Ticona Joins Network To Automate Replenishment

Holistic View of Inventory Boosts Efficiencies and Eliminates Bottlenecks

Exton, PA - August 18, 2008 - Elemica Inc., the industry-leading business process network for the external supply chain, announces that Ticona, a division of Celanese and a major Engineered Polymers corporation, has implemented Elemica's Demand Schedule Replenishment (DSR) solution to automate the replenishment process for its customers. DSR improves visibility into the supply chain, giving a holistic view of inventory at every level, and incorporates sales forcasts for a true picture of actual inventory and demand. Elemica eliminates costly manual approaches to the replenishment process with innovative automated features that streamline the process.

"With Elemica's sophisticated DSR solution as the backbone of a disciplined planning process, Ticona can quickly bring its inventory in balance to help meet the needs of even their most demanding customers," said Mike McGuigan, CEO, Elemica. "They can respond quickly and efficiently to changing customer demand patterns and dramatically reduce or eliminate missed deliveries and over-shipments."

"Ticona explored other solutions, but we decided Elemica was the best option," said Adam Herman, SAP Leader/Americas at Ticona. "Point to point via EDI for all customers was just too expensive a proposition. Elemica was the best value and has saved us time and money. Each subsequent implementation goes smoother and smoother, so we are looking at other Elemica offerings for further cost improvements."

Previous to the implementation of Elemica's DSR Solution, Ticona was experiencing problematic duplicate shipment issues with an EDI point-to-point connection, and before Ticona could determine the cause of the problem, they had to pay for return shipments and "eat" restocking fees.Ticona manually collected Excel spreadsheets of customer sales forecasts, and then interpreted them into orders. Elemica now automates this process, improving efficiencies. Ticona can now standardize their work processes whether the customer is sending discreet purchase orders (POs) or delivery schedules.

"When we deployed Elemica's Demand Schedule Replenishment with one initial customer, we saw a dramatic drop in duplicate shipments," adds Adam Herman. "And if they do occur now, Ticona is able to get to the root of the problem quickly. We have been able to get the customer to review their own processes to improve what they are sending, thus boosting productivity."

Elemica's DSR solution simplifies the replenishment process by integrating demand signals and inventory levels into the planning application, generating time-phased proposed deliveries or standardized replenishment schedules. Elemica solutions are delivered using the Software as a Service (SaaS) model that speeds implementation and mitigates risk. With this system, Ticona has improved efficiencies due to order standardization, seen a dramatic drop in duplicate shipments, and eliminated bottlenecks.