Kinaxis Unveils New Capabilities for Superior Demand and Supply Chain Visibility and Collaboration

PALM DESERT, Calif., May 22, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Gartner Supply Chain Executive Conference -- Today, at the Gartner Supply Chain Executive Conference, Kinaxis® introduced significant capabilities that will provide global enterprises with enhanced operational visibility and tighter collaboration of sales and operations planning (S&OP) and other supply chain related processes. Kinaxis RapidResponse® is a cloud-based enterprise planning and "what-if" simulation product that helps customers enhance customer service, mitigate risk, and improve financial performance by empowering companies to know sooner and act faster to demand and supply imbalances.

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The primary supply chain visibility enhancements in this product release include:

• Mobile Access: Providing insight to the business "on the go"
  
  RapidResponse provides mobile access to "live" executive and operational dashboards on any tablet of choice. With RapidResponse, mobile users can have uninterrupted visibility to the current state of the supply chain and make decisions that impact the demand and supply balance, regardless of their location.

• Integrated Project Management: Bridging the visibility gap between project management and supply chain operations 
  
  In many organizations today, demand and supply changes take too long to show up in project management schedules, or do not show up at all, resulting in missed milestones, "throw away" work, penalties, and cost overruns.  RapidResponse enables enterprises to manage their projects in the same system they manage their supply chain, providing an accurate view of how a project is impacted by supply chain disruptions, or conversely, how a project change alters supply chain requirements. RapidResponse links project management "what-if" analysis capabilities to supply chain analytics, and therefore can accurately calculate the implications of changes.

• Rapid Supply Chain Data Integration:  Sophisticated system integration resources to ensure the right data is in the right place at the right time
  
  The new RapidResponse integration layer facilitates rapid integration and automation among heterogeneous system environments with multiple data sources.  The closed-loop integration of RapidResponse to disparate transactional systems ensures companies operating in multi-application environments can work in near real-time, making the path from decision to execution seamless.

"Large manufacturing companies with complex supply chains and volatile business environments continue to strive for better visibility into their operations," says Doug Colbeth, CEO of Kinaxis. "We continue to focus on those capabilities that enable global enterprises to attain a single, holistic view of their business, whereby individuals across various functions can come together to collaboratively make quick, profitable decisions that benefit the enterprise as a whole."

"Visibility across our extended supply chain is crucial to our ability to effectively plan, monitor and respond to continuous changes across key processes in our supply chain," says Shellie Molina, VP, global supply chain at First Solar. "Enhancements in Kinaxis RapidResponse such as integrated project management, mobile and rapid data integration provide intriguing new capabilities to further our supply chain visibility and collaboration."

Ms. Molina will be part of a panel of experts participating in the Kinaxis Solution Provider Session taking place today, May 22nd at 3:15pm PT at the Gartner Supply Chain Executive Conference. The panel will discuss the emerging trend of supply chain management control towers. In particular, they will focus on the concepts, components and consequences of investing in these control towers to ensure complete visibility and orchestration across all demand and supply initiatives.

Kinaxis at the Gartner Supply Chain Executive Conference:

In addition to hosting a solution provider session, Kinaxis is also the premier sponsor of the Gartner Supply Chain Executive Conference, and once again a proud sponsor of the Supply Chain Top 25 Dinner. 

Kinaxis will be represented at booth #2 at the event and you can follow #Gartnerscc, @kinaxis, or @milesahead for live commentary on the conference.

About Kinaxis
Kinaxis delivers a cloud-based solution at the heart of planning and response management for value chain operations. Large manufacturing companies with complex supply chain networks and volatile business environments rely on RapidResponse for collaborative planning, continuous performance monitoring, and coordinated response to plan variances across multiple areas of the business. With RapidResponse, enterprises are able to attain a control tower solution that encompasses a full spectrum of supply chain related business processes, including such functions as: S&OP, supply and capacity planning, demand planning, and supplier collaboration. As a result, Kinaxis customers have replaced disparate planning and performance management tools and are realizing significant operations performance breakthroughs. From a single product, customers are able to make both long-term and real-time demand and supply balancing decisions quickly, collaboratively, and in line with the shared business objectives of multiple stakeholders.

About the Gartner Supply Chain Executive Conference
The future direction of the supply chain industry will be examined at the Gartner Supply Chain Executive Conference where supply chain executives are looking ahead to a smarter, more-connected and more-sustainable physical and information infrastructure as they plan for the future. The Gartner Supply Chain Executive Conference provides a unique opportunity to collaborate and connect with the world's leading supply chain executives, all in one place at one time.  For more information, please visit www.gartner.com/us/supplychain.

CONTACT: Lori Smith, +1-613-592-5780 ext 5297, [email protected]

SOURCE Kinaxis