Wholesalers and distributors operate in a highly competitive environment that demands optimized operations. They face constant exposure to already thin margins, and live with the threat of being cut out from the supply chain by manufacturers selling directly to end customers.

As a wholesaler and distributor, you need to protect existing business and expand opportunities to reach new customers. IBS Assembly – a fully integrated module of the IBS enterprise supply chain solution – can help you reduce supply chain costs, innovate and improve product offerings, respond quickly to dynamically changing markets, and extend services to offer more value to customers.

Focus on lean, agile manufacturing IBS Assembly is developed specifically for the supply chain environment. IBS Assembly comesequipped to handle all of the fundamental processes that are required, such as work-orders, resources and work-center management. The solution is geared especially towards assembly or light manufacturing as opposed to heavy industrial manufacturing. This means that more complicated, unnecessary steps surrounding production planning are avoided.

The focus of IBS Assembly is to provide only the necessary function for light assembly – resulting in a lean and agile manufacturing set-up. Additionally, the software allows a company to take a step-by-step approach for growing in the assembly/manufacturing area, balancing necessity with complexity. This scalable approach supports the expansion of your company’s distribution assembly services in planned stages.

Pull-planning geared for assemblyIBS Assembly makes use of planning methods that aim toward lowering inventory and driving production from customer orders. The solution uses a pull-planning concept that has two major focal points:• Shortage analysis, focusing on products and components that are subject to or risk shortage within the defined planning horizon.• Priority analysis, based on the coverage time (in days) that an actual product has within the planning horizon, taking into account the demand, order, stock situation and forecast. The design of the priority value (cover time) is user-defined in a way that makes it possible to create customer- defined planning methods.

Functionality that fits assembly requirementsIBS Assembly is equipped with a number of specific features crucial for distributors and wholesalers who offer assembly or light manufacturing. Some of these features are highlighted below.

Automatic release of Back-to-Back (BtB) manufacturing orders and direct printingIBS Assembly allows manufacturing orders to be set up for automatic release and process-ing. This means that orders move from preliminary to ready-to-ship status as soon as the manufacturing order and sales order are created, and that all release and detailed planning activities can be skipped. This streamlined approach helps to speed up the fulfillment of direct ship orders.

Functional overview - iBS enterpriSe

More and more wholesalers and distributors are taking on various types of assembly jobs

and light manufacturing as part of their everyday business. IBS Assembly software offers a

comprehensive solution for companies that carry out assembly and light manufacturing.

IBS Assembly

• Flexible tool for agile, responsive assembly and manufacturing• Accurate order fulfillment resulting in satisfied customers and improved profit margins• Describe bill of materials for each level of production • Check availability of material at any stage of the production process.

Sales and manufacturing order replanningBecause of the combination of orders processed by distribution companies that also do assembly, an integrated replanning function is crucial. This function allows for both sales orders and manufacturing orders to be replanned at the same time, taking into consideration factors such as order priority.

Availability checks on several levelsThe planning function in typical distribu-tion assembly or light manufacturing operations tends to be somewhat limited, or even non-existent. Because detailed planning is usually unnecessary, it means that availability checks on a component level have to be done at order entry.

IBS Assembly lets you perform availability

checks on as deep a level as you need. For components or sub-assembly items, you can determine, on an item level, whether availability checks are to be performed on lower levels. If this is the case, the lower level will contain informa-tion that will reflect whether even further availability checks should proceed to the next level, and so on.

Manufacturing tear-downsFor many companies, even if the major stream of assembly is driven by orders, pre-order manufacturing of components and parts also takes place. The disadvan-tage of this process is that, in the event of the market suddenly changing, a company might be left with a number of components that are tied to the pre-manufactured products. These pre-order

products can be expensive to warehouse or difficult to sell, with a negative impact on inventory costs.

To alleviate this, IBS Assembly makes it easier to do manufacturing tear-downs, which release the components for sale or for use in the assembly of other products. This offers a structured way for compo-nents in the pre-manufactured products to be released for use in the warehouse.

IBS North America: 1-800-886-3900 • info@ibsus.com • www.ibsus.com

The materials contained in this document are summary in nature, subject to change and intended for general information only. For updates of this information, please contact your local IBS representative. v2006-08 © IBS 2006

IBS, International Business Systems, is a world-leading supplier of supply chain management software and professional services for large and mid-sized companies. IBS has some 5,000 customers in more than 40 countries, including ABB, Ciba Vision, Galexis, Nautor’s Swan, Nintendo, General Electric, Honda, Maxell, Scribona, Miele and Volvo.

This panel shows all operations that are included in an assembly. Per operation you can define needed tools, text or conformity.