5 Most Powerful Features of Kinaxis RapidResponse
Has your supply chain been rattled or turned upside down over the past two years? Are you a planner that's been hit with yet another bombshell that your key supplier can't get you materials in time and you still need to figure out how to keep production running in the coming weeks? Are you a manager struggling to evaluate plan A versus B, C and D and decide whether to go for a quick win or a solid longer-term solution? Are you an executive wondering how quickly an alternate plan can be implemented to enhance shareholders' ROI?
No matter who you are, you're in luck- Kinaxis RapidResponse is here to help. This revolutionary supply chain planning tool will give you insight to potential issues before they become actual problems and will provide you with agility to quickly respond to today's rapidly changing environment. Here are 5 of our favorite RapidResponse features- see what they can do for you!
#1 - RapidResponse is the TOP concurrent supply chain planning tool on the market.
Concurrent planning sounds great, but what does it really mean? It means that a change to any one setting or data point will trigger your entire plan to recalculate at the same time. There's no need to sequentially schedule jobs or wait overnight to see results, everything is done in a single instant with one click of a button.
Say that demand for your popular disinfectant spray skyrockets overnight. Simply input the demand increase into the system and immediately discover how quickly production can be pulled forward and how many additional materials are needed from your supplier. On the flip side, maybe one of your suppliers has a plant shutdown and can't get you corrugate to package your products on time. Have your supply planner input the packaging material constraint and instantly see which orders will be late and how swapping materials or switching around the production schedule can eliminate the late orders and keep you from incurring late fees.
It's easy to see that RapidResponse is a one-stop shop for planning. It generates immediate results across your entire supply chain, from inventory optimization and shelf-life planning to detailed production scheduling. This provides immediate value and synchronization across your entire plan. Everyone, from demand and supply planners to executive leaders, has a firm grip on what's happening across the entire supply chain. You don't truly understand what it means to see instant results until you see this tool in action.
#2 - SCENARIO Planning Capabilities
Concurrent planning is powerful, but what if you have a whole team of planners in the system at once and don't want them all to be immediately affected by a change you're testing? That's where scenarios come into play. Users can create private and/or public scenarios to test potential solutions to a problem. Once they're ready for feedback, they can share the scenario with other users who will be affected by the change and collaborate to develop the optimal plan. Ultimately, if the plan is a good one, it can be promoted to become the current operating plan.
Scenarios not only help establish proper usage etiquette within the system, but also are a powerful tool for performing what-if analysis. RapidResponse scenarios allow you to model multiple solutions to a problem and then compare them to see what is most optimal. And no worries, you don't need to re-create the plan from scratch for each solution. Just create a copy of the scenario and RapidResponse will track the changes between them. No longer will you have to spend hours or days copying data, making slight changes and performing calculations to determine the differences and best way to move forward.
#3 - Intuitive Dashboards
RapidResponse not only combines all of your data and plans into one tool, but also provides powerful dashboards to analyze those plans from a detailed planner-level view all the way up to an executive-level view. With all of your data in one system, these dashboards update instantly and are a great way to compare scenarios. Drill-down capabilities allow you to quickly get to the information you need and figure out the root cause of a problem. Whether you need to garner information about obsolete inventory or KPIs, the RapidResponse dashboards are a powerful tool to get the job done.
Kinaxis RapidResponse Master Scheduler Dashboard helps you compare metrics across scenarios
#4 - Guided Process Steps
Built-in guided process steps help new hires quickly get up to speed and serve as handy reference guides for experienced team members. No longer will you or team members have to go digging to find documentation or create cheat sheets to keep next to your laptop. RapidResponse offers several options for incorporating documentation and help directly into the tool itself.
Fully-integrated process steps that are specific to your business
Taskflows are step-by-step process guides that walk through a specific planning task such as generating the consensus demand plan or simulating a demand increase. Each step includes a link to the workbook, dashboard or scorecard needed to execute the task at hand and a company-specific description for what needs to be accomplished during that step of the process. In addition, each workbook and worksheet has built-in help to outline its purpose, its application and detailed information about the specific columns and data being shown. There's simply no better way to consolidate configuration rationale and comprehensive end-user help than directly in the tool itself.
#5 - Exception-based Alerts
Exception-based alerts generated in real-time allow you to quickly identify issues and mitigate risk in a timely manner. Worksheet or scorecard based alerts are a powerful way to keep you focused on what matters instead of combing through the minutiae of data and trying to identify exceptions on your own. RapidResponse goes beyond just alerting you to a potential issue, and provides the ability to input a recommended solution making the alerts prescriptive and guided. Users can take this information and attempt to resolve the problem right there and then, potentially eliminating the need to make it an even bigger issue.
RapidResponse is truly a transformative tool in the supply chain planning space. It's a viable solution for firms just starting out on the journey of defining a planning process as well as for firms looking to revolutionize their current process with an advanced concurrent planning tool. Moving to RapidResponse will utilize your data to its full extent and empower you to make quick and confident decisions while navigating the daily uncertainty of your job.
Know sooner and act faster with Kinaxis RapidResponse. Contact us at SCM Connections for further details and to set up a system demo.
