supply chain, qad explore, qad dynasys

QAD Explore 2019, the company’s premier customer conference connecting its global community of leading manufacturers, recently took place in New Orleans, Louisiana, and was a pleasure to attend. The conference provides an unprecedented opportunity to contribute to the discussion on the future of manufacturing and how changes in business ecosystems impact manufacturing supply chains. Among others, this year’s Explore featured informative sessions dedicated to the game-changing evolution of the modern supply chain. Some of the topics presented and discussed included the impact of geopolitical events on global trade, the advancement of digitization to drive augmentation and automation, and the proliferation of advanced analytics to support fact-based, real-time decision making.

Consumer Products / Food & Beverage Vertical Update

The Consumer Products and Food & Beverage Vertical Update session featured three presenters, covering a variety of industry-specific topics.

QAD’s Director of Consumer Markets Stephen Dombroski kicked things off with some insights and trends on the consumer goods and food & beverage industries as well as the key disruptors impacting manufacturers. Such disruptors include Anything as a Service (XaaS), Make to Order at Scale and scenarios that encompass the Digital Transformation of Manufacturing.

Oras Group, a European manufacturer of faucets, presented their QAD upgrade customer case study, shared their lessons learned, benefits and next steps.

Finally, QAD DynaSys Product Manager Shaun Phillips drilled down into several new innovations available in Demand & Supply Chain Planning (QAD DSCP) to support these industries, including Predictive Analytics, Machine Learning and Trade Promotions Planning.

Welcome to “Supply Chain Planning 2020”

The next session focused on Supply Chain Planning 2020. Manufacturing companies today are operating in a new world and dealing with constant changes in geopolitics, exponential speed and the digitization of everything, more demanding and less committed customers, and ever-changing supply chains. Shaun Phillips discussed some of the major events impacting global supply networks, notable strategies, and technologies that may be adopted to not just survive, but thrive in 2020.

The Next Generation of Demand Planning: Intelligent and Real-Time

Demand Planning technology is being reborn into something real-time, intelligent and reactive. The Next Generation of Demand Planning session spoke to this notion.

Modern-day planners are bombarded with large volumes of both historical and real-time data. Planning systems must rapidly identify trends, exclude outliers, and turn data exceptions into actionable insights, which is why supply chain planning is a natural candidate for machine learning. In this presentation, we discussed how machine learning and demand sensing change the demand planning game.

From S&OP to IBP: How to Align Operations and Financial Plans

It was standing room only in the Demo Theatre for Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) and Integrated Business Planning (IBP). QAD DynaSys Senior Sales Executive Jeff Livingston described the growing importance of S&OP and IBP processes to maintain operational and corporate alignment. Jeff stressed the importance of collaboration and data. Particularly insightful was the crucial role of finance in S&OP to not only align budgets but assess cash flow impacts and ROI analysis.  

Then, to make this journey a reality, QAD DynaSys Manager of Customer Engagement Pierre-Julien Buard (PJ) selected three demonstration scenarios: budget misalignment between finance and operations, executive S&OP decision making, and collaboration between different geographic entities. PJ expertly walked through each of these business challenges comprehensively illustrating the decision-making process. It was a perfect showcase for QAD DynaSys DSCP.

Conference Sessions Available for Download

These sessions highlighted, along with all other Explore 2019 sessions, are available to watch or download on the QAD Explore website. We are here to help you build the future of your supply chain and to become an Agile, Effective Enterprise.

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