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Kinaxis in the news
- July 2010
- SupplyChainBrain
100 Great Supply Chain Partners: Executives Reveal How Providers Play a Big Role in Their Success
In this special issue, we again celebrate those companies that have been nominated by their partners as someone deserving recognition because their product or service has been of great value to them. Full list found here. - June 2010
- Fast Company
The Definitive Case for B2B Social Media Marketing
While most B2B marketers are scratching the surface, Kirsten Watson and her team at Kinaxis are digging deep into the rich veins of social media and finding gold. - June 2010
- Telecom Engine
Major industry executives make Supply Chain their business
"The past breakthrough was: plan it better, become a better planner. The future breakthrough, I think, is going to be: respond to plan variants better," Sicard said. - June 2010
- CTV - TECH NOW
Social media in the Ottawa business sphere
You may know all the names now: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and so on have gained a lot of recognition. The public has latched on to them, and the business world is trying to figure them out. However Kinaxis of Ottawa has not only figured it out – it's paying some big benefits for them. - May 2010
- B2B Social Media Digest
Capture B2B Leads through Social Media and Brilliant Videos
Supply chain management company uses personality to charm prospects - May 2010
- Supply Chain Awards (by World Trade Group)
The Supply Chain Distinction Awards 2010 - Shortlist
Best Value Chain Solutions Provider (Shortlisted companies): Kinaxis, Partnership for Supply Chain Management,Terra Technologies with Procter & Gamble and Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics - May 2010
- Supply & Demand Chain Executive
When Your Only Constant Is Change, You Need to Bridge the Reality Gap
There has been a capabilities gap in supply chain management for quite some time...the economic climate simply served to exacerbate, accelerate and expose the problem...The traditional processes and tools in place today were never designed to absorb the degree of volatility companies are now facing. - April 2010
- Supply & Demand Chain Executive
Conference Preview: Aligning the Supply Chain for Innovation, Collaboration and Leadership
Featured speakers at the CSCO Summit also include Angel Mendez, senior vice president for customer value chain management at Cisco Systems, joined by John Sicard of Kinaxis. "Leading companies are focusing on cross-boundary collaboration with their trading partners," says Sicard, whose company provides an on-demand offering for integrated supply and demand planning, monitoring and collaborative response capabilities. "They don't look at managing their supply chains as something that happens in a black box." - April 2010
- SearchSAP.com
The changing face of supply chain visibility
"Visibility alone is a very difficult thing to justify -- it's just the starting point of being able to effect change," said Trevor Miles, director of industry application marketing for Kinaxis, which markets an on-demand software solution for supply chain visibility and sales and operations planning. "The fact that you have the information doesn't mean you've been able to make decisions based on that information. Once you've worked out what the information means and what to do about it, it's at that stage that value is delivered." - April 2010
- SearchSAP.com
Quick payback supply chain visibility projects
At BreconRidge, a contract manufacturer in the electronics industry, the visibility issue was more about inventory management and control, as well as visibility for revenue recognition. The company had difficulty getting a clear and accurate picture of inventory despite using existing tools like Excel and its SAP ERP system, according to Paul Smithson, BreconRidge's corporate planner. In 2007, the firm began using Kinaxis' RapidResponse on-demand supply chain management service... - April 2010
- BtoB
BtoB Social Media Awards 2010
Kinaxis carefully planned an integrated social media program that lived up to the hype. The company started a blog, built a community for supply chain management, participated in LinkedIn and used Twitter. All of this is working: Kinaxis said it has experienced a more than threefold increase in leads. In addition, registered community members, who numbered 1,615 in February, reached 2,223 in early April. - April 2010
- Ottawa Citizen
OCRI awards celebrate best in Ottawa technology
A total of 34 finalists will be vying for trophies in 11 categories at the 2010 OCRI Awards to be held at the Hilton Lac Leamy on Thursday. The ceremony, put on annually by the Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation (OCRI), honours the best technology talent that the Ottawa region has to offer. Technology Company of the Year finalists include: Kinaxis; DragonWave Inc.; and Pronexus Inc. - April 2010
- Supply & Demand Chain Executive
The Paradox of Supply Chain Risk
One approach to dealing with this kind of demand-side risk is not to focus on trying to forecast demand better, since history is a poor guide to the future in these circumstances, but rather on putting in place the capabilities necessary to sense the changes in demand as they occur and to respond to those changes in a timely manner, says Trevor Miles. Miles is director of industry and application marketing at Kinaxis, which offers on-demand supply chain applications for supply chain visibility, demand management, supply management, sales and operations planning (S&OP) and supply chain risk management. "You need to be able to have an early warning that a metric is going in the wrong direction, but this kind of visibility is about more than just getting information, it's about being able to do something with that information," says Miles, who has written and spoken extensively on supply chain risk. - April 2010
- Supply & Demand Chain Executive
2010 Pros to Know
Honoring supply chain leaders building competitive advantage in recession and recovery: Monique Rupert, Vice President, Professional Services, Kinaxis - February 2010
- Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation (OCRI) News
2010 OCRI Awards Finalists Announced Today
The 2010 OCRI Technology Company of the Year Finalists are: Kinaxis, DragonWave and Pronexus - February 2010
- Supply & Demand Chain Executive
Positioning the Supply Chain for Recovery
The strategic role of the supply chain within the enterprise also is a theme in the closing address scheduled for the SCM World Live 2010 event presented by Professor Hau l. Lee, of the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and John Sicard, with Kinaxis, and titled "Matching Supply and Demand with Sensisble Sense and Responsive Response." Sicard says that the topic of the presentation is crucial for supply chain executives today because more and more companies are recognizing that a responsive supply chain is becoming an imperative to compete in today's volatile marketplace. "It's a board room-level discussion. It's not a question of tactical managers and directors trying to be more responsive," he says. - January 2010
- SupplyChainDigest
Keeping the S&OP Heart Beat Going
For many, the sales and operations plan (S&OP) is the heartbeat of the company ….or at least it is supposed to be. Like the human heart, it must be fully functioning all the time. And if there’s an unexpected obstruction, it needs to be fixed fast. Finding out what went wrong after the fact is too late. - January 2010
- IndustryWeek
Viewpoint -- Suites are Sour... and I Am Not Alone
ERP suites are too complicated, too expensive and most importantly, they don't fulfill the real need. By Doug Colbeth, CEO, Kinaxis - January 2010
- Gerson Lehrman Group
Software Suites Still Not Meeting Business Needs
...These products were designed and developed piecemeal for departmental silos and functional parts of a business. Although vendors provide integrations across these parts in solution suites, they still don't meet the real needs and cause many project failures for customers. - January 2010
- The Connect Magazine
Risky Business: How to Protect Your Supply Chain…enterprises face external factors beyond their control that can easily disrupt the supply chain
In today's volatile environment, companies have never been more vulnerable given the increased risks to their supply chain. In response, more and more companies are looking to implement or augment their risk management strategies.
The growing awareness and importance of supply chain risk management can be attributed to several business trends:
- leaner supply chains — less inventory, saving money and avoiding liability, but when events happen, there is no buffer to recover
- global sourcing — limited visibility, difficult communication, lead times stretched
- higher customer expectations — consumers want instant gratification, supply chain slow downs result in lost customers
- complexity and interdependency of supply base — networks of contract manufacturers with materials flowing in all directions
- variability of demand, shorter product life cycles
- increasing commodity costs and tighter logistics capacity — harder and more expensive to ship goods
These trends have been further exacerbated by major events over the past several years — from increased regulation, to natural disasters, to the volatile economy — that have only magnified the risk of supply chain disruption.
Regardless of how well planned or well managed a company’s operations are, enterprises face external factors beyond their control that can easily disrupt the supply chain.
Companies with the most effective risk management strategies address both anticipated and unanticipated supply chain disruptions; they are able to assess the impact, evaluate the action alternatives, and most importantly, implement the most effective response as quickly as possible. Read More
- January 2010
- Supply Chain Matters
Kinaxis RapidResponse- Much More Than a Planning Application
What has always impressed me with RapidResponse are its broader capabilities and abilities to be much more than a supply chain planning application....Kinaxis has documented RapidResponse computational speed of 29 seconds to extract over seven million records across 32 SAP sites, whereas ERP planning runtime would have been in excess of 8 hours. - December 2009
- APICS Magazine
Surprise and Compromise: Why the supply chain professional is integral to business success
Front-line supply chain people make critical business decisions on a daily basis that affect customer satisfaction, profitability, and a host of other key business metrics. They have the very difficult responsibility of balancing what often can be the competing priorities of customer service and operations performance. Given the number of moving parts, this balancing act requires human insight and judgment, adeptly taking what is known and applying it to the situation at hand. While, for years, the goal has been to take humans out of the equation in the interest of automating processes, today’s competitive advantage will go to businesspeople who understand how to leverage the unique knowledge and skills of their supply chain professionals and, thus, empower them in the decision-making process. - December 2009
- Supply & Demand Chain Executive
Why Better Demand Planning Isn't the Answer
Many companies that struggle with demand volatility try to address the issue by implementing a statistical forecasting tool. Here is the problem: implementing a forecasting tool isn’t going to reduce the volatility…Clearly, it is important to get a fairly good understanding of the predicted demand, but recognize that the uncertainty inherent in the supply chain will drown out the accuracy of any optimized result…Go ahead and plan – everyone needs a plan – but also put into place processes and systems to detect and respond quickly and effectively to the inevitable changes in demand. Industry leading organizations have learned that what you can’t plan, you must respond to. - December 2009
- Managing Automation
SCM Cost Concerns Trump Spending
Though the widespread focus on cost containment hit many supply chain management software vendors hard, some were able to tap into manufacturers’ interest in narrowly targeted projects and quick ROI..... Also recording strong results were some supply chain management vendors pursuing a software-as-a-service solution delivery strategy, which helps customers reduce up-front software costs... And Kinaxis, a provider of SaaS-based supply chain visibility and S&OP tools, had similar strong results. - November 2009
- Supply Chain Digest: Expert Insight
The Blurring Lines Between Planning and Execution
Companies must establish a capacity to reconcile demand and supply on an ongoing basis, not just as part of a planning cycle.....Companies need a rapid response capability to enable continuous alignment of demand and supply. In essence, bridging the gap means a company can plan and execute in real-time. - September 2009
- CanadianManufacturer.com (Materials Management & Distribution - Canada's Supply Chain Magazine)
Right-size your inventory
Despite the Lean Six Sigma enthusiasts who advocate that inventory represents waste, holding inventory does play an important strategic role in buffering against demand variations and potentially harmful supply disruptions. The challenge is selecting the appropriate inventory management strategies and clearly understanding the cost and benefit implications for business performance. Here's how to do it.... - August 2009
- IndustryWeek
Supply Chain Management Amid Dim Economic Conditions
[Hubbell] looked to Kinaxis' RapidResponse to dynamically align its supply and demand. The software solution helped the company assess and mitigate its risk and respond to unplanned supply chain events -- a daily occurrence these days. - July 2009
- SearchManufacturingERP.com
For many companies, managing supply chain risk still an afterthought
RapidResponse allows supply chain managers to simulate the impact of any supply chain risk, analyze it and come up with possible courses of action. - June 2009
- SearchManufacturingERP.com
SOA architectures reopen the best-of-breed SCM debate
"A large number of companies are realizing that the classic, back-office ERP system is good for managing inside their four walls, but when they're looking to extend to the supply chain, these systems fall short," said Joshua Greenbaum, principal, Enterprise Applications Consulting, a consulting company specializing in enterprise software. - June 2009
- AutomationWorld
Managing Supply Chain Risk
“The acute conditions, like swine flu, terrorism and bad weather, are very hard to predict,” adds Trevor Miles, product marketing [director] at Ottawa, Ontario, Canada-based supply chain management solutions provider Kinaxis Corp. “The odds of you predicting one of these issues and it coming to pass are very remote. On the other hand, the chronic, day-to-day risks like intellectual property protection, quality control and rising prices, are more predictable and more manageable. Customers, supply…that’s where you can make a lot of difference.” - June 2009
- Manufacturing.net
Sales And Operations Planning -- Is It Time To Reassess Your Processes?
Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) as a process was defined more than thirty years ago -- long before the ubiquity of multinational organizations, pervasiveness of outsourcing or the precariousness of the consumer-driven marketplace. Yet most companies’ S&OP processes reflect the history of S&OP instead of the reality of today. For companies that want to reap S&OP’s potentially significant operations performance and financial benefits -- and remain competitive in today’s cutthroat business environment -- reassessing the traditional S&OP process is paramount. - May 2009
- SupplyChainBrain.com (Global Logistics & Supply Chain Strategies)
Benchmarking Helps Companies Chart Path to Better Performance
Benchmarking also is a “good way to look in the mirror and understand if you are spending the right amount of effort on the right things,” says Trevor Miles, director of product marketing at Kinaxis, a supply chain technology company that focuses on solutions to enhance operations performance. “If there is something you are doing that gives you a competitive advantage, it is worth spending the effort to ensure you maintain that advantage,” he says. “Don’t benchmark areas where the activity is like a commodity and you only need to keep pace with your peers.” - May 2009
- Supply & Demand Chain Executive
Demand Management: Don't Look Back
Gone are the days of sequential demand planning and supply chain planning processes that operated in batched silos. Today's imperative is for a collaborative and integrated demand - supply planning process supported by proactive monitoring and rapid response to change. Here's a checklist of key steps companies can take to address today's demand management challenges. - April 2009
- Industry Week
On-Demand Supply Chain Management Solutions to Increase as Economic Pressures Accelerate
By consolidating traditional suppy chain management (SCM) solutions -- such as spreadsheets, custom planning applications and databases -- into a single on-demand service, companies can rapidly gain tangible benefits to IT and the business. - April 2009
- Manufacturing Business Technology
Julie Fraser: S&OP matures into strategic process
Fast-moving forward views. In today's market, many companies are making changes to plans well within their forecasting horizon. Specialists such as Kinaxis, Right90, and Terra Technology that deliver short-span, frequent forward-planning views can support improved S&OP accuracy and timeliness too. - April 2009
- Manufacturing Business Technology
Lighten Up
At Hubbell Lighting, for instance, material plans and supplier data are held in an SAP ERP system, while the supply readjustment insights are made using RapidResponse. While the ERP system is effective at inventory management and material planning, explains Jeffcoat, the material planning logic in the ERP system tends to focus on part and item-level data rather than the fuller range of cross-dependencies that RapidResponse can examine, such as which orders are affected by changes to supply plans, and if there are multiple suppliers for a part, which ones need alerts. - April 2009
- Managing Automation
Deep Dive: Are You Willing to Bet Your Supply Chain?
(page 5) Similarly, lighting manufacturer Hubbell Lighting Inc. uses what-if planning tools from Kinaxis to simulate what the impact would be if demand were to suddenly shift or the company had to switch suppliers. That kind of analysis has proven particularly important recently, says Rick Jeffcoat, Hubbell's operations analyst, as the recession has frozen housing starts and significantly reduced demand for some of Hubbell's products. - March 2009
- Supply & Demand Chain Executive
2009 Pros to Know
Honoring supply chain leaders demonstrating leadership during times of economic crisis. Duncan Klett, vice president of supply chain analytics is recognized as a Provider Pro to Know - February 2009
- Manufacturing Business Technology
Filling the gaps in S&OP
Since most companies realize total forecast accuracy is an elusive goal, many try to offset the failures by quickly adjusting to changing demand. Collaboration and risk mitigation are two important strategies that can make companies more adroit in altering production and supply chain strategies on-the-fly. “Our position is rapid response,” says Trevor Miles, a company director for supply chain software vendor Kinaxis. “It’s inevitable that customers will not buy what we think they will, so we have to be prepared to scramble to meet reality.” - January 2009
- Intelligent Enterprise
Intelligent Enterprise 2009 Editors' Choice Awards (Kinaxis among 'companies to watch')
Intelligent Enterprise considered scores of companies that are helping organizations move toward the ideal expressed by its publication's name and determined 48 leaders. COMPANIES TO WATCH: PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT Kinaxis. Software as a service shines when collaboration crosses geographies and organizational boundaries. Kinaxis provides a SaaS-based performance management application that helps companies improves sales and operations planning as well as supply chain visibility. - January 2009
- Managing Automation
Only the Adaptable Survive
RapidResponse lets Jabil planners quickly analyze customer demand estimates…and evaluate different scenarios for scheduling and executing demand plans, including impacts on capacity and material supply. “Now we’re able to really understand demand and plan production a lot better,” [says Andy Joyner, program manager in Jabil’s supply chain management group. “The more accurate we can make those processes, the more it helps to make us more agile downstream on the production end.” - December 2008
- SupplyChainBrain.com (Global Logistics & Supply Chain Strategies)
Forecasting, Demand Planning in a Difficult Economy
A formal consensus gathering process within a company can capture vital input from all disciplines that can adjust a statistical forecast to arrive at a better demand plan. “The consensus forecast outweighs the statistical one,” says [Trevor] Miles [of Kinaxis]. “Our users are increasingly confident that their managers and their customers are better able to tell them where demand is going than any statistical forecast.” - December 2008
- SupplyChainBrain.com (Global Logistics & Supply Chain Strategies)
ERP or Best-of-Breed? The Question is the Same, But the Answer May Not Be
“ERP vs. best-of-breed is still a relevant question that comes up with our clients on a regular basis,” he [Jim Shepherd, senior vice president-research at AMR Research, Boston] says. “We hardly ever see companies embracing a total best-of-breed strategy as might once have been the case, but they often look to best-of-breed vendors to solve specific and particularly complex problems.” - October 2008
- Managing Automation
Kinaxis Launches Program to Lure i2 Customers
Early in September, Kinaxis reacted to the latest deal in the steadily consolidating supply chain software market by offering current i2 customers an aggressive incentive to sign up for RapidResponse, Kinaxis' on-demand service for supply chain planning, monitoring, and response (free registration required to view full article) - October 2008
- Consumer Goods Technology
Cannondale's Supply Chain is Built for Speed
Cannondale turned to Kinaxis for its integrated demand-supply planning, monitoring and collaborative response capabilities. Using RapidResponse, users could do a full MRP explosion in minutes, compared to the eight hours it had taken previously.... Initially brought in as a MRP support tool, RapidResponse is now used to solve multiple problems and address a number of [supply chain management] needs. - September 2008
- Manufacturing Business Technology
ERP integration: BreconRidge uses response management to meet customer demand
Says Glenda Paquin, BreconRidge VP of planning and supply management, “Supply chain management competencies comprise an integral component of BreconRidge’s value proposition. RapidResponse helped us achieve remarkable performance improvements in this area in a matter of months. - September 2008
- Supply Chain Quarterly
Control is instrumental to Teradyne's success
Teradyne relies on an application from Kinaxis called RapidResponse. This software integrates data from Teradyne's and Flextronics' enterprise resource planning systems with weekly information from suppliers' information systems in order to provide a multi-enterprise view of inventory and ready access to production planning data. The software also allows Teradyne to see how an order or a change in demand will affect Flextronics as well as its suppliers. "If we change demand, we can see how that demand cascades down from the contract manufacturer to the component supplier," says Wood. "The idea is to see everything in our plants and our contract manufacturers' plants as if we were all one big connected family." - September 2008
- Manufacturing.net
What To Do When You Can’t Plan Everything
The industry has changed dramatically since the concept of optimization was introduced, according to Miles. “Companies like Apple no longer make products within the four walls of their building,” he said. “If you don’t make it, what’s to optimize? It’s more about coordination than optimization and about collaboration instead of control.” According to Miles, the optimization model can only take you so far....There should be a degree of optimization in your planning stage, but you need to monitor your operations and the environment around you to track changes. Then you have to respond to any problems that arise as soon as possible to stay on track. - September 2008
- 580 CFRA- News Talk Radio
Friday Market Monitor - Interview with John Sicard, EVP, Kinaxis
John Sicard provides a Kinaxis company overview (see 1 hour 45 minute mark of the Sept 19th podcast) - August 2008
- Supply & Demand Chain Executive
The Growing Importance of Supply Chain Analytics
With a growing recognition of the strategic influence of the supply chain, executive teams are looking at ways to more tightly link corporate strategy to supply chain execution. This requires a clearer understanding of the cause and effect of daily operational actions in the context of meeting corporate objectives. As a result, there is increasing attention being given to establishing more robust supply chain analytics and integrated decision-making processes. - August 2008
- Global Logistics & Supply Chain Strategies
Following Its Merger, Alcatel-Lucent Holds on to Kinaxis Software
"Around April or May of last year - about four months into the merger - we started modeling the joint company's in-house and outsourced operations. By the end of this year we will have modeled 90 percent of the Alcatel-Lucent internal and external facilities, so we can provide a capability picture for all of the company....Many people from the Alcatel side were surprised at its capabilities. They had never seen a solution like this work company-wide." - August 2008
- Better Process Podcast
Industry Report: Randy Littleson, Kinaxis
What are the planning challenges MFG firms are facing today? The world has changed and the plan-execute paradigm is no longer relevant, making legacy supply chain planning and demand planning systems insufficient. What’s needed going forward? - August 2008
- Manufacturing Business Technology
Unplanned events: Rolling with the punches is the vital component in S&OP
“Kinaxis, for example, offers a real-time solution used to match supply and demand,” Tohamy (Noha Tohamy, a director of supply chain for Boston-based AMR Research) continues. “The solution's strength is the responsiveness it delivers as a result of a company being able to realize—in more-or-less real time—where it is in relation to [the S&OP] plan.” - June 2008
- Global Logistics & Supply Chain Strategies
Hidden Costs Can Sabotage Gains of Outsourcing for Manufacturers
Having the flexibility to respond quickly even in complex, outsourced supply chains —a solution area known as response management—is the basis of the Kinaxis RapidResponse product, which is used by many contract manufacturers as well as by their OEM or ODM customers. - June 2008
- IndustryWeek
Response Management Drives Next Generation Sales & Operations Planning
With a Response Management capability, companies apply a structure and process to responsiveness, empowering daily decision makers with tools for risk tradeoff and response.
