18 DC VELOCITY JANUARY 2017 www.dcvelocity.com
newsworthy
newsmakers
Synergy NA Inc., the company behind the Snapfulfil
warehouse management system, has recruited industry veteran Don White to serve as vice president of
enterprise solutions. … Third-party logistics service provider Kane Is Able Inc. has
named Mark Johnson senior vice president
of transportation and solutions. … Seizmic
Inc.’s chief executive officer, Sal Fateen,
has been elected to MHI’s Roundtable
Advisory Committee. … UniCarriers Americas Corp.
has expanded its regional sales team by hiring Aaron
C. Boemmel, Michael Paul, Terre Robert Haff, and Paul
G. West. … The Customized Logistics and Delivery
Association has selected Shawn Swearingen as its
new executive director. … S&H Systems has hired Jim
Chastain as manager of procurement and project support, Brian Robinson as sales account manager, Andy
Jordan as project coordinator/office assistant, and
Cheung Lee as project engineer. … LeanCor Supply
Chain Group has hired Dan Avila as senior vice president of customer solutions. … Orbis Corp.,
a manufacturer of reusable packaging,
has hired Todd Mathes as vice president
of manufacturing for its plastics operations. … Advent Intermodal Solutions, a
provider of IT-based intermodal solutions,
has added Allen Thomas to its leadership team as chief
strategy officer.
MATHES
FATEEN
FusionOps launches AI tool for supply chain
Business analytics software developer FusionOps has
launched a platform that uses artificial intelligence (AI)
to identify opportunities to improve supply chain performance for customers such as manufacturers and enterprise
corporations, the company said.
The new “cognitive applications” product is an extension
of Mountain View, Calif.-based FusionOps’ existing suite
of supply chain solutions, which use database analysis and
machine-learning tools to help companies improve their
forecasts, control costs, and hone inventory levels.
The platform uses embedded AI and machine learning to
connect the dots between complex signals such as changes
in demand, manufacturing, inventory, orders, and external factors. The system then suggests solutions and can
even take corrective action in real time, without requiring
human input.
The new suite comes in three main parts, with a search
feature and a cognitive application that were to be available
by the end of last year and a supply chain actions tool arriving this year.
Using machine-learning algorithms to generate prescriptive analytics is growing in popularity among supply chain managers. In May, JDA Software Group Inc.
announced a partnership with the logistics technology provider TransVoyant LLC intended to add predictive—and
prescriptive—analytics to its transportation management
software.
A GOOD FIT FOR IoT
In practice, the new FusionOps cognitive applications suite
fits into a business at the strategic decision-making level,
Internet of Things
(IoT), Industry 4.0,
and automated last-
mile delivery by
drones, David Hamdani, FusionOps’ director of product
marketing, said in a phone interview.
FusionOps collects data from enterprise resource planning (ERP) tools like SAP’s and Oracle’s platforms, harmonizes it in a single cloud-hosted database, then applies data
science algorithms to find solutions to business challenges
such as sluggish growth, high customer expectations for fast
fulfillment, and increasing global competition from emerging markets, Hamdani said.
The FusionOps algorithms continually scan the supply
chain for new opportunities and then suggest a course of
action, Hamdani said. Those opportunities could include
boosting product price to gain revenue when demand rises,
improving cash flow to free up funds for new business
ventures, or shipping products faster to gain market share
when a competitor has a shortage.
The cognitive applications suite follows FusionOps’
March release of a prescriptive analytics tool designed to
leverage big data to help businesses make better supply
chain decisions. The company has been growing fast since
it landed $25 million from venture capitalists in April and
announced its intention to use the funds to continue developing its supply chain software tools.
—Ben Ames
