enterpriseReplenishment™ (ER) is an integrated, enterprise-wide, multi-echelon, totally scalable, Web-based replenishment system that is offered as either a licensed product or hosted services.

This solution is a demand-driven, Distribution Requirements Planning (DRP), inventory management and visibility system that ties together retail, distribution centers and suppliers with shared forecasts, forecasted orders and metrics. The system can act as a complete replenishment system from store to retail distribution center or supplier — or it can work in conjunction with other systems especially those that use multivariate forecasts or fast-moving and highly price-sensitive items. The multi-year forecast plan can be used for bottom-up merchandise planning.

What does it do?

ER regulates a steady, sales-appropriate flow of inventory from manufacturing plants or suppliers, through distribution centers, to warehouses or stores — while accounting for the seasonality of the sales cycle. The result is that every product in the enterprise is where it is needed, when it is needed and in the right quantity.

ER streamlines your business, connecting people, processes and information throughout your entire enterprise — so everyone, trading partners included, can be on the same page.

It's how to integrate supply and demand planning, how to forecast, how to better manage the warehouse, shipping, procurement, order fulfillment and more.

And, because ER is Web-based, access to ER via the Internet provides visibility throughout the enterprise, allows for collaboration with partners and provides for the sharing and exchange of data.

How does it help me?

How does it work?

From any computer connected to the Internet — and from any location throughout your enterprise — you use a web browser to access, view and maintain all of your inventory information (data). ER generates an efficient, feature-rich set of user-friendly interfaces for comprehensive presentations and simplified data maintenance. Many ease-of-use features are incorporated.

ER breaks each enterprise down into a set of locations within tiers (types of locations, such as vendors, distribution centers, warehouse, or stores). Then it "rolls up" requirements from one level into the level above it.

For example, in a retail distribution environment, a typical hierarchical "roll up" would look like this:

In this case, requirements for the stores are rolled up into their respective distribution centers, and DC requirements are rolled up into their respective vendors.

The system generates forecasted orders (projected requirements/purchases) at the location/sku level. These forecasted orders are rolled up to the respective parent level and added to the parent forecast. There, they create an accumulated parent "demand". This process can be activated for all locations at all levels.

In addition, ER gives you the flexibility to conduct separate, hierarchical runs. For example, you could process a select set of distribution centers and their component locations, by time zone or geography (East vs. West).

Every day, ER does the following:

A key component of the ER system is the use of methods and rules that provide for greater capability, flexibility and control of the algorithms applied and processing techniques executed.

Additionally, ER reference databases (master files) can be maintained either through passing transactions along with the sales and inventory data or remotely over the Web/Internet.