Supply Chain Software: SCE platforms look beyond execution

Just when it seemed providers of supply chain execution (SCE) software had stitched together key SCE applications into tidy suites centered on warehouse management system (WMS) software, some new wrinkles may be appearing in the concept of an SCE platform.

The wrinkles are in the form of integration requirements for the increasingly important component of distributed order management (DOM), as well as upstream planning applications that could provide an advantage if they can link seamlessly with the “execution” apps normally found in a SCE suite.

The good news, say SCE software providers, is that through new forms of integration as well as long-standing efforts to build consistent data models for applications, users can bring applications like DOM into the SCE fold. At issue is the ability of a vendor’s platform to gel with more applications as well as the overall ability of the platform to adapt to business change.

SCE suites grew out of the WMS market, but over the years, major vendors expanded their offerings to include other logistics execution applications such as slotting, labor management system (LMS), yard management system (YMS) and transportation management system (TMS) software. The result has been SCE product suites.

The key benefit of having SCE apps pre-integrated under a platform, says Joe Vernon, senior manager of North America supply chain technologies for Capgemini, is that WMS users can add more solutions without having to worry about whether they’ll fit together, roughly akin to how automakers leverage one “platform” for different models.

“The platform idea started in Detroit, where you could design one chassis and use it to build different cars or even a light truck,” says Vernon. “Similarly, at the WMS level, WMS may need to connect to labor management and to yard management, and then to slotting. So you have this aggregate of components that need to come together under a platform and create an advantage when used together. That is the essence of a platform—having components come together easily to create an advantage for the user.”

The distinct SCE applications often share some of the same master data, such as what is a customer or what is a stock keeping unit location. Integration is easier when SCE applications have the same understanding of these core “business objects.” Vendors tend to approach integration in slightly different ways, but the aim is to get all of SCE’s more traditional apps—and the newer ones like DOM—fitting together nicely without much integration work.

Consistency counts
A persistent issue when it comes to SCE platforms is how tightly linked the applications should be. Rishi Raina, principal for supply chain technologies with Capgemini, notes that most major SCE vendors have acquired solutions over the years, and while some have built tighter integration, others use middleware with prebuilt “adapters” to more loosely link applications.

Both Raina and Vernon see a growing market interest in having DOM software capable of dealing with multi-channel fulfillment. “All of these pieces really need to fit together to enable a holistic supply chain execution platform,” says Raina.

Manhattan Associates has offered an integrated “process platform” for years and has the advantage of not having acquired solutions for many years, says Chris Clark, Manhattan’s director of technical product strategy. The applications share common business logic for elements such as purchase orders (PO), including details like header information and PO line information, which makes it easy for the applications to work together in an integration fashion, including Manhattan’s DOM solution, he adds.

“We don’t have to do data transformation,” says Clark. “Transformations can be error prone, they take time, and they take capacity in the system. We’ve taken a holistic approach to our data model and designed one model that applies to the entire set of products that sit on the platform.”

End user companies that have committed to Manhattan’s platform approach include food distributor and retailer Giant Eagle, which uses Manhattan’s WMS and LMS at multiple distribution centers as well as a solution for supply chain traceability. In Giant Eagle’s case, the combination of LMS with WMS proved beneficial, gaining an 8% to 10% labor productivity improvement at its health and beauty products DC, and a 3% to 5% increase at other DCs.

Users pick and choose which applications they want to plug into the platform to meet their priorities without worrying about integration burdens, says Clark, which leads to a more effective supply chain. “We find that with some customers, they want to use only one or two key applications, but others want to use multiple applications and have them work well together,” he says. “So the benefits of the platform really start to bear fruit when you’re dealing with multiple products on the platform.”

Fresh ESB approach
Since JDA’s merger with SCE vendor RedPrairie in late 2012, JDA’s integration strategy has looked at ways to tie its supply and demand planning solutions with the SCE suite. Now that strategy is moving forward under its “Intelligent Fulfillment” offering, which links planning with execution, says Fab Brasca, vice president of global logistics for JDA.

For example, says Brasca, managers using WMS and labor management would have visibility into promotion plans being developed at the corporate level. “With this better visibility into what’s coming, they can better plan their labor requirements, capacity or re-examine slotting,” says Brasca. The integration also works the other way around, so that demand-planning users see the execution constraints.

Underpinning JDA’s integration strategy is a new set of middleware capabilities built under an enterprise service bus (ESB) foundation, according to John Sarvari, group vice president of technology for JDA. This is not an older ESB concept, but rather a fresh one that takes the approach of smart adapters that exposes application functions or “services” in a standard way to other applications.

The middleware takes a “smart end point; dumb pipe” approach, says Sarvari, which means that the integration complexity lives inside the adapter where it doesn’t have to be tweaked by users every time one solution gets upgraded. “We are presenting a consistent representation of business objects that exist across solutions,” says Sarvari. “The real benefit of doing this is the flexibility.”

The ESB strategy is set to be highlighted this spring at JDA’s user conference and will be the integration layer for the vendor’s 9.0 Intelligent Fulfillment release. It also will be used to facilitate the integration needed for a key product alliance JDA announced late last year with IBM’s Sterling unit, which pairs IBM’s DOM software with JDA’s SCE applications.

Within each “solution domain” such as the SCE suite, JDA has distinct platform architecture, but going forward, says Sarvari, ESB with smart adapters will be the means of efficient integration between solution domains and third-party solutions. It’s a break from older middleware approaches, he says, achieving true orchestration of services. “Old world thinking was to use [middleware] to throw information over the wall ... whereas now, we really want to interrogate the source system of information and get a response back,” he says.

Consistent experience
At HighJump, which merged with Accellos last summer, the SCE product lines from each side are continuing as separate solutions sets, each with its respective architecture, says Chuck Fuerst, director of product strategy at HighJump. The reason is that each SCE suite tends to appeal to a different market segment, with the software from the Accellos side focused on smaller- and medium-sized companies, while HighJump’s software traditionally appealed to somewhat larger mid-sized companies or larger enterprises.

The HighJump WMS also has more extensive adaptability tools, so it tends to appeal to organizations that want to tweak the SCE suite to their needs. Given these differences, says Fuerst, it didn’t make sense to create a single architecture and try to migrate everyone to it.

Instead, the focus has been on what Fuerst calls creating a “common user experience,” meaning that factors like licensing, log-on and security, user interface (UI) style, and business intelligence (BI) tools, will become common between the product lines. “Users will have a common experience, regardless of which product you are using,” says Fuerst.

Some solutions will be integrated to work with either product suite, adds Fuerst. The first one of these is supply chain analytics. The current WMS versions still look different, says Fuerst, but over time, will gain a common look and feel.

Short term, adds Fuerst, the focus has been on commonality in factors like licensing, log-on routines, and security and administrative mechanisms. “If it feels clunky and you have different security measures between applications, that tends to erode user productivity, so we are focusing on providing a seamless experience for customers,” he says.

Where SCE users inevitably face an integration hurdle is in linking to enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, says Vishal Minocha, Infor’s senior global product manager for SCE. As a vendor of an SCE suite as well as multiple ERP suites, Infor offers its own middleware called ION to integrate SCE with ERP solutions, whether it is an Infor ERP solution or one from another ERP vendor.

The middleware exchanges information between ERP and SCE in a XML format called a Business Object Document (BOD) established by the Open Applications Group, a software industry standards group, says Minocha. The BODs, as well as the “publish and subscribe” style of exchange used by ION, he adds, makes it possible to achieve a loosely coupled integration to ERP “so that if you upgrade ERP, but not your supply chain execution, or vice versa, your integration is not going to break.”
Within the SCE realm, however, Minocha says there is value in going with a vendor who can offer a more tightly integrated, unified set of applications. A unified SCE suite allows tighter shared processes, he adds.

For example, a unified SCE suite with slotting that ties into WMS and labor management would let the user company to run a reslotting calculation and immediately see the labor resources needed to carry out the reslotting, while the WMS would be able to intersperse the slotting related moves with normal fulfillment tasks. “Having a unified suite streamlines processes,” Minocha says. “It’s like the simplicity you get with a smart phone in being carry out multiple key functions—voice calls, e-mail, texting, camera, Web use—on one device, rather than switching between devices.”

Beyond integration
While linking applications is an important, a SCE vendor should really offer more in a platform than integration, says Robert Colosino, vice president of marketing and business development with TECSYS. “Integration is just the meat and potatoes part of having an effective applications suite,” Colosino says. “A modern supply chain platform needs to allow users to easily execute, adapt, scale and expand to meet today’s rapidly shifting business priorities.”

Smart phone use, e-commerce, omni-channel and other trends are impacting SCE software users in multiple ways, says Colosino. They may need to scale WMS down to the store level or stock room level to fill orders closer to customers. Or, more e-commerce fulfillment might be adding so many more SKUs to the mix such that pickers need visual cues within their UIs to be more accurate and productive.

TECSYS’ platform accomplishes these needs by being easily adaptable by end users without programming. For example, users can quickly add pictures of items to screens in the WMS to avoid picking errors for items that look very similar, says Colosino. Or, users may want to quickly configure a new workflow to institute a returns-processing or quality-assurance procedure.

Colosino also sees integrated DOM as an important option, but DOM workflows, and indeed, all SCE application workflows, must be easy to change. As he sums up, “The important part of a platform increasingly is the ability to quickly adapt and change with the business environment, to create new workflows, and scale solutions up or down.” 

Companies mentioned in this article
• Capgemini
• Highjump
• Infor
• JDA
• Manhattan Associates
• TECSYS