So you’ve just learned that there’s good news… and there’s bad news. First, the good news: your sales for a specialty item manufactured in-house are through the roof. In fact, they’re way over forecast. Now, the bad news. You’re short on production orders. And raw materials. And coordinating your global supply chain in a timely manner to meet your customers’ needs feels like an even taller order. This scenario is just one of many that’s all too familiar for manufacturers. So what is the real problem here? And how can you handle the constant change in your supply chains more effectively? In this blog, we’ll discuss how the lack of real-time, end-to-end data can disrupt business operations and what can be done to prevent the “bad news” scenarios. Too Many Systems, One Major Disconnect First, consider the sheer number of systems that today’s global manufacturers rely upon to run their businesses. Often a result of internal growth or acquisitions, such systems might include everything from multiple ERPs, to CRMs, to S&OPs, to spreadsheets, and so on. The problem, however, is not simply a result of running multiple systems—it’s due to those systems not being interconnected. To make matters worse, those systems are typically not able to “talk” with external systems in their supply chain. This limited visibility, both internally and among partners’ systems, prohibits decision makers from being able to correct problems before they become serious—or conversely, respond to opportunities in the consumer and business-to-business marketplace. The Missing Pieces Again, what’s missing from the scenario above is real-time, end-to-end visibility of actionable information that allows manufacturers to proactively respond...
CAF Architecture Overview The Internet is the ideal platform for business network collaboration due to its ubiquity and widespread adoption. CAF utilizes technology, processes, and usability guidelines designed for the Internet. CAF was designed as a collaborative execution platform that would layer on top of existing enterprise systems, such as ERP, but provide the end-to-end visibility, collaboration and synchronized business process execution not found in these traditional enterprise applications. CAF provides the connectivity and collaborative decision support to speed fulfillment across multi-tier supply chain. CAF is J2EE-based and application server agnostic. It can be deployed on a variety of application servers including WebLogic, WebSphere, JBOSS, NetWeaver, and more. CAF provides a core set of services including communication services; business-object persistence, maintenance, and query; negotiation workflow services; alert generation and life cycle management services. CAFʼs Agent Framework enables rapid creation and deployment of agents, and distributed and custom business logic. The following sections summarize the major business solution components. Business Object Management CAFʼs comprehensive Business Object Model contains hundreds of supply chain objects mapping to a wide range of business data and process logic. These objects support inbound, outbound and outsourced supply chain operations. CAF provides business object lifecycle management services, including inserting, updating, deleting, and querying functionality based on XML interfaces that can be exposed as Web Services. In particular, XML queries support powerful logical expressions to handle complex queries at the business object level. The Business Object Designer is a graphical design tool that uses UML notation for defining business objects. The Business Object Designer can model and generate the following: Database schema for the selected relational database...
CAF Business Benefits Overview Rapid Application Deployment and Redeployment Veccoʼs CAF enables you to develop collaborative solutions through configuration as opposed to coding which significantly reduces the time to build, deploy and change applications. It was designed from the ground up with a robust service-oriented architecture and hundreds of prebuilt supply chain business objects, policies, services, workflows and processes that are readily configured through graphical business modeling tools. This unique flexibility and configurability places business users in control, allowing them to quickly and cost effectively meet rapidly changing business requirements on the fly. Non-programmers can modify existing processes or configure completely new systems, including business objects, workflows, alerts, profiles, key performance metrics, and business views. Collaborative processes are traditionally complex; with its component-based approach, CAF minimizes project risk and provides you with fast quantifiable benefits, by encouraging flexible incremental deployments. Adaptive Process Modeling Provides Continuous Improvement Adaptive Supply Chain Collaboration is all about managing complex fulfillment processes and making them more efficient. The applications must involve more than just the simple sharing of information. They must be able to sense problems; filter, aggregate and process information; apply business rules to the results; and allow negotiation and fast execution to resolve day-to-day problems. CAF supports business process modeling, providing tools to model business objects, users, roles, workflow, business rules and secure visibility. Generic process templates can be created and reused, allowing for quick deployment and ease of maintenance. CAFʼs business process engine orchestrates a rich set of components and services that support flexible, multiparty negotiation workflow for a wide range of business processes. Incremental Business Process Optimization A business process...
Managing Business Complexity, Change and Variability through Adaptive Supply Chain Collaboration Introduction – Adaptive Business Network Collaboration Globalization, exponential advances in technology, shortened product lifecycles and social commerce are changing the competitive landscape. Unknown companies are emerging overnight and dominating industries using information and time as competitive weapons. A company’s success in the “new normal” economy is increasingly less dependent on individual performance and more dependent on the overall success of the supply chains in which they participate. For too long, companies have focused on traditional performance improvement areas, those “within the four walls,” with continually diminishing returns. The real winners will transform their extended supply chain into a business network of synchronized partners focused on a common objective of satisfying customers better than their competing value chains. They will achieve new levels customer intimacy though their ability to sense change and deliver what the market is demanding before their competition has time to react. The ability to rapidly sense changing market conditions and respond to sudden changes in demand is a necessity for doing business in todayʼs volatile global markets. To adapt to these constantly changing business requirements, todayʼs companyʼs need a new breed of supply chain software that is flexible and easily modified, without requiring extensive custom software changes. Vecco provides sophisticated collaboration execution solutions that transform traditional, sequential supply chains into highly responsive and adaptive business networks. Veccoʼs Allegro suite of business network solutions is built and deployed using Veccoʼs Collaborative Application Framework (CAF). This whitepaper provides an overview of the Allegro CAF and how it enables Adaptive Supply Chain Collaboration. Collaborative Application Framework Overview Given...
