The following posting can also be viewed and commented upon on the Supply Chain Expert Community web site.

This posting continues highlights of the Kinexions 2011 conference being held this week in Scottsdale Arizona.  Readers can also reference our prior Dispatch One , Dispatch Two and Dispatch Three commentaries.

One of the new twists to this year’s Kinexions conference was an invitation for a broader group of industry analysts / partners / bloggers to not only partake of the conference but also attend a separate afternoon briefing session hosted by Kinaxis senior management and select customers. Seldom have I found software vendors willing to allow this grouping open access, and we complement Kinaxis for this effort.  As COO John Sicard explained to me, the company has reached a point where it requires broader market awareness of its capabilities.

The influencer briefing kicked-off with CEO Doug Colbeth and COO John Sicard jointly providing a history of the company both in its fabric and its technology development. Emphasis was placed on the current demonstrated scalability of RapidResponse and an acknowledgement that the application works best when in coexistence of existing ERP or legacy systems among its customers. Nearly 60 percent of Kinaxis existing customer base operate with an SAP ERP backbone system.  Also explained was that when users interact with RapidResponse they declare their work area responsibility, which the application then utilizes to tailor respective planning views. The application not only manages and processes large amounts of data, but also the business rules that exist regarding that data.  In our view, that characterizes RapidResponse as akin to a business process management (BPM) type of application, which the application accomplishes in its S&OP functionality. We were also briefed on why the new announced re-naming to Kinaxis RapidResponse Supply Chain Control Tower was a natural extension of the company’s current growth plans.  Although there was a on-stage demo, not a lot of information was shared in this session regarding the detailed functionality that is being planned for this extension of RapidResponse capabilities.

The remainder of the influencer briefing session focused on interaction and presentations from invited customers. Elisabeth Kaszas, Director of Supply Chain for Amgen, provided an update on that company’s multi-year transformational efforts towards more responsive supply chain business processes. A benefit mentioned, that was rather difficult to do in the existing ERP backbone system,was the need to provide various product costing structures beyond just standard cost data.

Chalam Kalahasti, Director of Global Planning and Fulfillment for Cisco Systems, described the unique challenges for planning a highly outsourced, globally extended supply chain.  Cisco has a very active S&OP process tied to RapidResponse, and a plan-of-record is created weekly. What is also noteworthy is that Cisco’s direction in more response-oriented planning has been motivated by previous incidents of supply chain disruption, such as earthquakes in Taiwan and China and the tsunami in northern Japan.  Cisco’s supply chain planning process is predicated on the ability to assess a definitive impact from an unplanned event and to provide different options and scenarios for responding to the exception.

Paul Lindblom, a member of the senior IT staff at Qualcomm QCT, provided a detailed perspective of how RapidResponse integrates with various other Qualcomm systems, along with the unique needs for planning in a combination push-pull, semiconductor supply chain.  Semiconductor wafers are long lead-time items subject to fab capacity considerations, and in the case of Qualcomm, multiple fabs are utilized to supply product.  Conversely, wafer packaging and testing are driven by customer buying and lead-time requirement cycles. Semiconductor planning needs which requires the unique ability to be supported for by-product and co-product production are supported in RapidResponse.

Due to time constraints, our final session featured Kerry Zuber of Kinaxis who provided an overview of the latest 10.0 release of RapidResponse, which includes a significant investment in demand management and product forecasting functionality.

Our briefing turned out to be a jam-packed session with a literal fire-hose of information.  Luckily, the customer appreciation event held on a reservation in the hills outside of Phoenix allowed ample opportunity to unwind and have great conversations with fellow attendees.

In a final posting, Supply Chain Matters will provide some final summary comments and observations regarding the Kinexions 2011 conference.

Bob Ferrari

Added Note: Kinaxis is one of other named sponsors of the Supply Chain Matters blog and the author provides services to this vendor.

It is a sincere pleasure to announce to Supply Chain Matters readers that Kinaxis will be a continuing sponsor of this blog during 2010.

Kinaxis is a rather web-savvy supply chain technology provider and was the first to sign-on as a sponsor of this site.  They recognized early on that educational and insightful blogs would play an increasing role in how supply chain professionals share thought leadership and gather insights.  Throughout 2009, our collaboration and partnership has led to innovative means to deliver these insights, including the highly successful 21^st Century Supply Chain Expert Blog Series, where I was invited to join other bloggers, industry luminaries and analysts in exchanging views on a variety of strategic supply chain topics.  Through our ongoing relationship, I have also had the opportunity to be invited to contribute to the Industry Week Monthly Manufacturing Business Challenge series, which is also sponsored by Kinaxis.

Kinaxis continues to grow its broad industry presence and customer base, including customer names such as Cannondale, Cisco, Genzyme, Honeywell, Jabil, Toshiba and others. The Kinaxis RapidResponse technology that is available today is much more than a supply chain planning system, incorporating many features for scenario-based analysis and sales and operations business process support.  The technology is available to serve both large and mid-market supply chain process needs.  Current RapidResponse implementations can accommodate users in the thousands, integrating key information from large numbers of ERP systems. 

We are also pleased to announce that in 2010, unique Supply Chain Matters commentary will also be featured in the new and improved Kinaxis Supply Chain Expert Community web site. Readers can also look forward to my attendance and live commentary from an upcoming Kinaxis sponsored customer event.

I am very pleased to have Kinaxis as an ongoing sponsor.  If your organization has needs for extended visibility and response capabilities that can be implemented in a very timely manner, I recommend you place Kinaxis on your short list.

Bob Ferrari

In numerous Supply Chain Matters commentary, I’ve been noting the magnitudes and complexity of change that are impacting industry supply chains today.  Global outsourcing and business changes continue to extend the complexity and scope of supply chain business processes.  Previous successful efforts in implementing postponement and lean processes, coupled with the forces of a cumulative 18 months of global recession have made many supply chains time constrained in their ability to respond to changes in product demand. Relentless cost pressures have squeezed inventory, safety stock and capacity resources. We have called attention to recent industry articles that are pointing out that spot material shortages are beginning to show-up in a wide range of components within high-tech and other supply chains. 

As firms reflect on 2009 events, and begin business planning for 2010, they should come to the conclusion that traditional planning processes are not going to suffice in this “new normal” of post-recovery.  The situation has changed so dramatically that in our Supply Chain Matters 2010 Predictions, we include a prediction that states that more responsive, event-driven planning capabilities will become a more important capability in 2010.  I believe that supply chain planning in 2010 and beyond will be more event and scenario driven vs. traditional ERP plan driven.

I had the opportunity in December to participate in the latest product briefing of the Kinaxis RapidResponse Enterprise application.  What has always impressed me with RapidResponse are its broader capabilities and abilities to be much more than a supply chain planning application.

Overall functionality has come a long way.  A one multi-site data model can provide supply chain wide visibility to more than just supply chain planning teams, accommodating plan information to key supplier and other cross-functional teams. Some current RapidResponse implementations accommodate users in the thousands. True event-and scenario driven planning capabilities provide teams with a much more dynamic event-driven planning tool.   These have been the design principles of RapidReponse from its genesis within the original Webplan, to fill a void in latent and time-consuming planning cycles, and to be able to emulate and transfer planning analytics across multiple ERP and supply chain planning applications.

One of the most impressive features brought out in a RapidResponse demo is the ability for analyzing various sales and operations planning (S&OP) scenarios.  These might include optimistic or pessimistic plans created for what-if analysis, reservation of inventory for key customers, or production or other event-driven responses to a business opportunity.  All of these are key resource planning competencies in the “new normal”.  The overall speed and response time of the application is also an important differentiation.  Kinaxis has documented RapidResponse computational speed of 29 seconds to extract over seven million records across 32 SAP sites, whereas ERP planning runtime would have been in excess of 8 hours.

Another consideration is that RapidResponse has been implemented in many industry settings beyond its original core high tech electronics vertical presence, where extended and complex supply chain are the norm.  Kinaxis has now added successful implementations in consumer electronics, pharmaceutical and other industry settings among many impressive customer names. A recent Kinaxis / APICS sponsored webcast featured the recent implementation at global biotech Amgen, where the single most important benefit was described as a 50 percent reduction in overall planning cycles, coupled with inventory cost savings.

If you desire more information on this application, you can visit the Kinaxis web site or double-click on the icon in our blog sponsorship panel.

Bob Ferrari

Disclosure: Kinaxis is one of other sponsors of the Supply Chain Matters blog, and as such provides financial consideration for having its product logo and product information linked to this blog.