Optiant Inc., a supply chain-design software company, last month introduced a software product that it says will help companies assess tradeoffs in how supply chains perform.
The product, called PowerChain Architect, is part of Optiant's PowerChain suite, which, among other things, provides inventory optimization capabilities. Architect adds a proprietary optimization engine and a collaborative, intuitive user interface.
"Architect looks across all phases of the supply chain and asks, 'end-to-end, what's the optimal set of actions?'" says Mike Braatz, vice president of marketing. "The software also models the base case of what a customer does. We explicitly dollarize everything."
Braatz says Optiant is targeting the tool to large discrete manufacturers with complex processes. Pricing of Architect will vary, but Braatz says he expects the average deal size to be about $500,000.
The PowerChain technology grew out of research work conducted at MIT.