Optimized Solutions, Inc. at SAP Sapphire + ASUG Annual Conference, 2019

Landed Cost Analysis

Challenge

Transportation Planning solutions have been available for years. The problem is in unforeseen costs. Duties, taxes, road fees, energy surcharges, etc. all have a material impact on transportation costs. Since many of these charges are billed at one time, a single invoice from an Ocean Carrier or 3PL can have hundreds of line items. Reconciling these charges to the appropriate cost center or project is extremely time consuming. To make the problem worse, these hidden charges often show up in many different transactional systems – they can be in Financials, Transportation Planning solutions, WMS systems, Freight Tendering systems, etc. Finance professionals often resort to an end of period allocation process to allocate these hidden costs, and unfortunately allocating these costs evenly across multiple cost centers hides the true source.

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Good Receipts(GR) Automation for SAP

Challenge

• Manual Process of Goods Receipt taking more time
• Human errors during inbound GR process
• Higher Operational Costs
• Lack of real time dashboards

Solution:

AMI, Optimized Solutions flagship digital transformation technological solution, can enable customers to automate GR in their warehouses. Advantages include fully-automated real-time updates of inbound inventory items, enhanced efficiency of warehouse, plant, field personnel & reduced GR/IR reconciliation errors, up to 20% of minimized invoice exception situations, and improved overall service procurement reconciliation for reduced operational costs.

Benefits of AMI:

• Built on a collaborative model between the client & Optimized Solutions
• Leverages core business processes in ERP & integration platform while
innovating with IoT
• Highly reusable solution that can be used with any ERP platform
• Delivered on an agile model with weekly sprints and co-ownership
between client and Optimized Sol.
• 4-6 weeks of build & test effort, with one week for demo & closure

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Commodity Raw Material Margin Management

Challenge

Companies must constantly make decisions about whether sales prices need to be adjusted, how much tolerance there is in price negotiations, and which products should be focused on by sales personnel. With volatile raw material prices and sudden changes in demand for products, companies need to be able to obtain information rapidly and with short notice. For example, a manufacturer may need to calculate the raw materials required for a major delivery to a customer, based on the Bill of Materials for thousands of other purchase orders.
Because of the large data volumes involved the IT related challenges are significant. The goal is to consolidate all relevant data from various source systems, bring it into context, and make it available to users at all levels of the organization through a user-friendly interface.

Solution:

With the help of in-memory technology, the raw material requirements and associated costs of delivery to any business segment (geographical, customer segment, product group) can be calculated in seconds. Ideally, all the relevant data for the simulation (scenario planning), including historical data, is incorporated. Thanks to an easy-to-use interface, users can run through the scenarios and display the results in aggregated form on a dashboard.

Benefits of AMI:

Securing product margin despite volatile raw material prices
Assessment of risks caused by fluctuations in raw material prices
Rapid decision making based on data
Increased accuracy

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Demand Driven Production Scheduling (DDPS) for SAP

Challenge

• Demand fluctuates significantly but the capacity is finite
• Lack of visibility across the production lines
• Lack of summary view of the demand, capacity and business rules
• Unable to meet the demand based on dynamic business parameters
• Inability to evaluate next available time for production lines

Solution:

AMI, Optimized Solutions flagship digital transformation technological solution, can create a single dashboard view in SAP (can also be SAP Fiori-enabled ) to provide visibility across the production lines about current job and scheduled jobs and help meet demand based on dynamic business parameters (customer, order volume, line conditions etc). It can also help evaluate next available time for production line & plan accordingly and help setup downtime on an as-need basis.

Benefits of AMI:

• Built on a collaborative model between the Client & Optimized Solutions
• Plug n’ play solution for both process orders and production order
scenarios in SAP
• Highly reusable solution
• Delivered on an agile model with weekly sprints
• 5-6 weeks of build & test effort, with one week for demo & closure

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Fleet Optimization

Solution:
Provide real-time insight into fleet (power units) operations and performance with capabilities to drive continuous improvement and process/ business optimization. 3 data perspectives: Generation View, Operations View, Strategic KPIs.
Sources include Load Capabilities, Plant Utilization, Production Costs, Fixed Costs, Energy Costs, Targets, and Consumables . Core KPIs include Unit Efficiency, Power Output, Power Factor, Unit Cost of Energy, Conversion Efficiency, Fuel Utilization, Power Generation, etc. In addition, Asset Performance, Maintenance, Sustainability, etc. will be part of the Operations and Strategic View.

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Logistics Analysis

Solution:
Provide end to end insight into reliability, customer service, cost to serve with capabilities for route optimization, load consolidation, asset utilization, etc.

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Real-Time Inventory Management

Challenge:
At many companies, Inventory Insight as a “Critical” process.

Solution:
“Inventory Insight” is a Real-Time reporting solution which will enable you to analyze select set of KPIs required for managing and analyzing inventory.

AMI Benefits:
Key characteristics of this solution are listed below:
• All the calculations and formulas for the KPIs are resident in AMI Enterprise
• Potential for reporting inventory metrics by different segments (Branch/Region/Corporation) and by different aggregations (Time, Sales Category, Location, etc.)
• Ability to trend and potentially correlate the data – time series analysis, consumption trends, etc.

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Complex Event Planning

Solution:
Build applications that process event streams in real-time, generate alerts, and deliver information for better decision making. AMI can monitor Complex Events (CEP) can monitor massive streams of real-time data, looks for key triggers and events. CEP is used by the NYSE and NASDAQ as a critical component of their architecture. CEP can monitor massive streams of data, and respond in milliseconds to key events with pre-planned scenarios. AMI works on CEP to enable more complex analysis of structured and un-structured data.

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Balance Energy Supply & Demand

Challenge:
Balance Responsible Parties need to ensure the equilibrium of demand and supply in the energy grid. Grid operators charge high amounts of money when reserve energies are used to balance demand and supply to avoid instabilities or even black-outs. For Utilities these costs are typically among the highest in their business. The more renewable energies are in the mix the less predictable the energy balance becomes. Unforeseen shortage of renewable energies (e.g. due to changing weather) dramatically increases the risk of very high reserve energy costs. Overproduction of renewable energies leads to shutdowns of wind parks or solar panels and therefore wastes resources. Goal: Use flexibilities in time and capacity of energy consumption for industry and millions of households to optimize the match of energy demand and supply.

Solution:
Based on AMI’s in-memory cloud solution where utilities, energy consumers and suppliers negotiate the optimal schedule of energy resources. Industry and households offer their energy flexibilities to Utilities which in turn use AMI to optimize the schedule of all resources taking into account; all energy costs, weather forecast to predict renewables in real-time, demand forecast to predict base load. Benefits: for household consumers: save on energy costs by trading energy flexibility. Benefits for for industry consumers: save on energy costs by trading energy flexibility.

AMI Benefits for utilities:
Save high costs on reserve energies , save CO2 by increased usage of renewable energies. Benefits for grid operators: more stable grid while increasing usage of renewables. Benefits for energy suppliers: increase profit by trading flexibility.

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SCM Variability – Balance Risks & Opportunities

Challenges:
In today’s global economy, companies’ source materials make products, and sell goods and services around the world. Because the workings of global networks make companies vulnerable to endless risks, from fluctuating economic conditions to international conflicts and natural.

Solution:
Imagine if you could reduce the impact of uncertainty by developing scenarios in real time to profitably respond to supply chain opportunities, events and risks.

AMI Delivers :
Detailed visibility of planned and actual supply and demand across all suppliers and locations, Real-time visibility of events and activities across the extended supply network. AMI gives you an understanding of volatility of material and supply chain at any level to balance supply chain, manufacturing capacity, and inventory with consumer demand. This enables your organization to respond immediately and profitably to opportunities and risks across a global network.

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Demand Signal Management

Challenge:
Due to large amounts of consumer data, visibility for sensing, analysis and planning data is often possible only on aggregated levels with limited functions in real-time on a granular level.

Solution:
AMI offers a Demand Signal Management (DSiM) works with POS and syndicated data as well as other influencing demand data points in order to rapidly analyze demand data and improve supply chain, sales, marketing, product development and other business processes. DSiM will provide the capability to store large amounts of shipment, POS and syndicated data as well as other influencing demand data points, combined with unique modeling capabilities to plan and manage demand and category performance (CP).

AMI Benefits:
DSiM connects CP manufacturers better with their end consumers by greatly improving responsiveness and performance to their customer and ultimately end consumer demand. DSiM helps CP manufacturers understanding consumer behavior ; it helps improving performance in the overall supply chain, such as preventing excess stock in warehouses and retail channels as well as eliminating out-of-stock situations which might erode profitability and brand loyalty.

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Spend Analysis

Challenge

In these times of economic uncertainty every organization’s chief procurement officer is continually striving to increase savings opportunities, reducing cost and limit supplier risk. It has become imperative to be able to classify these saving and cost-reducing opportunities as well as providing insights into operational risk or compliance to the Procure-to-Pay process. For Example, in a Global Telco organization, the procurement process across multiple operating companies, with a multitude of material categories and numerous suppliers, the volume of Purchase Orders, Invoices and Contract information generated is immense. The procurement functions require to analyze the spend data in order to be able to deliver the above business values, especially because a large number of operating companies are procuring from a similarly large number of suppliers, and supplier relationships can often be renegotiated to take advantage of their huge buying power. The procurement managers want to be able to liaise with their technology and finance counterparts to understand an operating company’s pipeline of projects by material category, supplier etc., the budget allocated by the operating company and top-down forecasts built from previous years spend patterns as well as knowing the current actuals. The procurement managers want to get an insight to the supply chain and gain visibility of where and what the business is planning to spend. A spend analysis solution may not sound like a typical big-data solution, but information at the line item level for Purchase Orders, Invoices and Contracts can involve millions of records, especially when a company is dealing with multiple currencies, supplier and material hierarchies and reference data. In addition, because of the complexities of reporting requirements and exclusions, report performance can degrade even with just moderate data volumes. A good spend analysis solution requires up-to-date and speed to aid the corporate reporting and decision making processes. The need for mobile solutions to measure spend exacerbates this problem, because response times on devices like the iPad is much more critical. Business users do not have the desire to wait for minutes for information to be returned.

Solution:

SAP BusinessObjects Spend Performance Management (SPM) has a rapid deployment model and front-end tool, which has an easy and intuitive nature, is geared to assist the procurement process to identify savings and cost-reducing opportunities. SPM runs on the SAP NetWeaver BW platform and this can either be installed, or migrated onto the SAP HANA platform – giving instant response times even with complex selections. Because SAP HANA operates as the database for BW, no business change or configuration change is required – it just works.

AMI Benefits::

Budget, Forecast and Actuals spend data can be analyzed in real-time in order to identify areas for saving or possible constraints in the supply chain, so when a PO or Invoice is raised, possibly against a contract, the current position can be reported immediately.
In addition, mobile reports are readily made available with excellent response times – allowing managers to make decisions about spend on the move.

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SCM Optimization

Challenge

As a result of volatile raw material prices, companies must constantly make decisions about whether and when sales prices need to be adjusted, how much tolerance there is in price negotiations, and which products sales personnel should focus on. To make the best possible decisions, companies need to be able to obtain information on short notice about which raw materials cause which costs for which product, customer, or business area – and what will be the effects of future potential fluctuations. The challenge is to consolidate all relevant data from various source systems, bring it into context and make it available for users through a user-friendly interface. Because of the large data volumes involved, the IT related challenges are significant. In order, for example, to calculate the raw materials requirements for a delivery to a major customer, it may be necessary to perform BOM explosions for thousands of (historical or planned) purchase orders.

Solution:

With the help of in-memory technology, the raw material requirements and associated costs of delivery to any business segment (geographical, customer segment, product group) can be calculated in seconds. Ideally, all the relevant data for the simulation (scenario planning), including historical data, is incorporated. Thanks to an easy-to-use interface, users can run through the scenarios and display the results in aggregated form on a dashboard.

Benefits of AMI:

Securing product margin despite volatile raw material prices
Assessment of risks caused by fluctuations in raw material prices

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DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IN AUTOMOTIVE

PROVIDE ADDITIONAL CUSTOMER VALUE, CREATE CUSTOMIZED VEHICLES & DRIVE NEW REVENUE STREAMS

The automotive industry is full of examples of revolutionizing and disrupting markets, processes, and technologies. From the first mass produced cars all the way to today’s fully connected, nearly autonomous vehicles, automotive companies have led the way in creating change.

Today, heightened competition from non-traditional players and increasing consumer expectations are continuing to push auto manufacturers to innovate. Digital transformation is impacting all aspects of vehicles, from the cars themselves to the production facilities where they’re built. The World Economic Forum estimates that there is $670 billion of value at stake for automotive players through digital initiatives.

Increase operational inefficiencies, respond quickly to changing customer demands, and speed up production times through more effective use of big data and powerful analytics. Take advantage of new opportunities to provide additional value to customers and customize vehicles to drive new revenue streams. Digital transformation is changing the way people get around. Automakers need to driving this change or they risk being left behind.

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AMI FOR LOGISTICS

IMPROVE FLEET TRACKING, DRIVE OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCY & CREATE NEW MODELS OF GROWTH

For transportation & logistics companies the name of the game is speed and efficiency. Margin pressures and increased competition are driving the need for improved operations and new technologies. Digital transformation and better use of data have the power to create new business models and drive new opportunities for companies looking to get ahead.

Track fleets in real-time, know the location of goods across all types of vehicles, and determine the best routes by leveraging big data and powerful analytics capabilities. Ensure goods get to the right place, at the right time, in the right condition, and identify any potential delays or problems before they occur.

Reduce wasted resources by better allocating equipment, optimize inbound and outbound movement of cargo, and reduce overall operations costs with better visibility across your network. For transportation & logistics firms, digital transformation can overcome many of the gaps in current systems and ensure downstream suppliers, retailers, and customers get the inventory they need, when they need it.

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AMI FOR FOOD & BEVERAGE

PERSONALIZE PRODUCTION, UNDERSTAND CUSTOMER SENTIMENT & HONE PROFITS

The food & beverage industry is rapidly being disrupted by technology. Pressure from consumers and retailers to deliver a wider range of products at lower prices means manufacturers need the right tools and processes in place to stay competitive. Digital transformation enables operational efficiencies and revenue generation opportunities across the entire supply chain by improving the use of data and analytics in decision making.

Fine tune supply & demand forecasting, optimize inventory levels, and improve raw materials usage at every step of the manufacturing process. Whether you have vertically integrated supply chains or work closely with other firms, effective data use enhances visibility and makes it possible to manage supply chains to identify efficiencies that save time and money.

Increase agility and launch new products more rapidly while complying to regulatory and safety requirements. Get feedback from customers in real-time and make changes to recipes or packaging quickly for new revenue streams across geographic regions. By leveraging technology and data, you can identify opportunities and stay ahead of the competition.

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