Kinaxis, o9 & Blue Yonder: Leading Supply Chain Technology

Supply chain orchestration is increasingly being used to coordinate, automate and optimise supply chain management. 

In today's world of constantly shifting trade politics and demand, supply chain operations need to be part of a holistic and connected process.

Technology companies such as o9 Solutions, Blue Yonder and Kinaxis are leading the way in developing solutions and helping with supply chain transformation.

Supply chain orchestration

Today's supply chains are expected to balance regulatory compliance, environmental compliance, financial excellence and more, all amid an increasingly complex landscape. Professionals are being challenged by a series of events, expectations and more, causing disruption to efficiency and resilience.

In order to combat this, leaders are turning away from legacy systems and fragmented data sets and towards supply chain orchestration tools. These tools offer reliable and accurate data, actionable insights and help break down silos. 

Supply chain orchestration helps organisations to better manage and negotiate complexities within the supply chain, developing strength within the supply chain. Through leveraging real-time data, AI and automation, companies can take a more holistic and data-driven approach to supply chain operations. 

The tool offers greater visibility, agility and resilience, which is particularly vital in complex, multi-tiered global supply chains. Main industries which can benefit from supply chain orchestration includes industrial manufacturing, consumer products, high-tech and electronics, aerospace and defence and automotive. 

Increasing planning capabilities with Kinaxis

Kinaxis is a leader in supply chain technology, helping supply chain leaders navigate turbulence and build tomorrow's supply chains. Its solutions have been applied to a range of industries, including consumer products, chemical, automotive and life sciences.

Its knowledge in consumer products has driven success for a range of companies as they look to stay ahead of consumer trends using an AI-powered supply chain. Its solutions have helped leaders gain greater supply chain transparency and meet consumer demand with agility and speed.

Moreover, it helps leaders with scenario planning, so they can ensure products get to where they are needed, when they are needed.

Procter & Gamble utilises Kinaxis Maestro in order to gain better control of its moving supply chain across North America. The multinational consumer goods corporation has to constantly adjust its shipping and manufacturing, planning supply and demand on a daily basis. In order to increase its operational efficiency, it wanted to reduce the amount of time it spend on planning. 

Through utilising Kinaxis Maestro, tasks now take significantly less time to complete, with a more proactive approach to concerns. 

Reckitt, another multinational consumer goods company, used Kinaxis to unlock better enterprise scheduling. 

“We were looking for end-to-end visibility,” explained Vivek Bhat, Global Process and Technology Director E2E Supply Planning & Analytics at Reckitt. As a result, Reckitt partnered with Kinaxis in order to sync scheduling and planning, to create supply chain transparency. 

“With Maestro Enterprise Scheduling, our schedulers are spending less time manually building schedules, and more time analysing scenarios and making strategic decisions."

o9: Continuous evolvement

o9 was founded with a goal of transforming enterprise planning, working with continuous innovation to deliver results to its clients every day. 

Its clients include Kroger, Keurig Dr Pepper and Coca-Cola, with operations in more than 30 industries. 

The company acts as an end-to-end planning platform unifying collaborative forecasting and cross-functional scenario planning. Through its customisable and user-friendly platform, planners across a range of industries can use o9 for their supply chain transformation. 

"With o9’s breakthrough Neuro-Symbolic AI technology to power the APEX Model, enterprises can now learn systematically from post-game analysis, improve faster across functions, deploy new capabilities at the pace of the market and continuously evolve their operations," explains Chakri Gottemukkala, o9 Solutions’ Executive Chairman, Co-Founder and CEO.

“Our clients see APEX as a strategic differentiator for their businesses in the coming years.”

How does Blue Yonder meet complexities?

Blue Yonder helps clients predict disruptions in order to course correct in real-time, utilising end-to-end visibility and AI-enhanced planning. It offers synchronised planning and execution across the supply chain, in order to modernise the operation. 

Technology company Lenovo operates 30 manufacturing facilities and serves 180 markets around the world. The rate at which it produces devices is incredible, boosted by the solutions from Blue Yonder. Its digital planning initiatives were transformed by Blue Yonder's solutions, across demand, supply planning, factory planning and more. 

The company saw a 5% boost in forecast accuracy, a 4% improvement in on-time delivery and a 10% higher delivery accuracy.

"Blue Yonder have the deepest experience to understand our business and figure out how to make sure their products are robust enough and thorough enough to handle all of our complexity," explains Jack Fiedler, VP of Digital of Digital Transformation for the Global Supply Chain at Lenovo

"I don't think you'll find any other company that can match the experience in planning that you'll find at Blue Yonder."