i2 Technologies is releasing another piece of its next generation supply chain management suite. The company announced Tuesday its namesake Supply Collaboration/Lean Replenishment module designed to help companies better manage supplier interactions.
Supply Collaboration/Lean Replenishment is the second such SCM release i2 Technologies Inc. has made this year—with one more planned to follow. The three modules combined will make up the companys new Collaborative Supply Execution suite.
While the individual modules can be acquired as stand alone products—or implemented sequentially—the CSE suite is really built to be used in conjunction with i2s Agile Business Process Platform, a service oriented architecture that, most notably, includes a business process workflow engine that enables users to model and manage processes.
The idea is that each SCM module has a series of workflows that, when combined with the i2 Studio programming capabilities, can be modified as processes change.
The Supply Collaboration/Lean Replenishment module is also geared toward helping users manage replenishment across their supplier base. Companies have the ability to collaborate with suppliers on short and long term supply chain plans around forecast and capacity. The software helps users implement lean supply processes like vendor managed inventory, officials said.
The first CSE module i2 released centers around procurement.