SAS® Service Parts Optimization
Comprehensive demand forecasting and inventory optimization
SAS Service Parts Optimization provides service organizations the ability to forecast parts demand and optimize parts inventory, helping them maintain adequate stock levels and optimal response times. It enables organizations to achieve the universal service goal: to reduce inventory costs while improving customer satisfaction.
Benefits
- Reduce stockouts and overages with accurate forecasting.
- Optimize inventory replenishment policies and order quantities.
- Achieve targeted customer service levels.
- Develop comprehensive, fully informed service parts strategies.
Features
- Robust, effective data management.
- Accurate forecasts at every level.
- Multi-echelon inventory optimization.
- Information sharing throughout the service chain.
“ SAS helps us sift the important signals from all the noise coming at us, . . . so we can make decisions that leverage our inventory and assets optimally and give us a good ROI in the market. ”
—Rajeeve Kaul
Director of Product and Price Optimization
AutoZone
How SAS® Is Different
- Forecasts with unmatched accuracy using the patented SAS Forecast Server and your choice of models that SAS created specifically for service organizations.
- Generates forecasts at any level, even for individual SKUs.
- Provides multi-echelon optimization with state-of-the-art simulation that calculates optimal inventory policies throughout the entire service chain.
- Can be scaled for large service networks to encompass hundreds of thousands – or millions – of SKUs at every location.
- Ensures usability for a wide range of user personas, with interfaces that can be customized according to business role.
Benefits
- Reduce stockouts and overages with accurate forecasting. SAS Service Parts Optimization provides flexibility and automation to forecast episodic parts demand, enabling you to forecast short-term, long-term and end-of-cycle parts demand. You can accurately determine the required amount of parts needed at any location. Thus you minimize stockouts and overages, improving the customer experience while reducing costs.
- Optimize inventory replenishment policies and order quantities. The solution calculates optimal inventory levels and replenishment policies based on user-determined constraints such as lead times, costs and targeted service levels. Thus you contain costs by ensuring the right amount of the right inventory at each location.
- Achieve targeted customer service levels. With SAS Service Parts Optimization, you can set customer service measures as a key replenishment policy driver.
- Develop comprehensive, fully informed service parts strategies. The solution works with existing systems to collect and analyze all aspects of service parts data throughout your organization. The result: a complete, accurate basis for service parts strategies that reduce costs and improve performance.
Features
- Robust, effective data management.
-
- Gathers and consolidates large volumes of data, regardless of format or location, from every echelon of the service chain.
- Transforms, standardizes and cleanses the data to prepare it for accurate forecasting.
- Sharpens the inputs that affect the information produced by the ERP system, thus improving the return on its investment.
- Accurate forecasts at every level.
-
- Automatically generates millions of statistically based, multilevel forecasts (top-down, bottom-up, middle-out) at frequent intervals.
- Produces a variety of demand forecasts, including: short-term (using historic data, event-based and failure-based); long-term (using advanced data mining techniques); new or slow-moving parts; and end-of-life.
- Ensures forecast accuracy with automated diagnostics and best method selection.
- Provides interactive and automated model building to support novice and experienced forecasters.
- Provides numerous models from multiple model families that are specific to service organizations – so that you can select the most suitable model.
- Permits you to adjust model parameters.
- Multi-echelon inventory optimization.
-
- Calculates optimal inventory levels and policies throughout the service chain based on user-specified constraints (such as service levels, lead times and costs) by product, location, category, SKU and more.
- Incorporates all variables on both the supply side (such as inventory on hand, on order, committed, and in transit) and the demand side (such as forecasts and sales orders) for the entire network, as well as every single location.
- Simultaneously plans the best inventory allocation for every location within your network.
- Information sharing throughout the service chain.
-
- Incorporates business intelligence capabilities designed specifically for the service chain, including: KPI scorecards, drillable views, snapshots and trends, and report template options that can be customized.
- Enables you to share summary and detailed reports with your logistic partners.
- Provides executive dashboard to show current performance at various levels and geographies.
- Provides ability to monitor demand and pipeline variance, and issue detailed alerts to report outliers.
Screenshots
The Executive Dashboard provides a clear picture of where the organization stands in relation to its goals.
Manage outliers by monitoring and reporting key metrics like “inventory costs” by location and over time.
System Requirements
Server tier supported platforms
SAS® Service Parts Optimization server component:
- AIX: Version 5.3 and 6.1 on POWER architectures.
- HP-UX PA-RISC: HP-UX 11iv2 (11.23), 11iv3 (11.31).
- HP-UX Itanium: HP-UX 11iv2 (11.23), 11iv3 (11.31).
- Linux for x86 (x86-32): RHEL 4 and 5, SuSE SLES 9 and 10.
- Linux for x64 (EM64T/AMD64): RHEL 4 and 5, SuSE SLES 9 and 10.
- Microsoft Windows (x86-32): Windows XP Professional, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista*.
- Microsoft Windows on x64 (EM64T/AMD64): Windows XP Professional for x64, Windows Vista* for x64, Windows Server 2003 for x64.
- Microsoft Windows (on Itanium): Windows Server 2003.
- Solaris on SPARC: Version 9, 10.
- Solaris on x64: Version 10.
- OpenVMS for HP Integrity Servers (Itanium): 8.3.
- z/OS: V1R7, V1R8, V1R9 and higher.
SAS Metadata Server, SAS OLAP Server and SAS Workspace Server components
All platforms listed under the SAS Service Parts Optimization server are supported except for:
- OpenVMS for HP Integrity Servers (Itanium): 8.3.
Middle tier supported platforms
WebLogic Server
- AIX: Version 5.3 and 6.1 on POWER architectures.
- HP-UX Itanium: HP-UX 11iv2 (11.23), 11iv3 (11.31).
- Microsoft Windows (x86-32): Windows XP Professional, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista*.
- Solaris on SPARC: Version 9, 10.
- Solaris on x64: Version 10.
JBOSS
All platforms listed for WebLogic Server are supported plus:
- AIX: Version 5.3 and 6.1 on POWER architectures.
- Linux for x64 (EM64T/AMD64): RHEL 4 and 5, SuSE SLES 9 and 10.
- Microsoft Windows (x86-32): Windows XP Professional, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista*.
- Solaris on SPARC: Version 9, 10.
- Solaris on x64: Version 10.
WebSphere Application Server
- AIX: Version 5.3 and 6.1 on POWER architectures.
- Linux for x64 (EM64T/AMD64): RHEL 4 and 5, SuSE SLES 9 and 10.
- Microsoft Windows (x86-32): Windows XP Professional, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista*.
- Microsoft Windows on x64 (EM64T/AMD64): Windows XP Professional for x64, Windows Vista* for x64, Windows Server 2003 for x64.
- Solaris on SPARC: Version 9, 10.
- Solaris on x64: Version 10.
- z/OS: V1R7, V1R8, V1R9 and higher.
Client tier supported platforms
- Windows (x86-32): Windows XP Professional, Windows Vista*.
- Supported Web browsers: Internet Explorer 6 on Windows XP Pro; Internet Explorer 7 on Windows XP Pro and Windows Vista*
- Firefox 2.0 on Windows XP Pro, Windows Vista* and Linux x86 (SuSE and RHEL).
* NOTE: Windows Vista Editions that are supported include Enterprise, Business and Ultimate.
Ready to learn more?
Call us at 1-800-727-0025 (US and Canada) or request more information.
