for the above requirement using oracle based products.

 

Posted by Srinivas Dronam at 3:20 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

There was a time, not so long ago, when various business functions within the enterprises used to function in silos and that was still ok. Simply because that was the norm of the day. Not any more though. In today's competitive environment, managers are continuously looking for avenues to cut costs without compromising service.

Unless the functions in the enterprise collaborate, those objectives are highly likely to fall flat on their face. It is like building a tunnel. If two teams start digging from either side of the mountain without working with each other, the probability of them finding each other half way down is pretty low. What the enterprises need in such situations are systems and processes which work across the functions to recommend what's in the best interests of the enterprise. Availability of better systems is a big enabler in this aspect.

There is an immense opportunity to improve cross functional interaction between Supply Chain Planning and Logistics. There is a perennial tussle between these functions. They have objectives that do not gel together most of the times. Supply chain planning wants to cut costs by cutting down inventory levels and doing just in time replenishments. But logistics would want to cut transportation costs by maximizing the TL percentage in the freight mix. The consolidation comes at the cost of impacted service (delaying the delivery) or elevated inventory levels (pulling ahead the delivery).

If logistics as well supply chain considerations are weighed in right upfront at the planning stage, ensuing decision is more likely to be executed as per plan - on time and on cost. Changes and corrections are much cheaper and feasible when done at planning stage. At execution stage it should be just a matter of executing what has been planned. But all this is easier said than done. Applications that support this sort of  integration between Supply Chain Planning and Logistics out of the box are far and few between.

I invite your thoughts and perspective on the best practices, products and solutions in this area.

Posted by Ravindra Sadani at 7:10 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

In continuation with my previous blog on use of Oracle Quality to manage business issues, we are now delving deep into our discussions with the next feature of Oracle to help you in managing your intellectual assets as part of our Oracle E+ series of blogs.

This Blog talks about the use of Oracle ERP as a single source of truth to track the cost of Enterprise Biz applications.

Once an ERP is implemented, the enterprise acquires a new intellectual asset. This intellectual asset will be added to your list of fixed assets. Though this asset will depreciate over a period of time, significant cost is also incurred in maintaining the asset and enhancing the existing functionalities. At times new business locations / sites will get added and the solution foot print will be extended to the new business sites. The cost of such projects should get added to the capital cost to the so called ERP asset. The enterprise treats all these activities as individual projects.  There is also a need for the enterprises to use the ERP system as the business system and reduce the use of stand alone or legacy systems. The purpose of this approach is to make ERP as single 'source of truth' business system than just a financial reporting system

The broad heads under which cost is incurred for ERP systems are:

1. Continuous or discrete enhancements to the existing functionalities of ERP system. 
2. Extending the solution foot print to the new sites / business units
3. Upgrading the application to the newer version as and when a new release occurs
4. General maintenance of the ERP system by housekeeping, back up, adding the new user groups etc.,
Absence of such solutions result in

1. Manual / stand alone transactions to track the costs associated
2. Additional reporting solutions are to be developed
3. Legacy systems continue to exist though a powerful ERP system in implemented

 The effective solution available in Oracle is to define a project that is associated to the ERP system and add each of the above activity as a task and track the expenses associated. A new task can also be added for each enhancement. By enabling the project management module of Oracle project suite, it is possible to maintain and track the project schedules, progress as well. The ERP application itself can be defined as an asset and can be associated to an active project in the Project suite of modules.

The advantages of such a solution is

1. Financials are reported within ERP
2. Maximum use of ERP functionalities
3. Legacy systems can be faced out at the earliest
4. No manual tracking required

Other legacy systems and cost involved in maintaining them can also be defined as projects and tracking will be made easier. Also, all these costs can be rolled out to a master project called 'Business applications'.

One doubt would certainly arise in the minds of a consultant: "What to do if the projects suite of modules are not licensed nor installed?"

The solution in such cases is to install Projects modules in shared mode or negotiate with Oracle licensing team and try for these solutions and it is worth it!!!

Catch you in the next blog post where we will discuss more business scenarios and more tips to handle the same till then.....cherish and think through the impact of Oracle E+ (Efficiency Plus)

Posted by Murali Krishna Somisetty at 5:14 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

There is an 'inconvenient truth' about the way mass producers run their businesses, they over produce with their oversize production facilities that guzzle energy and resources and their inability to respond to changes quickly,  wrecks havoc in the entire supply chain, in the economy, and in the environment. To wit, imagine a shipload of products suddenly stops selling as an unexpected collapse of a financial behemoth makes consumers nervous, train load of products that consumers do not want - the scourge of excess and wastes is not  limited to the balance sheets alone- it impacts us all, our surroundings, our planet - when there isn't enough energy till we find an alternate source, when CO2 levels are at a point where we don't know what will happen. When sources of greenhouse gases were analyzed, it was found that developed countries were the most polluters and manufacturing industries accounted for an estimated 40 percent of total CO2 emissions. Until now no price tag has been attached for emitting green house gasses (GHG).Time has come that manufacturers need to pay for 'Environmental and social' cost of their actions, besides their internal cost of production such as cost of fuel, labor, material etc 

 In January 2008 the European Commission proposed binding legislation to implement the 20-20-20 targets which included  - 'a reduction in EU greenhouse gas emissions of at least 20% below 1990 levels, 20% of EU energy consumption to come from renewable resources , a 20% reduction in primary energy use compared with projected levels, to be achieved by improving energy efficiency'. The U.S. has set a  target for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the range of 17% below 2005 levels by 2020.

While Environmental Management and Regulatory Agencies are striving to define standards, promoting pollution prevention measures, to sustain such progress companies must go beyond the "low hanging fruit," a company must create a waste elimination culture.  Here again Lean Manufacturing gives us a powerful option. Lean Manufacturing is an environmental friendly manufacturing system, which inherently eliminates waste from the value stream. Below is the list of 'The original seven 'muda' that Lean manufacturing eliminates from the value stream.

Transportation - unnecessary movement of parts between processes
Inventory - all components, work in process and finished goods not being processed
Motion - movement people or equipment more than is necessary
Waiting - people or parts waiting for the next production step
 Overproduction - production ahead of demand
Over processing - additional processing to meet customer requirement
Defects - the effort involved in inspecting and fixing defects

By virtue of reducing the above wastes, manufactures significantly reduce energy consumption and GHG emission per unit of production. In a Recent study by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) shows that  by adopting Lean Manufacturing, General Electric has reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 250,000 metric tons and saved $70 million in energy costs since 2005 at facilities worldwide. Toyota Motor Manufacturing North America reduced energy use and greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent per vehicle since 2000.

The major ERP package vendors already support lean /flow manufacturing applications. These applications offer key functionalities like Mixed Model Map, Line Balancing, Sequencing etc. Lean warehousing operation such as cross docking, direct shipments from the production lines can be implemented form out-of -the box or with a little customization. Another  interesting trend is the rise in spending on carbon management software and services in the manufacturing sector - a Pike Research shows that the market is to experience an aggressive 40.2% CAGR through 2017. Also the carbon footprint and reduction labeling scheme is catching up as  manufacturers want to demonstrate their commitment to managing their carbon emissions.

Mass Production Era saw  the trade-offs between cost and quality,  today commitment to carbon emission reduction will be another factor which will lead companies to the sustainable future and profitability.

Posted by Kallol Kumar Kar at 10:08 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 4 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

Engineer To Order (ETO) Manufacturers typically make complex products with longer lead time whose customer specifications require unique engineering design, significant customization or new purchased materials. Each customer order may result in a unique set of part numbers, bills of material & routings and each order needs to be tracked as a project throughout the Sales, Engineering, Manufacturing, Shipping, Installation and Service life cycle. This industry typically comprises of customers in Aerospace, Defense, Construction, Tool and Industrial equipment manufacturers etc.

In automating the ETO processes, most of the ERP products find it difficult to address the unique requirements and challenges in this industry. Some of the unique requirements in this industry are listed below.

1. Tight integration between Sales, Engineering, Manufacturing and Project management
2. Configurator and Pricing support to Sales/Engineering teams for accurate Quoting
3. Managing frequent engineering changes
4. Capturing engineering expenditure and Allocation of indirect costs
5. Managing close supplier collaboration
6. Purchasing and Tracking inventory directly for a project
7. Actual cost and profit tracking by project against budgets
8. Progress billing and Revenue recognition to meet accounting standards
9. Managing Installation and After market services
10. Support for Project WBS and Status tracking across execution phases

There are few tier2 ERP vendors like Glovia, Encompix, Cincom, IFS etc addressing to the specific needs of this industry with some good features. But the critical requirement of achieving the end to end integrations across departments and processes is very difficult to meet by specialty product vendors and it posts a significant risk for the buyers to integrate multiple independent systems. This is where Oracle scores over other ERP products by offering a completely integrated project management and supply chain ETO solution.

Oracle EBS suite offers a complete to end solution to this industry by integrating its products like Projects, Manufacturing, Planning, Quoting, Order management, Purchasing, Financials, CRM etc. Over the period, Oracle has also augmented its offering to this industry with some unique features like Seiban support, Model/Unit effectivity, PJM portal, Project hard pegging, Task auto assignment etc.

In this ETO series, we will discuss and share the details about what Oracle offers to ETO industry and how it addresses these requirements and challenges.

Posted by Vijaya Suresh Prabu at 10:45 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

Guest post by
Prasad Jayakumar, Technical Lead, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.

 

In my recent client discussion the ever pondering question popped up, "Do we need SOA Governance?" Definite YES, I told without second thought. If they would have asked me "Do we need SOA?" the answer would have been based on whether business is ok to WALK or wants to DRIVE.  Since the question was about governance, it is as simple as saying "If you want to drive safely, better hold a valid driving license."

Is driving a metaphor of some kind? Why am I repeating it?  Let me give a try to convenience my alter ego.  

	Real World	SOA World
People	Driver  Police Officer	Developer  Analyst  Architect
Process	Department of Motor Vehicle (DMV)  Traffic Rules & Regulations  Sign Boards	SOA Organization  Service Life Cycle  Service Principles & Guidelines
Technology	Fancy Cars	Oracle
What if, Governance is not in place?	Accident prone  Traffic congestion  Chaotic, need luck to reach home	Rouge Services  Sub-optimal solutions  Chaotic, no clue on ROI

People, Process and Technology is the critical chain of SOA Governance. Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt (Business Management Guru) says in his famous novel "Critical Chain" - "Here is the weakest link. I strengthen this link. The whole chain becomes stronger. I strengthen it again, the chain becomes even stronger. I strengthen it again, Nothing happens.  Why? It's not the constraint anymore.  So, we have to avoid inertia and go back to step one."

Based on this learning if we think, Process would be weakest link in our critical chain.  We need to strengthen by defining-

1. SOA Organization -
• Who should be part of the Organization?
• What is he/she responsible for?
• How should he/she execute?
• Are the few things that has to be clearly defined
2. Service Life Cycle
3. Service Principles & Guidelines and many more

Once Process is no weaker, the next possible candidate would be People.  Until People follow the Process by practice, People are weaker.  Finally Technology will come.  Ironically Technology has grown stronger by many manifolds and that's the reason for all the discussions.

Happy SOA Journey! 

Posted by Guest Blogger at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 1 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

Guest post by
Nipun Lakhotia, Consultant, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.

 

Supply chains are generally designed to optimize resources and provide better customer service. But in India, supply chain design decisions are mostly driven by financial considerations - especially tax implications. Let me explain this in detail.

In India, interstate sale of goods attracts central sale tax (CST), in addition to local sales tax (VAT). Due to this dual taxation, manufacturers tend to open several small warehouses in each state and perform simple stock transfer between their manufacturing plant & these warehouses. In this process, they save on CST and only pay local tax while making sale to the end customer. Hence tax implications over shadows classic principles of warehouse design like location, capacity, storage, transportation cost etc.

Facilities in these small local godowns are nowhere close to a standard warehouse and therefore they contribute to high logistics cost such as

• Storage cost
• Material handling cost
• Distribution cost
• Regulatory compliance costs

Because of these systematic cost pressures, manufactures in India don't go for expensive supply chain solutions like technology based automation or consultancy based services.

Starting April 2011, things will change as India is ready to embrace Goods and Services Tax (GST). GST is a comprehensive tax levied at every stage of production/distribution with necessary provisions to claim credit for the tax already paid while purchasing the raw material.

GST is going to have far-reaching implications on the supply chain, from design to execution. In absence of any interstate financial boundary, logistics planners will look at consolidating small warehouses into large distribution warehouses, each serving a bigger geographical area. This will pave path for the adoption of highly optimized hub & spoke model with centralized manufacturing and de-centralized distribution.

There will be few large warehouses and shorter supply chains. Inventory carrying costs will reduce. There will be significant change in transportation requirements as well. First leg movement i.e. manufacturing plant to warehouse will see longer line haul and will leverage less costly rail infrastructure. Bigger lot sizes for second leg i.e. warehouse to end customer will open new opportunities for truckload (TL) and less than truckload (LTL) services.

In order to support this model, manufacturers will also have to seek services of Third Party Logistics (3PL) providers. They may even consider sophisticated systems like Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) for efficient management of these large warehouses. High ERP costs will be better justified in this new model. Even 3PL providers will have to upgrade their facilities, size and IT solutions to sync with the industry requirements.

Emergence of GST and consequent supply chain redesign will change the costing equation in favor of ERP solutions, which will find greater acceptability in widely untapped Indian logistics market. Success of any enterprise solution will depend on its value proposition in terms of cost and the ability to localize as per Indian requirements.

Posted by Guest Blogger at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

Guest post by
Ankush Agrawal, Associate Consultant - Banking and Capital Markets, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.

 

This is in continuation to my previous blog where I talked about matched fund transfer pricing and how OFSAA in its newer version 5.XX (OFSAA) has further enhanced its matched fund transfer pricing. In this blog we will discuss more on the methods of FTP used in the industry and supported by OFSAA.

There are two types of methodologies that are prevalent in industry and supported by OFSAA - Cash flow and Non cash flow method. As the name suggests the basic difference between the two is that cash flow method requires detailed set of transaction level data and non cash flow method does not requires detailed set of cash flow data.

Cash Flow method: In cash flow method we need a detailed set of transaction-level data attributes, such as, origination date, outstanding balance, contracted rate, and maturity date to generate Transfer rates. These methods are considered more accurate as we can factor in very minute details of each account through behavior patterns, repricing pattern, payment pattern and prepayment rules based on various analysis and customer behavior pattern for different products and geographies.

OFSAA supports four types of Cash flow transfer pricing -

• Average Life
• Duration
• Weighted Term
• Zero Discount Factors

Non Cash Flow method: These methods do not require the detailed set of cash flow data. This method needs bare minimum cash flow information like origination date, maturity date or contracted rate, based on the type of non cash flow method used. These methods are very useful when we don't have the detailed set of transaction data for some products. In these methods also we can factor in behavior pattern and repricing pattern for few types of Non cash flow method based on customer behavior study.

OFSAA supports eight types of Non-Cash Flow transfer pricing -

• Moving Averages
• Straight Term
• Spread from Interest Rate Code
• Spread from Note Rate
• Redemption Curve
• Caterpillar
• Weighted Average Perpetual
• Unpriced Account

Both the methods are frequently used in the industry; OFSAA provides the flexibility of using different methods for different products. Normally Cash flow methods are used for products that amortize over time like 5 year 10% floating rate loan or 10 years 8% fixed deposit. This products amortize over time and have some planned cash flow activity, while noncash flow method is used for products that don't amortize over time and don't have any certainty about future cash flows for example savings and current account. Though cash flow method provides more accurate results as it considers the detailed level data for generating FTP but Non cash flow method is also very crucial for the product where such data is not present and where complex calculation is not required.

I will talk more on various types of Funds transfer pricing in my subsequent blogs. Keep following this space.

Posted by Guest Blogger at 10:45 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

Guest post by
Himanshu Bhardwaj, Consultant - Business Intelligence, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd

 

'Should I do it on my own' or 'should I have someone else do it for me' is a question that mankind has asked itself since time immemorial. This question, commonly put as 'Build vs. Buy' in the IT parlance, has been commonly debated in the Business Intelligence (BI) space as well. From BI's perspective, the Build vs. Buy debate can be discussed in two contexts. One point of view could be to consider home grown made-from-scratch reporting applications as 'Build' and standardized platforms and packages like OBIEE as 'Buy'. The second point of view could be to consider applications developed on tools like OBIEE as 'Build' and prebuilt packages like BI apps as 'Buy'. Since standardized tools/packages have clearly demonstrated their superiority over home grown reporting applications in terms of performance as well as scalability, the first debate is pretty much settled. So, for the purpose of this blog, we will focus on the second point of view that this debate can take.

Since we believe that the choice between OBIEE and BI Apps is purely circumstantial, we will not attempt to choose an unconditional best between the two. And, since this debate is more meaningful if discussed from the perspective of 'when to put what' rather than 'which one is superior', we will attempt to arrive at a set of parameters that should be evaluated before coming at a decision.

Faster deployment, lower TCO and better ROI are perceived to be some of the primary advantages of BI Apps. The prewritten ETL and the prebuilt metadata and reporting content provides a handy jump-start thus reducing the deployment time to less than half. Less time implies less effort leading to lower costs and superior ROI. And once we add superior functionality which is otherwise hard to replicate, adoption of industry best practices in terms of KPIs, potentially better security and performance and higher adoption rate by the business community to it, the balance looks to be tilting in favor of BI Apps. But there is more to the story.

The Source Systems Aspect

Rosy as it may seem, the truth is that all these benefits of a packaged solution come with a huge rider. Before they materialize, they will ask for a certain set of pre-requisites to be present. As we move from a non-customized standard source system (say an EBS with little or no customization) to a customized standard source system (say a highly customized EBS) and finally to a home grown non-standard source system, the benefits will start getting flimsier and flimsier. So, an honest and thorough assessment of the existing source systems should be the first step in the 'Build vs. Buy' decision making exercise.

The Customization Aspect

Proponents of BI Apps say that more than 80% of the metadata would be made up of non-unique content irrespective of the industry. However, this may not always be true and sometimes not even for organizations operating in the same industry and servicing similar types of clients. One of our clients in the financial services domain got merged with a same sized competitor and we realized that the common denominator is much smaller than it is perceive to be. It was seen that though the two companies looked at the same metrics but calculated them in very different ways. This resulted in re-building of the Oracle BI repository as per the 'new' definition and a lot of customization had to be done. So, in such scenarios a Buy option would imply a much higher license cost without any offsetting of effort or cost in customization. 

The Cost Aspect

A back-of-the-envelope calculation tells us that the licensing cost for a couple of modules of BI Apps, for a user base of 500, can set an organization back by more than a million dollars! So, the savings resulting from lower deployment and maintenance cost of BI Apps should be enough to offset the higher licensing costs. But this may not always be the case. Thus, a Cost benefit analysis of this nature is a must before making a final decision.

BI Apps is undoubtedly a fantastic product which can offer a lot of value to its clients. But there are certain circumstances where a Build option will prove to be a much safer bet. An honest and thorough assessment of Source Systems, Reporting Requirements and Level of Customization required along with a Cost Benefit Analysis is quintessential before we go ahead and recommend it to the client.

Posted by Guest Blogger at 5:32 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 2 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

It may leave many of us agape, but it is widely understood that retailers and distributors end up loosing close to 15% of sales revenues handling returns each year. A return has much more to it than mere waste management. In my last blog I had discussed on the probability of return as a function of multiple variables. Unless handled properly, returns could have a severe adverse impact on the bottom line of any retail organization. Concept of reverse logistics first surfaced in the 1980's, it is not new. But it may have been only well understood by proactive organizations or those smitten by the return bug.

The general perception among businesses has been that returns carried little to no economic value. Due to shrinking margins, organizations can no longer bury their heads in the sand. There has been a deep drawn attention to reverse logistics and it a common belief that efficient returns strategies are essential to SMART supply chains, or shall we call them SMART value chains.

But it is easier said than done. Unlike forward logistics, reverse logistics is characterized by uncertainty of supply. Reverse logistics is not forecast and demand driven. Organizations can't predict which products are coming back or when to expect a return and its condition.  I would like to spell out encore the probabilistic function that I had mentioned in my last blog.

Probability(Returns) = XF(Decrease in demand) +YF(Incorrect forecast) + ZF(Damage in transport) +AF(Quality issues) + BF(Stores inability to sell) + CF(Incorrect promotions).

Organizations are trying to reach out for the point of minimum inflexion for this function. Hence, although the returns are unpredictable, the probability of its occurrence can be minimized for best results.

A report published by Ryder mentions that effective reverse logistics management requires a broad range of operational, technical and strategic capabilities that include the include:

• Scale and flexibility to meet changing business needs with industrial geographical expertise
• Visibility into the full product life cycle and refurbishment/distribution center management
• Technologies and data integration

Now what are the Best Practices for an effective implementation of reverse logistics? There is no single implementation model that could help organizations achieve the desired results. A model that blends the following ingredients could be a successful recipe.

• Investment in Reverse Logistics Systems to achieve the highest levels of efficiency and accuracy.
• Outsourcing Logistics Operation if that is not your core competency.
• Reaching out to Secondary Markets to reap more revenue than liquidating the inventory

Effective Reverse Logistics will certainly increase customer satisfaction, reduce waste, and recover lost revenue. As they always say prevention is better than cure, reverse logistics could prevent the lost sales and tarnished image for an organization.

Posted by Amit Sinha at 3:29 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

APCC is an executive decision making tool for Planning and recently introduced in market by Oracle. APCC stands for Advance Planning Command Center. APCC is business intelligence-analytical tool and product is based on Oracle Business Intelligence - Enterprise Edition (OBIEE). It provides unified user interface for user analysis in form of Graph and Reports.

The Missing Link:

Oracle ASCP is a strong tool to analyze different ASCP Plan and their output but the limitation surface out when we try to perform some analysis to compare different Plan scenarios or Past performance of our ASCP Plan with the current one. For example:

a) Ability to perform neck to neck comparison of two or more scenarios on certain KPI's of planning which can help us to take a quick decision on the best options/Plan scenarios to be chosen.
b) If we want to analyze different kind of forecasting Model as a demand input for each of the Plan scenarios and see their Impact.
c) Input from other Planning products like S&OP, SNO, ASCP, DRP, IO etc while evaluating the decision.

Advance Planning Command Center Capability:

1. A analytical tool which can take input form all planning product like Demand Management , S & OP, Strategic Network Optimization, ASCP, DRP or IO.
2. A tool which can compare different ASCP scenarios to decide the best suitable option to go forward.
3. A tool which can compare the past ASCP scenarios with the present one and help analyzing our performance in compare to the past.
4. A tool which can compare the Key Performance Indicator of Planning for evaluation of performance of different ASCP scenarios.

Advance Planning Command center is next generation software which is going to give executive's an edge while making planning decision related to Supply-Demand, Forecasting, Manufacturing capacity, Supplier capacity, inventory and many other aspects of Supply chain planning.

Posted by Manish Gupta at 12:55 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

Many analysis has been done and many artifacts written about the success of the ERP projects but the question which primarily remains unanswered and less explored is who holds the key to success of the program.

ERP led Business transformation is a kind of IT oriented Business Process Re-Engineering exercise. This re-engineering process facilitates information sharing across business echelons, reduce manual effort, save cost with multiple benefits namely Single source of truth, Easier consolidation, Smoother interactions across companies.

There are generally 3 key stakeholder in any ERP led business transformation projects namely the PMO/Management, product/ consulting partner company and End/Core/business user teams. Each of the stakeholders has its own role to play and none of them can be regarded as less important or secondary. In last few years a lot of case based analysis has surfaced in various journals, conferences, online forums, blogs regarding the importance of management focus on the programs.  The benefits of the ERP transformation projects are now well known and due to which management puts in a lot of thrust on its need, direction, performance and success. But is the management focus enough?

Is it not that the group of people who actually give the requirements, vouch for the customizations/RICE,  agree/disagree to changes, are critical part of the piece and need to be focused? Off-late a lot of cases have come up in the ERP projects where users miss out capturing critical parts of business or misses certain scenarios or fails to test important interfaces or more so resists adopting best practices. 

Similarly the ERP product company's ability to provide required support, fitment of the product to the business scenarios, highlighting product capability and willingness to investment if required sometimes becomes an interesting and important attribute to success? The consulting or SI partner is and has always has been a key link between the success or failure of the program. This may be due to providing right fit of experienced people, program management skills, deeper understanding of setups and practices , bring in more discipline in delivery and many other plethora of others reason.

With these short overviews it becomes all the more difficult to identify the key stakeholder for success. Is there any direct answers?

Posted by Arnab Banerjee at 9:44 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 1 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

SOA Governance has become the buzz word today and has caught everyone's attention. Puzzled why? Here is the answer.

When the traditional programming approach posed major concerns with respect to flexibility in switching and replacing applications, reusability of assets and business agility- SOA emerged as the one stop solution for integration initiatives. It catered to almost all integration requirements through the wide spectrum of components that were offered as part of the SOA Suite. Still, organizations did not witness complete success in implementing SOA Projects. Reason being, the diverse functionalities offered by SOA products also brought in great deal of complexity in managing them thereby increasing the risk factor.  This is where SOA Governance pitched in; helping enterprise architects to utilize the benefits of SOA to the full potential eradicating the risk factor. Now, the question is what is SOA Governance and how does it help in successfully implementing SOA Projects. You will find the answer below. SOA Governance solution provides a single set of lifecycle management processes and tools to simplify and automate management of services. It acts as glue that holds and brings the four corners of SOA Implementation together- the run time back bone (including application servers, adapters, connectors, service bus, workflows etc), the development environment (including IDE tools, workflow tools, test, configuration management tools etc ), the operation environment (including monitoring, alarming, BAM, KPI, job scheduling etc) and the security environment(including authentication, authorization, policies etc ).It basically provides 3 value propositions- Visibility, Control and Analytics. The governance Suite includes the following components to address the above said values. These components are individually set up and can be used based on business needs.

1. Oracle Enterprise Repository- It serves as the core element. Provides visibility into all SOA assets, policies and their relationships, automatically discovers, maps and manages new dependencies to support impact analysis and track reports on reuse throughout the SOA Lifecycle.
2. Oracle Service Registry- Provides a standards-based interface for SOA runtime infrastructure to dynamically discover and bind to deployed service end points. It bridges the gap between the design time and runtime environments through automated synchronization with Oracle Enterprise Repository and Oracle SOA Suite.
3. Run time Policy Validation Tooling(OWSM)- Provides a solution for governing the interactions with shared services through security and operational policy management and enforcement to ensure service reuse remains under control
4. Service monitoring (Enterprise Manager Management Pack) - Provides a fully centralized management console enabling administrators to easily correlate events and activities for all components across the SOA environment to resolve performance and availability issues faster.
   

The cost of an ungoverned SOA is lack of reuse, failure of business processes, security breaches, non compliance, difficulty in managing complex pieces and many more; these issues multiply as the number of service offerings grow. Governance, is therefore not an optional ingredient in SOA implementations; it must begin with initial SOA deployment, providing the framework, processes and practices for scaling out a healthy and efficient SOA.

Posted by Harsha Agarwal at 5:29 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 1 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

Production Scheduling is oracle's latest tool for Shop Floor Operations / Resources Scheduling optimization. It's a standalone application and can be integrated very easily with manufacturing planning and execution systems. Production Scheduling can be integrated with Demand Management (Demantra) and Oracle APS to leverage best planning / Manufacturing & Scheduling outcome. This tool is highly used in environment where Production Volumes are high or Production constraints are higher because of its capability to perform constraint based scheduling. Key strength of Production Scheduling is it's User interface which can show multiple views together in one screen and help user making the decision process and identifying bottleneck resources if any.

How Production Scheduling Works?

Model Creation: Production Scheduling requires a Model representing production capacity of the enterprise to create a feasible production schedule.
Model Consist of: a) Resources b) Operations c) Routings

Model Data Required: a) Item & Item level b) Safety Stocks c) Work Orders d) Supply & Demand Information

Solving a Model: Changing Model data till it meets production requirements. Data which can be altered like Priorities, increasing capacity, manual changes to operations, Change in Supply / Demand, Change in capacity, Maintenance Requirements.

Publish a Production Schedule: Final Model can be published to Shop Floor for execution and you can also export this data to external system like Oracle EBS or any other legacy.

New Features in Production Scheduling:
This Production scheduling tool which replaces the old oracle manufacturing tool in many aspects mentioned below:

Automatic Floating Bottleneck Detection:
PS is capable of handling floating bottlenecks in shop floor and works on technology called "Constraint Directed Search" (CDS).
Bottleneck on shop floor keeps on floating from one resource to another based on variation is
Supply- Demand. PS is able to detect this automatic floating bottleneck and display
bottleneck resources to Scheduler.

Advance Analytical Decision Support:
This user interface also known as Production Pegging View tells scheduler about what are the supplies (Purchased or Manufactured) is available against each demand line item along with the delay time if any and reason, Sorting of Demand either by Sales Order / Forecast and can be further drill down by customer types, demand types etc., Graphical view of the demand fill rate is shown etc. This information helps user to make a quick decision on the next action to be taken.

Direct Scenario Comparison:
In Production Scheduling module planner can simulate different scenarios and compare the
KPI's of each scenario to come out with the best suited one for the given situation. This is a
unique feature which gives Oracle Productions scheduling a cutting edge over other
technology especially old oracle manufacturing scheduling.

Intuitive Data Model:
This stands for the ability to Modify data related to Operation-Resources, Supply -Demand, Work Order &
Calendar. User can edit Supply-Demand data, Work Order data, and changes operations-resource combinations
to analyze the impact and take the final best possible decision.

For further information on the above features, you can refer to the Oracle Production Scheduling user guide at
oracle metalink.

Posted by Manish Gupta at 5:15 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

This is not so much about the decline of mass production, as about the paradigm shift taking place in manufacturing around the world. Old system of manufacturing seems misfit to the current economic, political and environmental conditions. No new idea springs from void. Changes and even sea changes happen gradually. Craft Production System of late 1800 gave way to mass production when Henry Ford introduced Model T in early '90s. What Ford could achieve was not only the continuous flow of production, but also the standardization and interchangeability of the parts. What mass production system lacks, however, is a necessary responsiveness to ever changing consumer demands. Thanks to Oil shocks of 70s, Sep'11, Financial Meltdowns, demand volatility casts a shadow of mass destruction in profitability --- enterprises of all sizes across the industry vertical are struggling to remain competitive in the choppy market place. 

 

By 1950, Toyota Motor Company produced around 3000 automobiles, when a Ford Factory in High Land Park churned out several thousands in a single day. This was soon to change.
Eiji Toyoda and his Manufacturing prodigy Taiichi Ohno gave world an approach to respond to consumers demands quickly without compromising with quality of products, at the same time reducing cost of manufacturing and inventory. Womack , Jones and Roos poignantly described worldwide move from mass production to lean production in their seminal work - 'Machine that Changed the World'. In 2009 Toyota sold 7,234,439 vehicles followed by GM 6,459,053. Ford sold 4,685,394 vehicles.
Lean Manufacturing promotes a fundamental rethinking of how to produce and deliver goods and services. Largely, this rethinking represents a paradigm shift from supply driven supply chain to a Demand driven supply chain - where actual customer demand drives the production. Also to attain complete benefits of the new approach, manufacturing system requires a change from a "batch and queue" mass production to a production systems based on a product aligned "single-piece flow, pull production" system - from a work center approach to a cell centric production processes.

Though automotive especially Japanese car manufacturers led the way, followed by Electronics and Industrial manufacturers, there is an increasing trend of adoption of lean production across the industry. Today CPG and Pharmaceutical Industry too are embracing lean principles.

Posted by Kallol Kumar Kar at 7:56 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 2 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )