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5 Important Inventory Analytics Tactics for Retailers

January 3rd, 2012 by Devender Aerrabolu

The retail industry has always been competitive with very slim profit margins. Retailers can increase their sales, their profits, their relationships with their customers, and their competitiveness by effectively and efficiently managing their inventory. Historical sales data is just as important as accurate sales forecasts in spotting trends and making critical business decisions. Balancing inventory to optimize and maximize ROI entails understanding the marketplace, effectively reducing warehouse costs and customer returns, and improving sales.

Existing applications for reporting and analyzing data are inflexible and inefficient. Many retailers are moving to cloud-based SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) applications for business intelligence analysis and evaluation of business metrics. SaaS and cloud-based solutions can be implemented across all departments, including purchasing, distribution, and point-of-sale, and can be accessed from any location, computer, or mobile device. Cloud-based business intelligence technology has the capability to assist in the management of inventory more rapidly, more efficiently, and more effectively; thereby boosting profits, enhancing the competitive position, and improving customer relationships.

Inventory management is a key component to the success of retailers and several capabilities need to be available to understand the natural fluctuations of inventory and customer buying patterns.

1)Cross-functional data visibility for orders, shipping, receiving, distribution, customer returns, and marketing and advertising promotions.
2)Clear and real-time views of sales trends to maximize and optimize the product mix, including SKUs, categories, and store-by-store or region-by-region sales data.
3)A combination of metrics reports including forecasts sales, invoice aging, point-of-sale data for each reporting period—weekly, monthly, or quarterly.
4)Management capability of warehouse storage needs and inventory supply needs based on past and future sales data.
5)Strategic just-in-time inventory management that also does not negatively impact the supply chain or revenues.

SaaS-based inventory management systems does not require in-house IT resources for installation or maintenance of the applications, and allow for rapid deployment of applications. Many retailers are moving to on-demand business intelligence for their inventory management needs in order to realize cost savings, increase the speed and flexibility of data retrieval and analysis, and reduce dependent on location-based IT departments.

Posted in Applications, Business Processes, Ecommerce, Engineering Change Management, Hosting, Internet Retail, Physical Inventory, SaaS, Smart Warehouse, SMB, Systems Integration | No Comments »

Innovate Your DFR and DPT Practices

December 20th, 2011 by Devender Aerrabolu

Storage I/O solutions, in considering cost-effectiveness and best practices, address primary storage data footprint reduction (DFR) as well as support for data protection and recovery (DPR). DFR implementation allows more data to be stored in a smaller footprint and includes archiving email, databases, and file systems, real-time data compression, storage tiering, and thin provisioning. The tools and best practices policies of DPR include daily backup and restore, business continuity, disaster recovery, and meeting Service Level Objectives (SLOs) archiving requirements, recovery time objectives (RTOs), and recovery point objectives (RPOs).

The IT departments of MBEs are faced with supporting enterprise growth while simultaneously maintaining Quality of Service (QoS) and managing budgetary constraints. Data must be protected from various internal and external threats and disaster recovery and restoration capabilities must be effectively enhanced. Additionally, reliability and accessibility of data must constantly be improved.

Innovation and optimization, focusing on the source of DPR challenges and the performance of DPR and DFR technologies will help enterprise and MBE IT departments meet the challenges and demands of data storage, data protection and recovery, and RTOs and RPOs in a cost-effective and timely manner.

•Real-time compression leverages performance rates and response times and enables more data to be stored in a more dense data footprint.
•DFR techniques can be re-focused from downstream storage to complementary active and online reference data primary storage optimization, while maintaining and improving performance.
•More effectively utilizing primary storage resources such as cache and premium tier 0 storage—another use of real-time compression, can accomplish expansion of the current data footprint.

Any innovative changes must be seamless and transparent while providing interoperability with the various IVS storage products while co-existing with current DR techniques.

The IT professional can produce real ROI results for the company through innovation and optimization initiatives that maximize and enhance DFR and DPR practices while reducing the costs to manage the resources necessary.

Posted in Applications, Business Processes, Engineering Change Management, Systems Integration | No Comments »

ERP System Solutions

November 16th, 2011 by Devender Aerrabolu

When you successfully implement a flexible ERP system, you equip your manufacturing operations team with the best solutions that provide relevant real-time data and improve rapid responses to any business changes—whether your critical data resides on one or multiple systems. ERP allows you to execution processes and streamline your operations for the most efficient change management.

Refining your business processes to be more “disciplined” actually allows them to be more “flexible” as opposed to “rigid”. This flexibility makes your data more visible to relevant decision-makers, speeds up just-in-time ordering, and improves the use of critical business resources. Your enterprise can respond to trends, minimize costs, increase profit margins, and reduce delivery times.

Each member of your management team benefits from an integrated ERP system, improving the day-to-day productivity and overall effectiveness of the entire management staff.

The Sales Manager: An effective ERP allows the sales manager to focus on delivering orders, generating reliable sales forecasts, improving the sales performance of the field sales team, and providing excellent customer service.

The Supply Chain Executive: A flexible ERP systems frees the supply chain executive to focus on the core responsibilities of supporting operations, reducing material costs, and servicing the needs of customers.

The Plant Manager: Plant managers can utilize an effective ERP system to focus on plant operations, improve the productivity of the labor forces, improve quality, and meet the required customer service levels.

The VP of Operations: A flexible ERP system helps the VP of Operations to access the real-time data needed to make the most effective decisions, balance the allocation of resources, provide consistent customer service, and manage costs.

The Finance Executive: A successful ERP implementation provides the Finance Executive with the tools necessary to automate the data collection process, focus on initiatives that improve the financial health of the enterprise, and enhance cash management and regulatory reporting.

Changing your company from manual processes to a flexible ERP allows you and your management staff to rely on your business processes to manage your operations.

Posted in Applications, Business Processes, Change Log Management, Compliance Regulations, Engineering Change Management, Physical Inventory, Quality Assurance, Shop Floor Control, Smart Warehouse, Systems Integration | No Comments »

Data Center Power Systems Best Practices (2)

September 20th, 2011 by Devender Aerrabolu

Power system failures can severely hamper data center operations; extreme weather poses significant risk to a continuous power source. There are several best practices that can be utilized by IT departments to ensue maximum uptime for the data centers for their organizations. The first five were detailed earlier; the remainder will be discussed here.

1)IT departments and facilities managers can benefit by having on going monitoring and diagnostics that are enterprise-wide and proactive. Disciplined work practices and processes for software consultations and swift response actions will allow for the effective use of software for mission-critical equipment including power systems, environmental, and life and safety systems.
2)Establish and maintain contingency plans to deal with the loss of water and power. Extensive research, planning, and cost-benefit analyses should be executed to prepare for situations beyond the control of the enterprise, such as natural or man-made disasters.
3)Build redundancy into the power system topology. Although more expensive to purchase and install, data center redundancy will allow for much faster recovery after a power outage.
4)It may seem obvious, but replacing outdated equipment and UPS systems increases overall data center availability while also reducing cost of ownership to the enterprise.
5)Regular auditing of power systems by the data center managers will yield up-to-date information on the total infrastructure of mission-critical equipment capacity.

IT departments and facilities management engineers, working together, can help to mitigate power system downtimes by cooperatively establishing best practices for modern data center infrastructures.

Posted in Business Processes, Change Log Management, Engineering Change Management, Inspection Management | No Comments »

Data Center Power Systems: Best Practices (1)

September 6th, 2011 by Devender Aerrabolu

The recent extreme weather in many parts of the United States in the spring and summer of 2011 resulted in many IT department re-evaluating the power systems of their critical data centers.

There are several best practices that can be utilized by IT departments to ensue maximum uptime for the data centers for their organizations. The first five will be outlined here; the remainder will be discussed in a later post.

1)Because of the increased capacity of most server infrastructures, including the adoption of blade servers and virtualization, power overloads are much more common. Companies should have established written document for practices and procedures to allow IT departments and facilities managers to work together to for data center power systems management and maintenance.
2)Data center new construction or renovation projects should emphasize long-term value over short-term costs; including rewards for construction teams that have long-term views for their procurement procedures.
3)IT departments should, along with the facilities departments, standardize uniform maintenance processes using the definition of frameworks such as the Information Technology Infrastructure Library, or ITIL. Adoption of uniform standards will allow for better control over the assets of the IT departments and proactive maintenance for less downtime.
4)IT departments can also work with the facilities engineers to establish a comprehensive change management database (CMDB) to assist in the rapid resolution of emergency situations and to ensure continuity in processes.
5)Data center availability should be measured in both reliability—the mean time between system failures (MTBF), and the MTTR, or the mean time required to repair the system.

IT departments and facilities management engineers, working together, can help to mitigate power system downtimes by cooperatively establishing best practices.

Posted in Business Processes, Engineering Change Management, Inspection Management | No Comments »

Engineering Change Management for Microsoft Dynamics NAV

January 5th, 2010 by Bill Martin

Change management continues to be an important process in the engineered product environment. It has great potential to deliver material benefits but also great challenges in getting it right. Managing engineering change has always been hard as well as a source of inefficiency, but in the ever-escalating pace of business driven by an increasingly global market, it is more critical than ever to improve the process.

Historically, engineering change management has focused on cost control and increasing process efficiency. Competitive pressures are now driving a new agenda for change management, one that targets a reduction in development lead times and, secondarily, the ability to quickly respond to quality issues. This is a very real change in perspective as companies are beginning to realize that a more optimized engineering change management process can provide top-line benefits in addition to reducing costs. In today’s dynamically changing marketplace, speed-to-market can allow companies to overtake, and even leap-frog, their competition.

The other key driver of this new view of engineering change management is the need for an accelerated response to quality issues. There are also the changing market requirements as competition, globalization and concept of “mass customization” have created a demand chain with the customers driving any number of product permutations. Change management’s ability to positively impact quality is important in both the initial product launch and in ongoing product management.

Through our work with discrete manufacturers of all sizes, American Unit has experienced the value of optimized engineering change management. That led to the investment to develop an add-on module designed specifically for that purpose that augments the functionality of Microsoft Dynamics NAV solution. American Unit’s Engineering Change Management for Microsoft Dynamics NAV can handle different types of engineering change requests including bill of material changes, routing changes, and released production orders which are in shop floor and updates these changes automatically. This add-on module is fully integrated with Dynamics NAV’s manufacturing.

The Engineering Change Management module is the third release in the American Unit manufacturing suite. More information can be found here.

Posted in Engineering Change Management, Microsoft Dynamics NAV | 1 Comment »