Composable Architecture for Supply Chain Planning
Gartner is advocating composable business architecture for real-time adaptability and resilience in the face of uncertainty. It is intended to be an architecture to support a business that exploits disruption by making things modular and orchestrating business functions as autonomous units that support each other as needed without having necessarily a central command system. One of the major components of such an architecture is composable technology. The other two are composable business thinking architecture and composable thinking. This article describes the architecture of Adexa and how it supports composable architecture.
Adexa’s agent-based architecture is composed of distributed processes each of which is called Adexa Genie©. Genies are autonomous agents that function by sensing, acting and learning. They analyze relevant data and conclude and predict actions needed. They also learn from the data and improve over time. Each Genie senses real-time data that may trigger an alert or a request to other Genies asking for help.
They may also communicate with their users and seek guidance. Each Genie can be combined with others to from a new business process and react to real-time changes as needed. The architecture is scalable to any number of specialized Genies as needed to address all aspects of supply chain.
Composability also implies adaptability. Adaptability means changing behavior as the world changes around us in order to deliver better results. Adexa’s Attribute Based Planning Architecture is precisely designed to constantly enable changes in policies and business priorities. By detecting and learning new trends, the system can adapt its policies and behavior accordingly. Attributes are used as dynamic constraints that mold to the new business environment. Finally, Adexa Digital Blueprint© allows modularity while maintaining interoperability. An example of this is the ability to form executable plans and shifting planning scope from network to supply chain or down to executable plans and minute by minute operation of the supply chain and factories. In other words, merging planning and execution and giving the user the ability to work at different levels of supply chain as needed. The underlying architecture for this is a Unified Data Model. This architecture encompasses both horizontal and vertical business processes for planning. This is a stark contrast to today’s monolithic S&OP solutions that are only horizontal and can only deliver a rough long term plan without any adaptability or extendibility to lower or higher levels of planning functions. To learn more about Adexa Genies and adaptability through attribute-based planning click HERE.
