Kinaxis Implementation Services

Kinaxis Inc. is a leading provider of cloud-based subscription software that enables companies to improve and accelerate analysis and decision-making across their supply chain operations.  The supply chain planning and analytics capabilities of the company’s RapidResponse offering creates the foundation for managing multiple, interconnected supply chain management processes including such functions as sales and operations planning (S&OP), supply planning, capacity planning, demand planning, inventory management, master production scheduling (MPS) and order fulfillment.  By using integrated RapidResponse components instead of combining individual software solutions, users gain visibility across their supply chains, can respond quickly to changing conditions and ultimately realize significant operating efficiencies. It ultimately enables them to rationalize operating and inventory costs, improve revenue and margin visibility and optimize overall service levels.  Optimum Profit Consulting has years of implementation experience in a variety of discrete manufacturing industries, including Aerospace and Defense, Automotive, Consumer Product Goods, Electronics, Industrial, Life Sciences, Pharmaceuticals and Semiconductors.
Kinaxis Implementation Services:
  • Aggregate Supply Planning
  • Capacity Planning (Constraints)
  • Capacity Planning (CRP)
  • Demand Planning
  • Distribution Requirements Planning
  • Engineering Change Management
  • Financial Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP)
  • Inventory Management
  • Inventory Planning and Optimization
  • Integrated Project Management
  • Master Production Scheduling (MPS)
  • Order Fulfillment
  • Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP)
  • Supply Action Management
  • Supplier Collaboration

Recent Kinaxis Projects

Aerospace & Defense Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) Automation
A major Aerospace & Defense company has a monthly S&OP process focused on material availability and resource (manpower and machine) utilization.  The Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system is SAP and the planning software is Kinaxis RapidResponse.  Data from SAP is imported into RapidResponse where multiple material and capacity scenarios are performed but none of these results are loaded back into SAP.  The scenario data from RapidResponse is loaded into several Excel workbooks where the charts and data for the monthly Demand Review, Supply Review and Executive Review are created.  This process consumes around one hundred hours every month just for one business segment.
This implementation was to build in RapidResponse the charts and data that were currently being created in Excel.  Some of the capabilities built in RapidResponse are:
  • Lead Time Issues Workbook:  A three-year chart by program by part by month was created that color coded what was on schedule (green), nearing lateness (yellow), late (red) or where risk had been mitigated (blue) for contracted demand and potential new contracts.  This was a significant improvement over the Excel based chart where the lowest level of detail was program.  In this chart the lowest level of detail was by part which better accounted for the different lead times of different parts in a program.
  • Contract and Forecasted Demand Workbook:  A three-year stacked bar chart by program was created that showed the contacted demand (green) and the forecasted demand from new contracts (yellow).  This was a significant improvement over the Excel based chart because the contract and forecast demand was shown by part in the upper pane and the summarized demand for the program was shown in the chart in the lower pane.
  • Manpower Load Workbook:  A three-year stacked area chart was created to visually see department manpower requirements by program and demand type (contract or forecast).  The manpower needs by program were color coded by demand type where contract demand was a dark shade of a color and the forecasted demand was a light shade of the same color.
This implementation also created capabilities in RapidResponse that were previously done in other systems or that had never been done before:  
  • Forecast Entry Workbook:  An Access database had been used to enter the forecast for possible new government contracts which then populated forecast workbooks in RapidResponse.  A new workbook was added to RapidResponse that enabled a Program Manager to enter the potential new contract information and spread the planned demand by month for the next three years.  Filters were used to only show the contracts and parts that the Program Manager controlled. 
  • Resource Utilization Workbook:  A workbook was created to show resource utilization (labor or machine) by month looking out three years.  Forecasted utilization was color coded for resources under 75% (green), 76%-95% (yellow) and 96% and higher (red).  The user was able to look at the utilization at any level in a seven-level hierarchy.  Additional resource groups were created for Program Manager so that they could view resource utilization by program.
  • Contract and Forecasted Demand Workbook:  The three-year stacked bar chart by program previously discussed was modified to include the cumulative late demand (red) so that a Program Manager could easily see if the program was on-time or late.
  • Late Supply Treemap:  A treemap workbook was created to visually show late supply by part and value.  The size of the boxes were based on value of the part and the color of the boxes were based on days late.  By drilling into a box the detail by purchase order was shown for the part. 
  • Late Supplier Treemap:  A treemap workbook was created to visually show late supply by supplier and value.  The size of the boxes were based on the quantity of parts from the supplier and the color of the boxes were based on the value of the parts.  By drilling into a box for a supplier another treemap was shown by part where the size of the boxes were based on the quantity of the part and the color of the boxes were based on the value of the part.
 
Aerospace & Defense Financial Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP)
A major Aerospace & Defense company was interested in the pre-built Financial S&OP capabilities included in RapidResponse.  The majority of the data required for the financial S&OP widgets, workbooks and dashboards was already in RapidResponse with some exceptions:
  • Selling Price:  Selling price by part was not part of the standard data that this customer loaded into RapidResponse from SAP.
  • RapidResponse “forecastdetails” Table:  Many of the financial S&OP workbooks are based on the “forecastdetails” table in the RapidResponse database which was not populated when RapidResponse was installed or upgraded.  A transformation workbook was created to populate this table from other standard database tables along with manually entering sales price by part.
  • Control Tables:  Several control tables need to be populated that control the S&OP Calendar, S&OP Analytics, Historical Demand Category and Historical Demand Category Type
  • Profile Variables:  The Profile Variables for Finance Forecast Category, Marketing Forecast Category, Sales Forecast Category and Statistical Forecast Category were probably created when RapidResponse was installed but need to have Historical Demand Category Types assigned to them.
  • Annual Plan Targets:  Many of the S&OP widgets and workbooks display the annual plan along with the historical and future forecasted plans.  There can be an annual plan for any of the data used by the S&OP widgets and workbooks.  The annual plan for Revenue can be entered at any level in the product hierarchy and propagated up and down the hierarchy.
Once all the data requirements are met the pre-built Financial S&OP capabilities can be used which include:
  • Over fifty pre-built S&OP workbooks.
  • Over one hundred pre-built S&OP widgets (widgets are charts and tables that are used in dashboards).
  • Eight pre-built S&OP dashboards:
    • S&OP Dashboard for Demand Planners
    • S&OP Dashboard for Engineering
    • S&OP Dashboard for Executives
    • S&OP Dashboard for Finance
    • S&OP Dashboard for Marketing
    • S&OP Dashboard for Operations
    • S&OP Dashboard for Process Owners
    • S&OP Dashboard for Sales
  • Each of the S&OP dashboards contain multiple tabs with different sets of information.  The S&OP Dashboard for Finance contains four tabs:
    • Overview tab:  Contains the S&OP Process Calendar, Revenue Value chart and Ending Inventory Value chart.
    • Revenue & Spend tab:  Contains a Revenue by Product Family chart, Revenue Bullet chart and a Spend chart.
    • Margin tab:  Contains a Gross Margin Bullet chart, Margin % chart and Gross Margin chart.
    • Backlog tab:  Contains a Backlog % chart, Backlog Value chart and Past Due Backlog Value chart.
  • In all of the dashboards the user can drill into the data to see the detailed data and all of the dashboards contain hierarchies so that the user can view the data at any level in the hierarchy
The pre-built Financial S&OP dashboards are a great way to see data for different roles in the organization but the real power is the ability to build financially based dashboards specific to what a user or group of users needs to better perform the functions of their jobs.