Supply Chain Management Articles and Reports

Ingersoll-Rand (IR) wanted to improve service productivity, increase spare parts sales and boost customer satisfaction. Through an Enigma solution, IR delivers and dynamically updates its maintenance manuals, parts catalogs and service bulletins IR dealers now work with the latest service information to improve service decision-making.

Over the past 20 years, the distribution-related business
functions have grown from being responsible primarily for physical distribution;
i.e., warehousing and transportation; to logistics, which encompasses customer
service and finished goods inventory planning and management as well as physical
distribution. Now, as a result of the emergence of a global customer-driven
marketplace and the need to improve material and product flow, it has progressed
to supply chain management. As each of these growth steps has occurred, more
functions have been brought under the logistics function umbrella: customer
service, forecasting, finished goods inventory planning and management,
sourcing, supply chain partnerships, and even production planning.

JDA Software, a leader in the retail software with more than 4,800 customers will acquire Manugistics, a leading supply chain software vendor with over 800 customers. While JDA started by focusing on POS and retail optimization software, Manugistics grew by focusing on manufacturing. Forecasting, demand management, pricing, transportation management, supply, raw material inventory management and supply management are some of the functions from Manugistics. Retail portfolio management, channel clustering, assortment planning, shelf space management, inventory positioning, replenishment management, vendor managed replenishment, retail network planning, performance intelligence, warehouse replenishment are some of the functions from JDA Software. For quite some time both of them were trying to break into each others market. So merger will give both companies access to more customers. There are already more than some 100 customers using both the applications. So it is a strategic acquisition for JDA. JDA has a track record of successfully acquiring and integrating companies. See below for a list of acquisitions in the past.