Jari Kaukiainen explains the significance of this exciting new venture, and shares the ambitions that I-Plan and Tieto have for the future of their partnership, with words from Alan Cheesbrough, MD of Trading Science and Carsten Henke, Head of Production Excellence and Managing Director Tieto Germany.
Managing Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) and Integrated Business Planning has been a major challenge for paper and similar industries. In particular, linking demand planning to the cyclical nature of production schedules has been difficult to achieve.
I -Plan, a cloud-based software tool for forecasting, supply planning and inventory optimisation for roll and sheet manufacturing, packaging and process industries, provides this link. In addition, it solves many other practical questions around the S&OP planning processes.
“We are pleased to deepen our partnership with Tieto to provide a better and more comprehensive solution for the industry and also to innovate new services and solutions around supply chain and related optimisation. The collaboration starts in Enterprise Resource Planning, and goes through Sales and Operations Planning further to Manufacturing Execution Systems”
Alan Cheesbrough, Founder and CEO of I-Plan
I-Plan makes it possible to forecast market demand with far greater accuracy, schedule production more efficiently, control inventories more tightly and give executives the information they need to increase profitability while following strategic goals.
“The overall focus for us is to improve the efficiency of our customers and help them perform better. This strategic partnership will be useful for both our existing customers and the marketplace, and for us to be able to include I-Plan to our product portfolio. It is an important addition to our Production Excellence ecosystem of innovative products and services in the forest industry and in the entire process industry sector”
Carsten Henke, Head of Production Excellence, Forest Industry and Managing Director, Tieto Germany
The I-Plan concept also adds value through its capabilities to smoothly integrate with industry systems, both legacy and modern ERPs of all kinds and different MES solutions, such as Tieto’s existing Tieto Integrated Paper Solution (TIPS) products.
This is significant milestone for the I-Plan team and cements our position as part of a fast developing industry ecosystems, where companies like Tieto already innovate together adding value to industry leading businesses. I see this partnership further evidence for the agility of the I-Plan concept, to remain on the first wave of technology.
