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SAP Unveils New Solution for Smarter Supply Chain Planning (SCN)

SAP announced the availability of the SAP Integrated Business Planning application for demand-driven replenishment. Co-developed with Camelot ITLab and certified by the Demand Driven Institute, the application helps organizations better manage supply chain variability, compress lead times and reduce inventories.

Users of SAP Integrated Business Planning for demand-driven replenishment will be able to make more-informed supply chain decisions and deliver a better customer experience.

“SAP continues to deliver digital supply chain portfolio innovations that simplify how our customers run their organizations,” said Franz Hero, senior vice president, SAP Supply Chain and Logistics Development. “This latest offering incorporates industry-proven methodologies to help companies address the challenges of increasingly volatile business landscapes and gain immediate improvements in business operations.”

SAP Integrated Business Planning for demand-driven replenishment supports demand-driven material requirements planning (DDMRP), which is a methodology to model, plan and manage supply chains, and protect and promote the flow of relevant information and materials. DDMRP is comprised of known and accepted methods such as material requirements planning, lean, and the theory of constraints, and it helps to harmonize them.

DDMRP enables relevant material and information flow, a concept based on core principles that allow customers to:

Dampen the effect of demand and supply variation on the supply chain by calculating inventory buffers and assigning and managing those buffers at strategic decoupling points
Drive replenishment at strategic decoupling points from actual demand
Achieve visibility and demand-driven prioritization of supply based on buffer status at decoupling points