Patent Application
20230115896
The field relates generally to information processing systems, and more particularly to supply chain management in such information processing systems.
Supply chain management in the manufacturing industry typically refers to the process of monitoring and taking actions required for the manufacturer, such as an original equipment manufacturer (OEM), to obtain raw materials, and convert those raw materials into a finished product that is then delivered to or otherwise deployed at a customer site. A goal of supply chain management is to adequately balance supply and demand, e.g., the supply of the raw material (the raw materials procured or otherwise acquired from vendors, etc.) with the demand of the raw materials (e.g., the raw materials needed to satisfy the manufacturing of equipment ordered by a customer). In the current manufacturing industry, the amount of raw material needed to be procured and stored is an ongoing issue for OEMs.
Illustrative embodiments provide automated supply chain management techniques in an information processing system.
For example, in an illustrative embodiment, a method comprises defining a plurality of supply segments to represent a forecasted demand for material needed to manufacture equipment via a supply chain, and allocating supplied material across one or more of the plurality of supply segments wherein a first portion of the supplied material is allocated in a non-fixed manner and a second portion of the supplied material is allocated in a fixed manner.
Further illustrative embodiments are provided in the form of a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having embodied therein executable program code that when executed by a processor causes the processor to perform the above steps. Still further illustrative embodiments comprise an apparatus with a processor and a memory configured to perform the above steps.
These and other illustrative embodiments include, without limitation, apparatus, systems, methods and computer program products comprising processor-readable storage media.
As mentioned above in the background section, the amount of raw material needed to be procured and stored is an ongoing issue for OEMs and other manufacturers. By way of example only, raw material (or simply, material) that is used to manufacture computing and/or storage equipment ordered by a customer via an OEM may include, but is not limited to, hard disk drives (HDDs), random access memory (RAM) modules, motherboards, etc.
In the current end-to-end planning processes, tools are available to classify the demand into various groups or buckets, e.g., retail orders, large orders, service level agreement (SLA) orders, run rate/transactional orders, etc. The current set of tools take the historical sales and provide the forecast with respect to the above segmented/bucketed demand. This segmentation is important as it helps sales representatives to load their forecasted numbers into the tool. Once the forecast process is completed, the tool provides the output with respect to the percentage of the given demand segments. This entire process is known in the industry as demand segmentation.
When it comes to the procurement processes, for example, an OEM gets the holistic number that the part/item owner tries to negotiate with the supplier. Once the supplier supplies the material of the corresponding quantity, it can either match the forecasted quantity or it can vary. If the supplied quantity is greater than or equal to the forecasted quantity, there are no challenges in distributing the supply into different demand segments. However, if the supplied quantity is less than the forecasted quantity, there is a challenge to distribute the supply among different demand segments.
By way of example, in the manufacturing supply chain environment of computing equipment (e.g., laptops servers, storage systems, etc.), a supply chain is typically driven by a demand segmentation model such as shown in example 100. The practice of analyzing demand data and dividing it into smaller segments helps measure performance or improve service levels. Demand segmentation analysis can be performed on pre-defined company segments, including products or locations. Demand segmentation analysis is effective when determining areas of improvement or analyzing a company's key performance indicators (KPIs). Even though demand segmentation may be used for different purposes in different industries, a main purpose is to increase the accuracy of demand forecasting. With demand segmentation, as illustrated in example 100, the demand from each segment is calculated separately and forecasted separately. Eventually the forecasted segment demands are aggregated into a total demand forecast (e.g., 120 in
However, once the demand forecast is sent to a supplier according to a supplier segmentation model and the suppliers send the raw materials, the OEM typically maintains all raw materials (supply) in a single inventory bucket. Then, according to the order (e.g., transactional demand), the inventory from the common pool will get diminished to satisfy the need of the order. This is illustrated in
As shown, a total demand forecast 202 (e.g., total demand forecast 120 in
Illustrative embodiments realize that, in manufacturing and other like industries, there is no such concept as supply segmentation due at least to the following reasons:
(i) Transactional orders can come in any segment, and the raw material supply for any segment could be drawn from common inventory.
(ii) If supply raw materials were segmented, there is a chance that one segment will get less transactional orders and others will get more. Then, for one segment, the raw material will be consumed quickly and face parts shortages, while the other segment will be stagnant for a long period.
Thus, in existing supply chain process, there is no enforcement to segment the raw material (supply). However in some OEM industries, where there are different customer segments and varieties of products (different models of laptops or servers using the same raw materials) and different sales models (e.g., need to deliver material in 14 days, perpetual sales with must arrive by dates (MABD), or sudden large order from an established or otherwise high priority customer), it is realized herein that the need of segmenting the supply into different segments is becoming more and more important to avoid the lower priority order consuming all raw material and leading to shortages of raw materials (parts shortages) for higher priority orders (e.g., for high valued customers).
OEMs are currently doing some level of manual inventory allocation for some high priority customers and orders based on experience and customer relationship. However, there is no systematic supply segmentation available in the supply chain management process.
Illustrative embodiments overcome the above and other drawbacks and deficiencies in existing supply chain management by defining and implementing supply segmentation (distinguished from supplier segmentation as illustrated above in the context of
It is to be appreciated that soft allocation may be referred to herein as “non-fixed allocation” since it is intended to be subject to change, as compared with hard allocation which may be referred to herein as “fixed allocation” since it is intended to remain unchanged.
In contrast to demand segmentation, supply segmentation according to illustrative embodiments is not constant and rigid since supply segmentation may vary (e.g., adjusted many times in a day). Though supply segmentation may not totally eliminate parts shortages, it reduces the chance of parts shortages and improves the efficiency of the supply chain.
Further, illustrative embodiments provide for systematically creating a supply segmentation model, and soft allocating incoming supply and back logs based on the demand segmentation forecast percentage, and hard allocating the inventory for the high priority orders (e.g., largely eliminating parts shortages for high priority orders). Also, the soft allocation can be re-adjusted inside supply segments based on the change in the transactional demands and change in the incoming supply. This intelligent segmentation not only ensures systematic reduction in parts shortages for critical orders, but also gives a segment view to the supply so that the OEM can proactively take action for potential upcoming parts shortage scenarios.
Accordingly, supply chain management according to illustrative embodiments soft allocates (which can be changed multiple times according to the transactional orders) the incoming supply (raw material) for different types of order groups (supply segments). In some embodiments, supply segments are driven by one or more of: (i) historical consumption of raw material in different demand segments; (ii) customer relationship; (iii) level of urgency from customer; (iv) quotes and MABDs; (v) size of anticipated order; and (vi) type of order. Supply chain management according to illustrative embodiments can also hard allocate (not easily adjustable) some of the supply for different supply segments as per the need, re-adjust the soft allocation based on the transactional orders in a frequent time manner, and at the time of quote or order placement, provide procurement teams with visibility as to where the parts shortage can come to enable them to take action to replenish the raw material from a supplier in time.
In other words, collectively, steps 302 through 308 obtain the sales order history across demand segments defined by the given demand segmentation model, classify the sales orders based on the demand segments (e.g., a flag-based classification can be used), and find all parts used on the order by doing a BOM out of the orders in each demand segments. Classification can be performed by running a suitable algorithm, e.g., a multi-class classification algorithm. Not all parts need be considered. In a system, there will be critical components (for which there is frequent parts shortages) and non-critical components. Thus, some embodiments target the critical components while classifying the parts (e.g., classifications such as HDD, RAM module, motherboard, etc.).
Step 310 forecasts the consumption of parts in the targeted classified classes in each demand segment. In some embodiments, a random forest algorithm is used to provide the forecast. Based on the forecast, OEM knows the probable number of HDDs, RAM modules and motherboards it needs in a given time frame (e.g., next month, next quarter, etc.) within each demand segment. Linear regression techniques can be used in step 312 to smooth out the forecast generated in step 310.
In step 314, a supply segmentation is derived, e.g., by creating a supply segment (one to one correspondence) for each demand segment or by some other correspondence. Step 316 then soft allocates, for each supply segment, part of the incoming supply of raw material based on the forecasted demand percentage. Step 318 then hard allocates part of the incoming supply based on important (critical, high priority, high valued, etc.) transactional quotes and orders. Step 320 re-runs the soft allocation against transactional orders to make hard allocations (change a quantity of parts from a soft allocation to a hard allocation) if needed. Step 322 allows the inventory to stream from the supply segment from soft allocation. Step 324 derives one or more actions in case there is any predicted parts shortages in the soft allocation (e.g., notify OEM procurement system or team to obtain more inventory). It is to be appreciated that a parts shortage condition can be defined by a quantity in a given supply segment falling below a given quantity threshold or based on some other criteria.
More particularly, as shown in example 400 of
Referring now to example 500 in
Then, new inventory coming from the supplier will be segmented based on this rule. According to the transactional order, the supply chain management methodology performs a re-allocation multiple times in a day and hard allocates and re-adjusts the soft allocation between the supply segments. In case of an anticipated parts shortage, the supply chain management methodology notifies the procurement team or system regarding the details of the projected shortage to enable the team to replenish the part as per the need.
More particularly, demand segments classifier 632 takes the total demand and first segregates it into different demand segments. Each order in each segment is BOM-ed out using BOM manager 634 to get the raw materials (parts) used in that order and system. Demand segments classifier 632 classifies parts into targeted categories (e.g., 1 TB HDD, 16 MB RAM, Motherboard XYZ, etc.) using a multi-class classification algorithm. By way of example only, the HDD category may contain several parts based on the supplier. The classification results are used by demand segment forecast manager 628 to forecast the consumption of raw materials (parts) based on the targeted categories using one or more artificial intelligence, machine learning or deep learning algorithms such as, but not limited to, random forest and linear regression. BOM manager 634 BOM-es out the order into respective raw materials used.
Supply allocation engine 624 creates the supply segments by starting with the existing raw material allocation based on the current incoming supply and back logs and allocates the soft allocation based on the demand segmentation and the percentage of forecasted consumption on each demand segment. Further, supply allocator 626 reads the current transactional orders and quotes (also materialized opportunities) to perform the hard allocation based on one or more of customer relationship, level of urgency from customer, quotes and MABDs, size of the anticipated orders, and types of the order. Still further, supply allocation engine scheduler 622 provides a scheduler that runs supply allocation engine 624 upon a change in the incoming supply or a transactional demand to re-allocate the soft allocation and create hard allocations as needed.
Accordingly, system architecture 600 implements a process called supply segmentation to segment the incoming supply and allocate the raw material inventory systematically for different types of demands based on the incoming supply and actual raw material consumption in different demand segments. Further, system architecture 600 implements a hybrid model of soft (non-fixed) allocation and hard (fixed) allocation for optimal raw material (supply) allocation and re-allocation. Still further, system architecture 600 pro-actively identifies the probable parts shortages and take necessary action to mitigate such shortages.
Illustrative embodiments are described herein with reference to exemplary information processing systems and associated computers, servers, storage devices and other processing devices. It is to be appreciated, however, that embodiments are not restricted to use with the particular illustrative system and device configurations shown. Accordingly, the term “information processing system” as used herein is intended to be broadly construed, so as to encompass, for example, processing systems comprising cloud computing and storage systems, as well as other types of processing systems comprising various combinations of physical and virtual processing resources. An information processing system may therefore comprise, for example, at least one data center or other type of cloud-based system that includes one or more clouds hosting tenants that access cloud resources. Cloud infrastructure can include private clouds, public clouds, and/or combinations of private/public clouds (hybrid clouds).
The processing platform 700 in this embodiment comprises a plurality of processing devices, denoted 702-1, 702-2, 702-3, . . . 702-K, which communicate with one another over network(s) 704. It is to be appreciated that the methodologies described herein may be executed in one such processing device 702, or executed in a distributed manner across two or more such processing devices 702. It is to be further appreciated that a server, a client device, a computing device or any other processing platform element may be viewed as an example of what is more generally referred to herein as a “processing device.” As illustrated in
The processing device 702-1 in the processing platform 700 comprises a processor 710 coupled to a memory 712. The processor 710 may comprise a microprocessor, a microcontroller, an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC), a field programmable gate array (FPGA) or other type of processing circuitry, as well as portions or combinations of such circuitry elements. Components of systems as disclosed herein can be implemented at least in part in the form of one or more software programs stored in memory and executed by a processor of a processing device such as processor 710. Memory 712 (or other storage device) having such program code embodied therein is an example of what is more generally referred to herein as a processor-readable storage medium. Articles of manufacture comprising such computer-readable or processor-readable storage media are considered embodiments of the invention. A given such article of manufacture may comprise, for example, a storage device such as a storage disk, a storage array or an integrated circuit containing memory. The term “article of manufacture” as used herein should be understood to exclude transitory, propagating signals.
Furthermore, memory 712 may comprise electronic memory such as random-access memory (RAM), read-only memory (ROM) or other types of memory, in any combination. The one or more software programs when executed by a processing device such as the processing device 702-1 causes the device to perform functions associated with one or more of the components/steps of system/methodologies in
Processing device 702-1 also includes network interface circuitry 714, which is used to interface the device with the networks 704 and other system components. Such circuitry may comprise conventional transceivers of a type well known in the art.
The other processing devices 702 (702-2, 702-3, . . . 702-K) of the processing platform 700 are assumed to be configured in a manner similar to that shown for computing device 702-1 in the figure.
The processing platform 700 shown in
Also, numerous other arrangements of servers, clients, computers, storage devices or other components are possible in processing platform 700. Such components can communicate with other elements of the processing platform 700 over any type of network, such as a wide area network (WAN), a local area network (LAN), a satellite network, a telephone or cable network, or various portions or combinations of these and other types of networks.
Furthermore, it is to be appreciated that the processing platform 700 of
As is known, virtual machines are logical processing elements that may be instantiated on one or more physical processing elements (e.g., servers, computers, processing devices). That is, a “virtual machine” generally refers to a software implementation of a machine (i.e., a computer) that executes programs like a physical machine. Thus, different virtual machines can run different operating systems and multiple applications on the same physical computer. Virtualization is implemented by the hypervisor which is directly inserted on top of the computer hardware in order to allocate hardware resources of the physical computer dynamically and transparently. The hypervisor affords the ability for multiple operating systems to run concurrently on a single physical computer and share hardware resources with each other.
It was noted above that portions of the computing environment may be implemented using one or more processing platforms. A given such processing platform comprises at least one processing device comprising a processor coupled to a memory, and the processing device may be implemented at least in part utilizing one or more virtual machines, containers or other virtualization infrastructure. By way of example, such containers may be Docker containers or other types of containers.
The particular processing operations and other system functionality described in conjunction with
It should again be emphasized that the above-described embodiments of the invention are presented for purposes of illustration only. Many variations may be made in the particular arrangements shown. For example, although described in the context of particular system and device configurations, the techniques are applicable to a wide variety of other types of data processing systems, processing devices and distributed virtual infrastructure arrangements. In addition, any simplifying assumptions made above in the course of describing the illustrative embodiments should also be viewed as exemplary rather than as requirements or limitations of the invention.
