Infineon shortens planning cycles by half with JDA Sales & Operations Planning

JDA Software Group, Inc., The Supply Chain Company, has announced that Infineon Technologies AG has shortened its planning cycles, improved its forecasting accuracy and increased productivity using JDA Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP).

Infineon is an international supplier of semiconductor and system solutions for the fields of energy efficiency, mobility and safety. In the fiscal year 2012, the company, with its 26,700 employees, achieved annual revenues of 3.9 billion EUR.

In collaboration with Infineon, JDA has developed new functionalities for its Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) solution in the field of simulative rough cut capacity planning, using multi-stage, complex simulations that can be implemented in an interactive manner. The so-called RCCP functionality (Rough Cut Capacity Planning) permits companies to not only depict forecasts and processes with reference to demand in the S&OP process, but also  model the entire field of supply, including manufacturing cycle times, capacities, manufacturing locations and yields. In this way, data from all company divisions, from sales forecasting through pricing and right up to production capacity, can be observed and changed in one single simulation model. If one or more of the basic figures are changed, the associated impact on all other key figures recorded in the model is automatically computed.

As a result, companies can obtain a reliable and rapid overview of their integrated business planning processes whenever necessary, and can react promptly to changes in the market. Having deployed such improvements, Infineon has been able to shorten its sales and operations planning cycles from what had been four weeks down to two weeks.

"With the new functionality, the question 'what if?' for all relevant business decision dimensions can be answered online, which makes coordination processes clearly more efficient," said Andreas Mätzler, senior director of corporate supply chain engineering at Infineon. "As of now, the RCCP extension is also included in the standard JDA S&OP version.

In addition, JDA has undertaken two extensions to its S&OP software for increased user-friendliness. On the one hand, the company has realized the JDA S&OP interface as an Excel plug-in, which minimizes implementation costs and has a positive influence on user acceptance. Thanks to this user interface, all major Excel functions, including associated graphics, are available in JDA S&OP. In fact, JDA has extended Excel's performance scope so that it can steer common workflows, manage a common calendar with deadlines, and save the entries on a server in a common data model. Another key extension performed by JDA S&OP includes the pivot tables, which can be edited at every level in the aggregated lines.

Infineon was selected as a 2013 Real Results Award winner for its successful application of the JDA solution in driving business value. The award was presented to Infineon at JDA FOCUS 2013 in Orlando, Florida. Since 2006 JDA has presented Real Results Awards to customers that have achieved measurable return on investment, developed innovative approaches to supply chain processes, and collaborated beyond traditional supply chain boundaries.

"The rapid generation of integrated business plans that reflect the areas of sales, marketing, engineering, production and finance, is nowadays a necessity for each manufacturer that operates in a very volatile market," said Mark Morgan, regional vice president, EMEA, JDA Software.  "We are proud of having an innovative supply chain relationship with Infineon for the last 15 years and are pleased they are achieving outstanding business results using our solution."

Infineon has depended on solutions by JDA for Supply Chain Management since 1996. Using JDA S&OP, all of the different departments and the different international subsidiaries of Infineon have now started to work together using one single solution for the first time. As a result, in a volatile market, the semiconductor supplier profits from more dynamic processes and fast, high-quality decisions.