Supply chain planning application provider ILOG this week announced general availability of new versions of its ILOG Inventory Analyst and ILOG Product Flow Optimizer tools, which help manufacturers, retailers, and distributors reduce costs associated with logistics and inventory management.
Version 7.0 of the ILOG Inventory Analyst includes several ease-of-use features, such as a new user interface that the company says provides easier access to existing inventory data. In addition, a Data Store Table Editor enables quick setup of custom tables within a data store for customer-specific data. A Web-based optimization feature allows straightforward deployment of the application on a desktop or server with automatic population of inventory analyst scenarios.

ILOG Inventory Analyst 7.0 also features user-configurable dashboards and reports, to help organize and access historic and forecasted supply and demand, current stock, and optimized inventory and projected inventory levels, as well as optimization models that include shelf life and service levels, in addition to trade-off information among service, shelf life, and costs. The application automatically calculates unmet demand to help better optimize the system.

Version 7.0 of ILOG's Product Flow Optimizer, meanwhile, helps supply chain managers evaluate the trade-offs between logistic and inventory costs to determine an optimal path for each product from the distribution center to the customer. The application also helps users evaluate multiple potential flow paths for each SKU, as well as different transport mode options along each path. The ILOG Product Flow Optimizer also contains configurable dashboards and reports to display information automatically populated from the application.

Both products belong to ILOG's LogicTools suite of supply chain applications, which also includes the supply chain network design and planning product ILOG LogicNet Plus XE and ILOG PlantPowerOps, an integrated production planning and scheduling tool.

According to the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals' "18th Annual State of Logistics Report," inventory carrying costs rose 49% from 2002 to 2006.

"Inventory levels and costs are affected by many drivers, including uncertainty and seasonality in demand, production constraints, manufacturing yields and lot sizes, raw material or component availability, delivery lead times, transportation times, and service levels," said Edith Simchi-Levi, vice president of operations in ILOG's LogicTools division, in an interview with Managing Automation.

"With global production and market needs, the length and complexity of the supply chain increases, and this makes it difficult to understand what is driving inventory," Simchi-Levi said. "We have customer case studies that show that management assumptions about the way to resolve inventory problems — for instance, by improving the forecast — were completely different from the model results, which recommended keeping more inventory of raw material.

"Inventory Analyst and Product Flow Optimizer globally optimize the allocation of raw materials, work in progress (WIP), and finished goods inventory across the supply chain," Simchi-Levi said. "This helps companies find the hidden drivers so they can prioritize improvement opportunities based on overall inventory impact."

"Since upgrading to the new release of ILOG Inventory Analyst, we have seen significant improvements in ease of use and integration," said Brock Cummings, senior supply chain analyst at ILOG customer World Kitchen LLC, in a statement. "Due to the new scenario wizard and data store import functions, the extract, transform, and load time has been reduced by over 75%."

ILOG officials did not specify pricing information on the new releases, saying only that pricing depends upon the level of customization required.