Products

LogicNet Plus 6.0 XE

Release targets international users
Supply chain managers can see the business impact of changes before implementing them with the new LogicNet Plus 6.0 XE.

The network design and planning solution from LogicTools, a Division of ILOG, offers several ease-of-use enhancements and improved support for international operations. It also solves bigger problems faster with ILOG CPLEX 11, the latest release of the market-leading mathematical optimizer (Story, Connection No. 41).

But what will really give users a charge is the new automated functionality for simulating and comparing scenarios. The application enables quick analysis of the trade-offs between production, warehousing, transportation costs and service requirements, as well as calculation of optimal network configurations for different cost and service objectives.

Solutions from models can be viewed, compared and easily exported to tables and graphs for further analysis and presentations. The application also provides improved feasibility analysis for assessing penalties for violating certain constraints, as well as a scenario simulator that automates sensitivity analysis.

Overcoming complexity
The supply chain is complicated by conflicting objectives, including cost and service trade-offs, inherent uncertainties in both supply and demand, and various supply chain dynamics. As more than 250 companies can attest, LogicNet Plus XE masters this complexity with an ability to define thousands of real-life constraints through an easy-to-use interface specifically designed for supply chain professionals.

The new LogicNet Plus XE enables network design and production sourcing or asset planning optimization to take into account seasonality and inventory requirements over time. It also has new international features that include the ability to handle multiple currencies, unique tariff structures, and the different regulations governing regional markets.

Other features include an expanded toolbar for easier access to data forms, side-by-side scenario comparisons, bulk-add record editing used by Microsoft Excel, and improved demand graphing with Pareto charts, line graphs and pie charts.

Learn more about LogicNet Plus 6.0 XE at www.logic-tools.com.

"We have been using the LogicTools network design and planning products since 2002 on numerous projects because it is a powerful tool that is easy to use. The performance on all levels has improved significantly over the years, including the latest release."
� Mike Jones
CEO
St. Onge Consulting

 

 

ILOG Rules for COBOL

New tricks for COBOL applications
ILOG Rules for COBOL simplifies the addition of a business rule management system (BRMS) to an existing COBOL application to cost-effectively implement policy change management and automated decisioning.

No matter their industry, most Fortune 500 companies � and thousands of smaller ones � have their mission-critical applications on mainframes. In many cases, these applications are in COBOL, that venerable programming language introduced nearly 50 years ago.

According to a leading analyst, 80 percent of the world�s business runs on COBOL. Almost every industry, from finance to manufacturing, relies on COBOL applications, and these systems contain more than 180 billion lines of code, of which a large portion contains �lost business rules.�

Top BRMS supports COBOL
ILOG Rules for COBOL works by providing access to most of the features available with ILOG JRules, the market-leading ILOG BRMS:

• Define the input and output for generated code by importing COBOL data structures into ILOG JRules Rule Studio to create a Business Object Model (BOM)
• Create a business vocabulary for the BOM and extend the imported data-centric BOM with action phrases
• Create rule flows, Business Action Language (BAL) rules, decision tables and decision trees using standard ILOG JRules features
• Generate COBOL source code from defined and published rule sets, for compilation into an executable format

ILOG Rules for COBOL is well suited for companies that currently deploy their business rules in COBOL mainframe applications but want to benefit from a BRMS. The rules in a COBOL application can be incrementally moved to a central repository, where they can be externally managed � even directly by business personnel � and still execute in COBOL code.

Available soon, visit http://www.ilog.com/products/cobol/ for more information.

 

 

ILOG Plant PowerOps 3.0

Three's a charm for manufacturers
ILOG Plant PowerOps (PPO) brings greater efficiency to process manufacturing, and in its third release, takes production planners to a new level for managing demand variability and building executable schedules.

An integrated planning and scheduling tool, ILOG PPO is designed specifically for the fast-moving consumer goods, pharmaceutical and chemical industries. It addresses unique challenges such as tank management, complex material flows and maturity constraints, and can quickly guide a user through difficult trade-offs and apply user-defined key performance indicators (KPIs) in automatically generating reliable, cost-effective production schedules.

A plan or schedule based on new cost assumptions or a spike in customer demand can be generated in just a few mouse clicks, thanks to the most sophisticated optimization models ever delivered in a general purpose commercial application and a combination of ILOG optimization and visualization technologies. As a result, planners can more easily handle exceptions and expedite orders, and compare different production scenarios.

Extending a performer
ILOG PPO can be implemented alone with its own repository of data or as a planning and scheduling extension to enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions. New of ILOG PPO 3.0:

• Material rebalancing engine to manage demand and process variability
  • Improve coordination between intermediate and finished products, and enable readjustment of decisions for finished products
• Rescheduling
  • Dynamic repegging during manual rescheduling
  • More powerful tools to help planners change a schedule without violating constraints
• Analysis and discovery
  • Multidimensional product and time aggregations (e.g., analyze stock coverage on products aggregated by packaging format or flavor)
• Planning and scheduling process
  • Ability to support different planning and scheduling business processes (e.g., plan finished products before intermediates or vice versa)

ILOG PPO has helped improve reactivity, operational efficiency and service levels at plants owned by Danone, a leading maker of yogurt and other dairy products. It has also been adopted by Japanese and American manufacturers.

Learn more about ILOG PPO 3.0 at http://ppo.ilog.com.

 

 

ILOG JViews 8.1

Tuned for speed
Several improvements in ILOG JViews 8.1 make this minor release a major leaguer by boosting performance across ILOG�s suite of advanced Java� visualization components.

ILOG JViews' power expands to more platforms:

• Native Eclipse GEF graph layout capabilities � Developers making Eclipse applications can use either the improved AWT/SWT bridge to reuse existing Java SWING and AWT assets or ILOG JViews Diagrammer�s new native graph layout module to create 100 percent Eclipse GEF diagrams.

ILOG JViews adds sense to schedule views:

• Additional data view for ILOG JViews Gantt � The new Program Evaluation Review Technique (PERT) view for ILOG JViews Gantt uses ILOG JViews Diagrammer to display activity graphs that use nodes for activities and links for end-to-start constraints.

ILOG JViews improves productivity and the user experience:

• More compact and feature-rich dashboards � A binary file format complements the existing XML one for more compact ILOG JViews dashboard files and five times faster startups. 20 types of charts can now be used in JViews Diagrammer dashboards.
• More efficient Ajax Web applications � ILOG JViews JavaServer Faces (JSF) Ajax Web clients now have more intelligent and compact JavaScript code loading for faster startups and up to four times less network traffic.
• Improved applet deployments � ILOG JViews applet deployments are more efficient than ever with reduced roundtrips (25 to 50 percent) due to improved BeanInfo data and new resource bundle loading.
• Faster screen updates
  • Numerous enhancements to Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
  • Redone base-level drawing operations
  • ILOG JViews Maps support for vector map generalization

Learn more at http://jviews.ilog.com.