ILOG and Oracle provide supply chain solutions. (Management News).

ILOG is developing a new supply chain planning product that will work with Oracle Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) to meet the needs of specific vertical industries. The new product, ILOG OEK (Optimisation Extension Kit), will be designed specifically for Oracle Advanced Planning and Scheduling and will be jointly promoted by Oracle and ILOG. A complement to Oracle Advanced Planning and Scheduling, ILOG OEK will extend the existing functionality of Oracle APS by allowing developers to create supply chain planning and scheduling applications unique to a process, company or specific vertical industry.

ILOG OEK is based on ILOG's Cartridge Development Environment (CDE) technology, which combines an internal data model, methodology, automatic code generation tools, and state-of-the-art ILOG optimisation engines (ILOG CPLEX) and ILOG Solver to build ISV-specific extensions. CDE technology allows ILOG's ISV partners to use ILOG's optimisation expertise in order to provide industry-specific extensions to their supply chain platforms.

Comment: Often supply chain planning (SCP) solutions are not customised for specific industries, which is an obstacle to their use in specialised areas such as oil and gas, pharmaceutical and retail. According to the AMR Research Report on Supply Chain Management, APS Goes Vertical: "Industry-configured applications result in shorter implementation time, additional license revenue opportunities, and the ability to reallocate existing vendor resources to other programs and initiatives. Having a meaningful industry focus ensures initial and future credibility with the user. Vertical product strategy addresses user requirements for quicker time-to-benefit, faster and deeper training, and easier future software upgrades.

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