I am back from Las Vegas after attending Collaborate'07. The conference lived up to expectations with record attendees (6000+) and exhibitors (50+?). The conference was well organized with excellent sessions and well planned demo grounds. From a Warehousing and Distribution perspective there were these sessions:
WMS SIG: Despite the schedule on a Sunday morning at 9:15 AM, it was very well attended. In the first part of the session, I covered a summary of challenges that are faced by Warehouses today and how Oracle WMS features address those challenges. The second part of the presentation was done by Walt Zipperman from DAZ Systems. Walt did a great presentation on an actual WMS implementation which his team managed to successfully complete in just under 3 months! Isn't that incredible?
There were a lot of questions about WMS R12 and actual customer case studies. I personally thought that this session was time well spent on a Sunday morning away from home. However it would be nice to reach a much wider user base in the future. One of the ideas that I am pursuing is to have a regular Webcast (once in 2 months or so) about WMS. Debbie Arnold, Organizer of WMS SIG at OAUG, thought this was a good idea and promised to provide support. If you have any other ideas, we would love to hear them.
Logistics Strategy: Jon Chorley, Vice President of Supply Chain product strategy delivered this session about the current capabilities and future direction of overall Oracle logistics applications.
WMS and OTM: Creating an effective logistics foundation: The title of this session was somewhat misleading. The session was mostly about collaboration in a supply chain execution environment. In a WMS world, this means ensuring that compliance mandates are supported in a flexible manner.
Shipping Directly from Manufacturing with WMS Cross Docking: WMS direct ship feature can be very effective for "Just-in-Time" shipment of assemble to order (ATO) finished goods. This process can be made "contactless" i.e. the finished goods coming off the assembly line can be directly packed and staged to a shipping area. Subsequently the shipping transaction can be completed by a single scan of the LPN bar code.
This is a very interesting case study of direct ship being used in a manufacturing crossdock environment. Incidentally by using R12 Planned Crossdock feature, this process can be enabled for incoming supply from "Back to Back" orders, WIP jobs for non ATO items and even purchase orders for non-procure to order items. If the LPN is RFID tagged, the ship confirm transaction can also be done using RFID scan through a reader portal.
Continuous Moves in OTM: Integrating Inbound and Outbound Transportation: This session was about Oracle Transportation Management (a.k.a OTM) capability to synchronize inbound and outbound shipments and thereby increase carrier utilization and lower rates.
I am not sure if the presentation material is available on-line for those who registered. I will provide a link if I find it.
Update: The presentation material is available online here. Thanks Patrick for providing the link.
Comments (2)
Here is a link to the presentations from Calaborate 07.
http://secure.meetingexpectations.com/oaug/presentations/schedulemanagement.aspx?ConferenceID=66
Posted by Patrick Gresham | April 22, 2007 10:14 PM
Posted on April 22, 2007 22:14
Thanks Patrick!
Posted by Aditya Agarkar | April 22, 2007 11:55 PM
Posted on April 22, 2007 23:55