Aberdeen & JRG See Future In An On-Demand Supply Chain

JRG, provider of the first on-demand supply chain planning solution for the Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) industry, today announced an Aberdeen Group report and survey result, Process Manufacturing Excellence: Strategies for the Plant Floor and Beyond. The report illustrates the importance of scheduling technology, team-planning and performance management for industry leaders. Aberdeen focused on the major business drivers, strategies and technology solutions of best-in-class process manufacturers in the chemical, food & beverage and pharmaceutical industries.

According to Aberdeen's survey of more than 60 process manufacturers, the key business challenges facing them today include responding to major retailer mandates for just-in-time delivery that requires improved forecasting; the need to take advantage of opportunistic selling that requires ramping-up quickly; and finally, downward pricing pressure from offshore competitors.

"Across the board, process oriented manufacturers are undergoing dramatic change. The days of long production runs with few equipment changeovers are being replaced with dynamic schedules, new configuration processes for just-in-time shipment, and substantially more end items," said Jane Biddle, vice president of manufacturing research for Aberdeen. "We've identified a set of capabilities that separate the best-in-class performers from their poorer performing counterparts. Many of these can be addressed with JRG's solution."

Today's market forces have led to a set of prioritized mandates, including decreased production costs, proactive management of the manufacturing process, the meeting of delivery dates and standardizing best practices. Aberdeen found that manufacturing excellence today is determined primarily by enterprises' ability to rapidly and profitably respond to customer and market demand through improvement programs, greater responsiveness, synchronization and flexibility.

To date, best-in-class companies report that as a result of performance improvement initiatives, 75% have reduced inventory levels and 76% have increased on-time shipments.

Looking specifically at manufacturer's technology implementations, Aberdeen found that many organizations fill the scheduling gap between ERP and production with spreadsheet solutions and manual processes. In contrast, best-in-class manufacturers have established common information platforms that enable interoperability throughout manufacturing, support for the detection and response to anomalies, and the foundation for visualization and scenario planning.

Finite scheduling is at the top of many manufacturer's lists for technology acquisition. Seventy-three percent of best-in-class respondents stated that they have already implemented a finite scheduling tool, and 43% of all companies plan to implement one in the next 18 months.

Aberdeen also found that best-in-class companies strive to create "a collaborative work environment" for team-planning, that enables them to solve problems "from the plant floor to the executive suite." Finally, the research firm saw that "metrics-driven performance improvement programs are paying dividends to leading chemical, food & beverage, pharmaceutical and other process-oriented manufacturers."

Two JRG customers were interviewed for this report, representing best-in-class manufacturers. One, a major cereal co-packer, was asked by its customer to ship just-in-time in response to daily forecasts extrapolated from point-of-sale data. After implementing JRG, the company was able to meet the new demand profitably, generating realistic schedules while decreasing inventory levels.

JRG Supply Chain Planning delivers the scheduling, team-planning and performance management capabilities that Aberdeen found in best-in-class manufacturers:

• Factory Scheduler — Enables factories to respond to demand changes instantly
• Enterprise Planner — Synchronizes demand across factories and headquarters to enable team-planning
• Performance Manager — Metrics-driven solution that allows corporate/plant management to track performance & make sure that future plans are in line with demand

To download your complimentary copy of the "Process Manufacturing Excellence: Strategies for the Plant Floor and Beyond", go to http://www.jrgsystems.com/library_aberdeen.jsp.

About Aberdeen Group
Aberdeen Group is the leading provider of fact-based research and advice for the global technology-driven value chain, delivering solutions for business and technology Executives. Our portfolio of research-based solutions comprise benchmarking, market and solution assessments, solution selection and sales acceleration programs, and networking conferences. For more information, please visit Aberdeen on their website www.aberdeen.com or call +1-617-723-7890.

About JRG (www.jrgsystems.com)
JRG provides on-demand supply chain planning for the Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) industry. The Company's solution helps manufacturers Build-to-Consumption — connecting their factories directly to retailers in order to re-plan production based on actual retailer demand continuously, as opposed to monthly. JRG's hosted, managed solution allows manufacturers to increase perfect orders, reduce production costs and streamline inventory with significantly lower IT impact, risk and cost than first generation enterprise supply chain software — implementations are live in 10 weeks or less. JRG customers include major food & beverage, pharmaceutical & auto parts manufacturers. The Company was founded in 2001 and is based in San Mateo, CA. For more information, visit www.jrgsystems.com.