Valdero Announces Breakthrough Supply Chain Suite for Consumer Electronics Companies.

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Consumer Electronics Applications Integrate Inventory Visibility from Manufacturing Sites and Streamline Order Fulfillment in Response to Actual Demand

Valdero(C) Corporation, a leading provider of supply chain applications, today announced a new product family designed specifically for the consumer electronics industry. Valdero's Consumer Electronics Applications offers customers the ability to efficiently fulfill channel demand while balancing inventory across multiple distribution channels to minimize inventory exposure and stockouts. Valdero's applications provide functionality that integrates inventory visibility from manufacturing sites, Original Design Manufacturing (ODM) sites and distribution centers and intelligently matches this supply with actual demand and Point Of Sale (POS) data from channel partners to streamline the order fulfillment process resulting in strong relationships with demanding customers.

"Since consumer electronics companies are ultimately liable for excess inventory in the distribution channel, they need to have visibility along the entire extended supply chain," said S. Singh Mecker, president and CEO of Valdero. "This visibility enables effective vendor managed inventory programs that allow manufacturers to respond to real customer demand instead of blindly pushing material into the channel."

Addresses the Challenges specific to the consumer electronics industry

In the price and brand-sensitive consumer electronics industry, short product lifecycles and retailer-specified sales windows are the norm, making time-to-market and time-to-volume the driving concerns. Valdero has responded to these trends by developing this suite of supply chain applications designed to enable consumer electronics companies to rapidly respond to changes in actual demand and improve the order fulfillment processes with their retail and distribution customers. Valdero has developed a suite of three applications to address these challenges -- Global Inventory Visibility, Demand Replenishment, and Supply Demand Matching.

Using manufacturing best practices is a common strategy for containing costs. Whether consumer electronics companies design their own products before outsourcing all or part of the manufacturing process, or rely on ODM's to handle the entire process, they must effectively manage tight manufacturing schedules across extended supply chains to hit target delivery dates with new products or miss short-but-critical sales and profit cycles.

Valdero's supply chain applications have demonstrated their ability to help manufacturers lower excess and obsolete inventory up to 95%, reduce order cycle time up to 50% and reduce operations cost up to 30%. These are impressive benefits for all manufacturers especially in the price and brand-sensitive and extremely competitive consumer electronics industry.

Supply Chain Suite for Consumer Electronics

Global Inventory Visibility -- In recent years, the severe cost and margin pressures caused by market conditions have led many manufacturers to outsource manufacturing, distribution and logistics. These trends have resulted in complex multi-tier supply chains; evolving complex relationships for inventory management and ownership; and high risk of inventory obsolescence. Valdero's Global Inventory Visibility application addresses these challenges by providing a single platform to represent and view the supply chain from channel partner through supplier or ODM partner. It enables the manufacturer to:

--Get an integrated view of inventory across multiple tiers from distribution and retail channels through Contract Manufacturers, ODMs and suppliers;

--Analyze the impact of supply demand imbalances and resulting impact on financial performance;

--Track key operating metrics for supply chain performance -- visually and by exception; and,

--Collaborate on key inventory information with parties inside and outside the enterprise.

Demand Replenishment -- Margins are under constant pressure to managing costs and rapidly responding to changes across the extended supply and demand chain is critical to maintaining profitability. To counter cost pressures, many retailers and channel partners of these consumer electronics manufacturers have adopted replenishment models like vendor managed inventory (VMI) or channel managed inventory (CMI). These trends have resulted in inventory build up at VMI hubs, inability to execute these programs on a sustainable basis resulting in increased lead times, missed revenue opportunities on both replenishment and non-replenishment channels, stock outs at key channel partners and the inability to manage fulfillment of new products. Valdero's Demand Replenishment enables manufacturers to:

--Create and manage inbound replenishment signals by aggregating and rationalizing demand and POS information from channels;

--Intelligently allocate supply to replenishment signals using business rules; and

--Integrate with ERP systems to execute order shipment and tracking shipments back into the channel.

Supply Demand Matching -- Short product lifecycles and retailer-specified sales windows are the norm, making time to market and time to volume the driving concerns. These trends have resulted in increased price protection and stock rotation penalties, inventory build up at channel partners and missed revenue opportunities. Valdero's Supply Demand Matching enables manufacturers to:

--Aggregate demand across multiple channels, tiers and POS locations;

--Prioritize demand using business rules to maximize business value;

--Allocate supply to prioritized demand to minimize shortages and maximize order fulfillment performance;

--Simulate the impact of unexpected demand changes and end-of-quarter hockey sticks; and

--Create a personalized dashboard to analyze demand patterns and measure fulfillment performance -- visually and by exception; and finally,

About Valdero

Valdero Corporation is a provider of inventory visibility and order fulfillment software applications. Valdero creates high velocity supply and demand chains through real-time visibility, collaboration and execution. With Valdero, businesses can reduce excess and obsolete inventory, reduce operating costs and order cycle times. Valdero's solution can be implemented in as little as three months. Applicable across manufacturing companies in the high technology, automotive and consumer markets, Valdero is currently in use at industry-leading companies such as Leapfrog, Advanced Fibre Communications (AFC), Extreme Networks, Juniper Networks, net.com, and Enterasys Networks. Based in Palo Alto, California, Valdero is a privately held company backed by premier venture capital firms including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Mohr Davidow Ventures, Trinity Ventures, and Integral Capital Partners. For more information visit www.valdero.com.

Valdero is a mark of Valdero Corporation. All other company names mentioned are the property of their respective owners and are mentioned for identification purposes only.