With markets reporting an oversupply of commodity products, the chemical manufacturing industry faces continuous pressures to reduce costs and accelerate product research and development cycles.  Many companies have forged tighter partnerships with suppliers and customers, and many have grown by merger and acquisition to leverage global economies of scale.  These extended enterprise relationships require expanded supply chain management capabilities, particularly when you factor in the multitude of country-specific regulatory mandates.

Other challenges include:

• Demand forecast accuracy
• Set-up productivity with hybrid products by-products and co-products
• Responding to seasonal fluctuations in demand
• Accommodating complexities in planning and scheduling products with various color/grade combinations
• Maintaining the proper materials supply in the face of demand fluctuation
• Limited shelf life
• Optimizing capacity allocation according to seasonal factors
• Reconciling conflicting objectives of customer responsiveness with production throughout
• Minimizing inventory levels across the entire supply chain
• Maximizing customer satisfaction while minimizing logistics and inventory costs

Investments in manufacturing operations and supply chain management have been historically subordinate to funding in discovery, development, and sales and marketing. However, revenue softens and expenses climb, forcing chemical companies to understand the value of rationalizing and streamlining global supply chains.

Automated supply chain solutions, integrated ERP systems, and extranet solutions can all play a critical role but only if optimized effectively.  Adexa helps make optimization happen.

Optimize Resource Investments -- Compare financial KPIs and tie them into operational KPIs to ensure a response to opportunities and threats in a timely manner.

Stabilize Demand Planning -- Integrate demand data from multiple sources, including subcontractors and distributors, into reliable consensus forecasts in real-time.

Reduce Inventory Exposure -- Extend visibility across the supply chain to optimize the use of inventory and increase flexibility in response to short-term demand fluctuations. Hedge against inaccurate forecasting by making the entire supply chain leaner, more responsive, and more reliable.  Reduce total inventories including raw materials, stock inventories, and finished goods.

Increase Production Schedule Accuracy - Easily accommodate complexities in planning and scheduling production for different product colors and grades.

Consolidate Planning -- Integrate sales, inventory and operations to establish a common language for capturing demand and supply information and feeding decisions directly to varied enterprise and shop floor systems.

Improve Global Capacity Utilization -- Automatically communicate front-end demand changes to allow responsive re-allocation of back-end resources.  Generate a virtual supply chain to optimize capacity and streamline the asset base through a single integrated view.

Synchronize Multi-Site Production -- Establish a common language for capturing data and feeding decisions back to varied legacy systems and shop floor applications.

Enable Collaboration -- Deliver better information faster so trading partners can react quicker to changes in the supply chain, helping to reduce inventories and increase customer responsiveness.

Enhance Customer Service -- Increase flexibility, accelerate order promising, and improve aftersale  support with more responsive demand planning and inventory management.

Measure, Monitor, Notify, and Adjust -- Use hundreds of pre-built, audit-ready and approved KPIs across all departments and roles to stay continuously informed about all aspects of production.