Stories about: Logility

Oracle has released the first major new version of its demand management software a year after acquiring the technology through the purchase of Demantra.

As supply chains stretch around the world, companies look to tweak supply chain management systems.

Manufacturers dream of a finely tuned supply chain, with finished goods landing softly on distributor and retailer loading docks at exactly the right time in precisely the right quantity. That can't be done, of course, without accurate demand forecasting -- which still tends to be based on intuition, last year's sales numbers, and spreadsheet war games between sales and marketing groups. For most, the dream remains distant.

Christmas in July? That's the way it is around online educational toy store SmarterKids. com, which is retooling its supply-chain management process and bulking its network to prepare for the holiday shopping season.

At the Retail Systems 2000 conference in Chicago, everyone was talking about collaborative planning, forecasting and replenishment, or CPFR for short. This is the buzzword for online sharing of sales forecast data between buyer and seller for efficient production planning.

Interviewee: Joe Plaster, vice president of electronic-business technology. He was promoted to the position March 14 from director of common systems technical support.

IBM and i2 Technologies are teaming up to develop industry-focused, pre-packaged supply-chain management templates as a way to make advanced planning and scheduling (APS) software more affordable to middle market customers, said Michael Martin, vice president of business development for i2.

In an effort to bring APS (advanced planning and scheduling) software to middle-market customers, IBM Corp. has enlisted i2 Technologies and Logility to port their APS applications to the AS/400 environment.

IBM Corp. has expanded the range of Internet applications available on its midrange AS/400 server.

First, there was a move by manufacturers and retailers to use the Web to collaborate on production plans and demand forecasts. Now, the same thing is starting to happen on the warehousing and transportation side of the supply chain.

VA Linux Systems Inc. in Sunnyvale, California, has launched a free online repository of open-source software projects, called SourceForge. According to the company, which owns the linux.com domain, SourceForge will contain more than 700 open-source projects done by more than 3,000 software developers in 76 countries.