LogicTools, an ILOG company announced yesterday that it has released Supply Chain Analyst 6.0 (SCA). According to Business Wire, this solution for supply chain and inventory optimization brings the ease of use that LogicTools has been known for to tactical inventory optimization - where integration with business processes and enterprise systems is essential to fully benefit from improved safety stock and service level optimization.

Traditional supply chain planning applications provide basic single node inventory calculation capabilities but leave the parameter setting for safety stock and service levels up to the users. Therefore, most companies do not fully benefit from the capabilities of this software since these settings are still based on spreadsheet calculations or rule of thumb approximations. Multi- echelon inventory optimization can provide sophisticated analysis and product differentiated strategies for positioning and stocking inventory throughout the supply chain, including finished goods, WIP, and raw materials. The outputs of SCA can then be used to feed the traditional planning applications driving better performance from these systems by executing to optimal inventory and service level metrics.

Supply Chain Analyst 6.0 has added capabilities that now allow organizations to use SCA for both strategic and tactical use. SCA 6.0 now incorporates standard technologies including Web Services and Data Stores that enable the configuration of business and data workflows to seamlessly integrate SCA with ERP and APS solutions. Automated two-way flows of data from ERP and APS solutions into SCA allow for tactical users to monitor and identify exceptions via configurable exception reports and alerts. User dashboards and configurable reports can be created to view key performance metrics such as turns, working capital, and service levels. User overrides with reason codes can be compared to optimized targets to identify if users are improving or hurting overall inventory performance.

Web services can also be deployed with composite applications such as 'Safety Stock Optimizer' which has achieved SAP® xAPPs™ Certified - "Powered by SAP NetWeaver®" status.

Strategic users of SCA can take advantage of the out- of- the-box functionality in SCA that allows users to get up and running within 90 days, while tactical users can take advantage of the configurable business and data flows to fit SCA into the current company ecosystem.

Supply Chain Analysts supports four major modules:

Inventory Analyst for multi-echelon inventory optimization.

Supply Planner for production sourcing and asset planning.

Product Flow Optimization - for network and inventory optimization solution that targets product flow decisions.

Demand Profiler - for analysis of historical data to create forecast and forecast error.