Accomplish key objectives: Optimize profitability and order fulfillment performance Ensure schedule feasibility and reliability Reschedule operations quickly Understand profitability and customer service trade-offs Manage customer and vendor relationships more precisely Improve the new product introduction process Effectively support: Demand-driven manufacturing initiatives Cooperation between planners and plant operations schedulers Fine-grained decisions in the order management or purchasing process Analytic or transactional decision-making extensions to SAP and Oracle Operational adjustments after mergers and acquisitions

Improved Decision Making with ILOG Solutions

Manufacturing companies today face rapid change and tough global competition. Demand-driven manufacturing initiatives with smaller order sizes and direct store deliveries are picking up steam. New products are on the rise. Mergers and acquisitions can change supply chain designs in a heartbeat, and pressures to improve efficiency continue. It has never been more important to be agile and innovative.

Improved planning and scheduling systems and more fine-grained and flexible decision-making processes within transactional applications are needed. As the leader in both optimization and business rule management technology, ILOG can help.

Optimization is the technology at the heart of most supply chain planning and scheduling solutions, and business rule management technology—often in conjunction with business process management (BPM) technology—is at the heart of modern SOA-based decision-making in the world of transactional applications. Both technologies can help you make the most out of your enterprise resource planning (ERP) and supply chain applications—whether by extending the analytic capabilities of SAP or Oracle, or by making better decisions in the high volume order management or purchase management processes.

Technologies that cope with rapid change
Traditional manufacturing solutions do not deal effectively with the rate of change in 21st century supply chains. Manufacturers need better planning, scheduling and decision-making tools to be more agile and responsive.

ILOG helps manufacturers by providing:

• Supply chain planning applications for network design and inventory optimization
• Supply chain scheduling applications for integrated production planning and detailed scheduling in process and semiconductor manufacturing
• Pre-built, best-in-class optimization models for integrated production planning and detailed scheduling in process and semiconductor manufacturing
• Custom planning and scheduling solutions—based on custom optimization models—that fit your unique decision-making challenges, eliminating the compromises that sometimes come with generic applications or Excel-based solutions
• Scheduling precision—by the minute, rather than tby he hour or day
• Metrics and trend analyses that capture both operational efficiency and financial performance
• State-of-the-art "what-if" analysis, scenario comparison and goal balancing
• The ability to make decisions based on data stored in multiple systems
• The ability to manage and maintain business policy rules and decision-making services—independently from the transactional applications they support

Planning and Scheduling Applications for the manufacturing industry
Plant PowerOps—Provides integrated production planning and detailed scheduling or rescheduling for process manufacturers who coordinate the production of intermediate products and finished goods, while handling the complexities associated with tanks, cleaning rules and changeovers.

Fab PowerOps—Provides detailed scheduling and rescheduling for the main process steps of front-end wafer processing for semiconductor manufacturers who want state-of-the-art cycle time reduction and throughput. It can be tightly integrated with IBM SiView or other manufacturing execution systems (MES) software packages in place at the plant.

ILOG's Optimization Decision Management System (ODMS)
Whether your problem is strategic planning, cutting and trimming, or truck loading, ILOG’s complete system of development tools and engines and our optimization experts can build you a state-of-the-art custom planning or scheduling application.

Exercise your optimization model(s) fully with “what-if” analysis, scenario comparison and goal balancing. Optimization engines execute with the best performance and optimization accuracy available, and provide controlled relaxation of binding constraints, sensitivity analysis, explanations, and other valuable features. ODMS-based applications incorporate superb visual displays of input data, solutions (plans or schedules) and key performance indicators (KPIs).

ILOG's Business Rule Management System (BRMS)
Develop decision-making rule services that can drive transactional decision making in any process. ILOG's Business Rule Management System (BRMS) is a key component in modern IT architectures. BRMS and BPM technologies are at the heart of most SOA strategies.

As the leader in BRMS technology, ILOG has strong partnerships with most of the leading BPM providers, including IBM, BEA, Oracle, and SAP; and ILOG BRMS is Netweaver certified. BRMS-based decision-making provides an intelligent decision-management process where policies are maintained and auditability is ensured. Rule services can drive fine-grained decisions in order fulfillment, quality management, customer service, procurement, supplier management and compliance.

• Read a datasheet on ILOG business rules for manufacturing operations