Plan your Supply Chain with Intelligent Constraints

Attribute based planning is having the ability to take into account all the business rules and constraints into account when generating a plan. The result is an accurate plan which is executable without further manual planning and projects correct financial information and reliable delivery performance with almost 100% accuracy.

Any object in the supply chain has properties or attributes. Examples are demand items with special instructions (attributes), products with special features (attributes), equipment with certain qualities (attributes), suppliers who are qualified by certain customers because of their capabilities (attributes).

Taking into account such attributes require intelligent planning that Adexa solutions take into account in the form of an expert system. In other words, based on properties of these objects, business rules are defined by the users (not developers) in order to define the precise digital twin of the supply chain. Here are a few examples:

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Here are the benefits of this approach:

  • The system molds itself to the changes in the business as the processes change and as the business grows.
  • It becomes an exact image or the digital twin of the supply chain
  • The users themselves can insert this kind of intelligence into the system. No need to have developers and outside consultants involved
  • Because of this flexibility, the system can be adapted very quickly lowering the cost of ownership drastic

Note that just having attributes, as most systems do especially for finished goods, is a far cry from attribute-based planning (ABP). In ABP an expert system engine takes into account and scans all the dynamic constraints to generate an accurate plan. In general, S&OP solutions lack attribute-based planning and generate a rough plan that requires manual changes by the planners who have knowledge of these attributes and business rules. With Intelligent constraints realized by attributes, every plan is automatically executable and accurate for today, this week, this month and beyond without manual intervention thus cutting planning time, generating accurate delivery dates and financial projections at the same time lowering cost of inventory and operations considerably resulting in a sustainable and resilient supply chain.

plan supply chain with intelligent constraints

“With intelligent constraints, realized by attributes, every plan is automatically executable and accurate.”