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Volume 2  Issue 1 April 2004

NEC Cuts Annual Supply and Demand Operation System Costs by 50%

By Shuji Sueshige, SVP and President, Adexa Asia Pacific

Remember the TV-commercial for the electric razor where the tag line was, “I liked it so much, I bought the company!”?  (I’ll include the company and spokesman’s name at the end of this article, so don’t bother with an Internet search for it.)  A similar phrase came to mind last month when NEC announced it had implemented Adexa eGPS for Demand Planning.  They liked it so much, they became a re-seller.

NEC’s objective was to restructure their supply and demand operation system by replacing their mainframe system with an open, scaleable memory resident system.  They had a finite budget number and they had a deadline of six-months, start to finish, to complete the changeover. 

NEC is one of the world’s largest and most successful corporations, providing a complete range of IT and Networking solutions to a global customer-base.  It sought to establish a collaborative demand planning environment, where data would be aggregated from multiple sources in real-time and be visible to all stakeholders, to facilitate the optimization of supply planning and increase the efficiency of supply chains.   The financial objective was to reduce supply and demand operation system costs by 50%, and increase customer service by ensuring the right products were available in the right quantities at the right times. 

Given the tight time-lines, potential solution providers had to rapidly prove themselves and earn NEC’s trust.  Adexa won the contract by creating a prototype and showing NEC its extended enterprise demand planning network in action.  Aside from the functionality, NEC was impressed by the user-friendliness of the application, and the ability to download demand planning data to Excel spreadsheets.  Adexa’s implementation was ahead of schedule.  The job was completed in four-months and the objective of reducing supply and demand operation system costs by 50% has already been achieved. 

The re-seller agreement was stuck after NEC showcased its new demand planning solution to another division within the company.  The reviews were so positive, NEC decided to offer Adexa eGPS to other manufacturers and distribution organizations in Japan.  As the late Victor Kiam, of Remington Products Company might have said, they liked it so much, they became a re-seller.

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