THE APICS (Association for Operations Management) 2005 Innovation Award in the USA recognises the development of a new technique or product that has significantly advanced the field of operations management.
GAINS, the demand, inventory and supply chain planning and optimisation supported by GRA in Australia, was awarded runner-up.
The award recognised that GAINS’ optimisation planning process had helped one client – that was using a manual replenishment system that had no item-by-item analysis of supply constraints or marketing promotions – achieve a $2 million increase in profit, a 27% reduction in inventory and a 96% customer service level.
The GAINS inventory optimisation system focuses on balancing supply to meet demand at a minimum total annual cost, inventory level and workload for each item in the supply chain.
A GAINS interface was developed for the client’s ERP system that could collect sales data for a given day and analyse it with a series of algorithms to update the company’s forecasts.
The client could then evaluate the level of inventory at each location and calculate orders required to meet demand at the lowest cost across the supply chain.