Features List
SAS Inventory Optimization Workbench
Data management
- Data from disparate sources of product distribution can be aggregated while eliminating inconsistencies and redundancy.
- All factors that affect demand can be considered, which creates more accurate forecasts.
- Data from can be pulled from ERP and legacy systems.
- Transform, standardize and cleanse your data.
Inventory optimization
- A buyers’ workspace with a suggested plan of orders for a given facility in a single, dual or multiechelon network.
- Replenishment plans for low-stock items.
- Cost by source for each order.
- Cost summaries for each optimized plan.
- Auto-leveling between facility inventories when the data suggests this would be cost-effective.
- Lock and promote order recommendations that includes an automated pathway when needed.
- Edit suggested orders, or create a manual order.
- Promotional and turn ordering workflows:
- Base/turn orders allow for the normal volume and demand fluctuations that fall within standard lead times.
- Promotional ordering allows for long lead-time planning, collaboration and execution.
- Order suggestions and optimization overrides:
- The system automates the creation of trusted ordering requirements.
- System provides a logical stepped process to go from the opening order, to promotion of the order, and then to order execution.
- Allows for cancellation of an order and an immediate system update.
- Ability to generate a manual order to override the optimization process.
- Promotional order sequencing and sorting:
- Order processing can be configured to align with negotiation periods.
- Align ordering with optimal upstream and downstream product flows to support promotional events.
- Sort order by promotion ID, date, name, vendor, product and locations.
- Improved inventory performance and advanced product and location segmentation:
- Easily viewable outputs provide insight into the optimization policy results.
- Configurable product segmentation allows for extremely accurate segmentation and the ability to link to product attribute segments for hard-to-forecast products including attribute filtering in what-if scenarios.
- Configurable facility segmentation allows customization of facility hierarchy.
- Customized alert thresholds and the ability to assign specific service levels to regular (versus promotional) volumes.
- Visual facility hierarchy view to easily understand product flows including the ability to see upstream inventory support to underlying locations.
What-if scenario development
- Provides accurate cost analysis of inventory proposals before implementation.
- Allows for multiple scenarios to be developed at once.
- Enable the user to review how business decisions affect both single-echelon and multiechelon networks.
Demand-driven planning and optimization suite integration
- SAS® Collaborative Planning Workbench – Automates consensus planning with a structured forecasting workflow.
- SAS® Forecast Analyst Workbench – Uses SAS High-Performance Forecasting to generate more accurate, large-scale forecasts.
- SAS® Forecasting for SAP APO – Advanced analytic forecasting integrated with SAP APO.
- SAS® New Product Forecasting – Combines business judgment with statistics and our patent-pending structured judgment method, which suggests future demand of new products based on surrogate products.
- SAS® for Demand Signal Analytics – Provides an integrated repository of demand information with tools for exploring and analyzing sales, products, stores, territories, promotions, inventory, price, performance and operations.