ILOG UNVEILS NEW TRANSPORTATION PLANNING SOLUTION

ILOG(r) (NASDAQ: ILOG; Euronext: ILO, ISIN: FR0004042364) today announced ILOG Transport PowerOps(tm), a new transportation planning software application with comprehensive support for complex transportation networks and detailed customer requirements. ILOG's complete application for transportation planning and the first release from the company's new PowerOps(tm) Suite, ILOG Transport PowerOps (TPO) allows shippers to create more realistic plans compared with other solutions on the market, enabling them to better control costs and increase efficiency. With ILOG TPO, shippers can have a planning process that is connected and streamlined, versus having the consolidation, carrier selection and scheduling tasks performed separately. It targets third-party logistics providers (3PLs), retailers and consumer packaged goods manufacturers with complex planning requirements.

Today's announcement gives ILOG a larger role in the Transportation Management Systems (TMS) market, which according to research firm, ARC Advisory Group, reached $873 million in 2003, and is forecasted to grow to $1.2 billion by the end of 2008, representing a compound annual growth rate of 7.1 percent. Previously, ILOG provided only optimisation software components to the TMS market. The company will continue to provide these components to end-users and its software partners.

Increasing fuel costs, as well as changes in service hours and capacity have significantly impacted profits for both transportation providers and their customers. In response, both groups want to gain advantage by better managing the trade offs between performance metrics, like on-time delivery and utilisation, and the costs of service. Prior to the availability of ILOG TPO, customers were forced to use manual planning or would have to model warehouse, yard and transportation operations separately. The resulting gaps between reality and the models can decrease efficiency, impacting profitability. In addition, shippers and carriers alike are looking for more flexibility and control over the parameters of their transportation management, as well as the savings and agility that result when they give control of business policies to their end-users.

ILOG TPO helps shippers and carriers alike better control costs and boost profitability by providing better support for the increasingly complex transportation planning environment, including the trend in the industry towards more complex transportation network designs, such as pool points and cross-docks. In addition, ILOG TPO provides more detailed (and realistic) facility resource modeling, allowing customers to model far beyond how many dock doors are at a site, for example, but also the number of forklifts, exit gates and even how many people are available down to the minute. Because the new product provides for more granular scheduling, congestion and waiting times are reduced or even eliminated. For example, at a warehouse expecting 100 trucks a day, the truck arrivals could be scheduled according to the actual resources required to load the shipments.

For carriers and private fleet owners, ILOG TPO contributes to lower fuel costs by providing detailed plans that reduce the miles driven, reduce waiting times at warehouses and plants, as well as maximise vehicle utilisation while minimising the number of vehicles necessary--all contributing to higher overall profitability

These benefits are possible because ILOG Transport PowerOps (TPO) combines three powerful technologies together for the first time: interactive visualisation to realistically depict transportation assets; business rule management to change customer parameters as often as necessary; and resource optimisation technology, which automatically balances asset utilisation and costs against service levels and delivers the optimised transportation plan based on available resources.

Available on April 11, ILOG TPO has five major components: an interactive map and schedule view; a transportation server, which manages scenarios; an optimisation engine that generates the plan and evaluates plan edits; a business rule management system to enable user-directed business policy management; and an underlying object model for logistics operations.