Every day, your Epicor Kinetic ERP solution recommends its best ERP features, supplier orders, manufacturing jobs and inventory transfer, all based on user demand forecasts and stocking parameters. As you change these parameters accordingly, have you ever wondered how it would impact customer service level and inventory investment? Do you know how your historical inventory and service level performance have been? Or what it is likely to be in the future?
Forecasting and Inventory optimization can answer these questions and more. It helps inventory-carrying organizations reduce waste, improve service levels, and streamlines sales, inventory, and operational planning. For our Epicor customers, Smart IP & O functions as an extension of your Epicor Kinetic ERP system. It provides a unified, easy-to-use, scalable, and collaborative environment to model demand inventory performance and shows results that drive replenishment and production planning. The data model and precision engine for Smart IP&O are built to import and export data in a variety of file formats. The system allows you to conveniently export transaction data such as shipments, sales orders, supplier receipts and more to your Epicor Kinetic ERP system. You can then analyze trends, stocking policies and inventory metrics all in one place.
Through integration, the Smart platform provides these solutions in its ERP features list:
- Smart Inventory Optimization (SIO): This uses a scenario-based, service-level-driven methodology to provide optimal inventory policies, balancing inventory costs against service level, fill rate, and financial objectives. SIO applies the Smart Platform patented approach to intermittent demand planning. It works to help you reduce inventory and associated costs while increasing your service levels. SIO produces inventory reorder points, safety stocks, order quantities, and lead time demand forecast that you may upload to your Epicor Kinetic ERP system.
- Smart Demand Planner (SDP): SDP produces statistical forecasts for thousands of items in your inventory. It selects the optimal statistical method for each item, addresses seasonality and trends, identifies items that require a closer review and offers collaboration to support the organization’s consensus forecast development. The primary output is a demand forecast that you may upload to your Epicor Kinetic ERP system.
- Smart Operational Analytics (SOA): SOA helps you identify root causes of operational inefficiencies, benchmark service levels, and assess supplier performance. SOA produces ready-made reports showing your inventory position today, where you have too few and too many items. It shows where you are in danger of stocking out, actual supplier performance and more.
- Smart Supply Planner (SSP): SSP provides a fast, easy and accurate way to predict when you’ll need to order. Order suggestions are powered by probabilistic forecasting that simulates your daily demand and identifies optimal stocking parameters. You’ll anticipate when stockouts and excess stock are probable to occur, enabling you to take corrective action before issues arise. You’ll be able to predict when the next replenishment will arrive and simulate how alternative planning parameters (reorder points, min/max, safety levels, and forecasts) impact supply planning, future on-hand stocking levels, and replenishment spending. This can help you develop a plan that best suits your business objectives and purchasing constraints.
With this ERP software features list, Smart IP&O can help businesses like yours reduce inventory by up to 20% while reducing stockouts and operating costs. Leading organizations worldwide, like Hitachi, Otis Elevator, Metro-North Railroad, and many mid and small-market enterprises, use Smart IP&O solutions to improve their forecast accuracy and optimize inventory policies. As a customer in manufacturing, you will enjoy benefits like these:
- Improved perfect order fill rate and met customer demands
- Reduced inventory and product costs
- Increased revenue by optimizing inventory levels
- Improved planner productivity by allowing them to focus more time on value-added activities.
- Established organizational/ stakeholder census by modeling and communicating expected demand.
Reducing excess stock, equipment downtime and lost sales in your manufacturing business requires the proper planning foundation. Six S Partners can help you efficiently integrate the Smart IP & O platform with your current Epicor Kinetic ERP system and provide the consulting services you need to scale the platform as your business grows. To get started with a Smart IP & O ERP integration or to learn more about Epicor solutions, Contact Six S Partners today!
For over 30 years, Smart Software has been a leading provider of demand planning, forecasting and optimization solutions. When they developed Smart IP&O (Inventory Planning and Optimization), a cloud-based platform, they set out to provide the most innovative and easiest-to-use inventory planning and forecasting system in the marketplace. They have now become a solutions provider of some of the best ERP features. Because it is a partnered Epicor product, it is sold and supported by Epicor.