Unicharm Corporation Employs Kinaxis RapidResponse As Its Global Supply Chain Management Solution
Leading Personal Care Goods Producer Greatly Improves Flexibility and Collaboration in Managing Constant Market Change
Kinaxis Inc., provider of the on-demand supply chain management (SCM) and sales and operations planning (S&OP) software service, RapidResponse, recently announced that Unicharm Corporation—a leader in the personal care products industry—has deployed RapidResponse at the company's operations in Japan and Thailand. RapidResponse is also expected to be implemented at other Unicharm sites.
Headquartered in Tokyo, Unicharm is the largest manufacturer and distributor of diapers and other consumer sanitary products in Asia. Unicharm implemented RapidResponse to replace its Manugistics supply chain planning solution and move away from the limitations of statistical-based planning systems. With RapidResponse, Unicharm can complete planning calculations in 5 minutes—a process that took 12 hours with Manugistics.
Unicharm chose RapidResponse because of its ability to help the company dynamically balance supply and demand in response to ever-changing conditions. In addition to replacing Manugistics, RapidResponse also replaced IBM AS/400 for material requirements planning in Unicharm's Japan operations—allowing the consumer packaged goods company to integrate two systems into one.
Overall, RapidResponse has simplified supply chain management processes, while easily scaling with Unicharm's growing business. With better visibility and control, Unicharm can operate on a global basis, but sustain the necessary local focus. One specific area that RapidResponse has strengthened is new product introduction (NPI). By integrating demand planning, supply network management, product management, and material planning within RapidResponse, Unicharm is better managing its NPI process, and has significantly increased revenue contribution as a result.
"We were confident in Kinaxis as a partner because of its broad supply chain expertise and deep industry success," said Mr. Morizane at Unicharm Corporation. "We chose RapidResponse for its unparalleled ability to allow us to effectively manage our supply chain in today's environment given the urgent and explicit need for supply chain visibility, simulation and collaboration capabilities." Unicharm was also impressed with RapidResponse's ability to be deployed with minimal IT resources in a short time frame—and with the fact that planners can use the SaaS solution via a web browser on their PCs.
"The successful use of RapidResponse from a leading consumer packaged goods company is strong validation that the RapidResponse value proposition spans multiple industry verticals," said John Sicard, chief operating officer at Kinaxis. "Unicharm understands the unique requirements for a 21st century supply chain and the resulting limitations of their historical black-box planning optimization approach. RapidResponse empowers a broad base of users with integrated supply chain planning, monitoring and response—to the benefit of the company and its customers. We are proud to call Unicharm our customer."
About Kinaxis
Kinaxis delivers a comprehensive on-demand supply chain offering—RapidResponse—that enables manufacturers and brand owners to drive supply chain management (SCM) and sales and operations planning (S&OP) from a single system. Global leaders across a broad range of industries are using RapidResponse as a decision-making hub for the broader value chain and are realizing a competitive advantage as a result. Large manufacturing companies with complex supply chain networks and volatile business environments rely on RapidResponse for collaborative planning, continuous performance management, and coordinated response to plan variances. For more information, visit http://community.kinaxis.com/.
SOURCE: Kinaxis Inc.