o9 Solutions, the premier AI-powered Integrated Planning and Operations Platform provider; and operaize, a leading Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company specializing in solving complex Manufacturing Scheduling and Sequencing challenges in various industries, have partnered to deliver an integrated solution to bring the most advanced scheduling and sequencing solvers into the o9 planning platform. The partnership enables customers to develop plans for different time horizons across complex supply chains in the o9’s integrated planning platform while benefiting from the operaize’s best-in-class solvers to improve capacity utilizations and OEE, delivering concrete results in operating margin of manufacturing companies.
Today, most manufacturing companies are relying on best-of-breed scheduling and sequencing solutions that are connected to their ERP and/or MES solutions. Usually, these solutions operate in isolation at plant level, disconnected from corporate Planning Solutions. Frequent shortcomings include scheduling attainment, sub-par OEE, lack of integration of raw and packaging materials availability and lack of visibility of the demand across the network. These shortcomings also mean operating margins are often not improved.
“o9 Solutions and operaize are two best-of-breed solutions that will be tightly integrated to transform the planning and execution of manufacturing planning, scheduling and sequencing to drive higher ROI for our joint customers” said Chakri Gottemukkala, CEO of o9 Solutions.
Both o9 and operaize are cloud-based, AI-powered enterprise software providers that solve complementary problems for numerous Fortune 500 clients. This partnership leverages the most innovative solvers in the manufacturing domain and o9 supply chain planning solution to enable customers to improve operating margins, OEE, product availability, faster response to market changes impacting manufacturing. The integrated solution, with connection to MES, IoT, LIMS systems, additionally brings full overview of shop floor operations into one unique platform.
“With cognitive operations, we support optimally managing an increasingly complex production chain with a lot of potential disruptions like break-downs or missing material availability. Our next gen AI proactively detects potential disruptions and autonomously and expediently determines solutions to manage the production chain,” reports Alexander Kouril, one of the two founders and managing directors of operaize. Christoph Lieth, his co-founder and co-managing director adds: “Thanks to cognitive operations, we have enabled a leading process industry company in Germany to increase plant efficiency by up to 35%.”
Alexander Kouril reports that the close partnership between o9 and operaize will allow global manufacturing clients to be offered completely new forms of integrated planning. “We have had intensive discussions with suppliers of AI-based planning procedures and were able to establish that o9 is by far the leading, most innovative supplier of an integrated planning approach and the efficiency increases achieved by the customer bear witness to this.”
The partnership is a natural consequence of a strong market pull towards digitization and adoption of AI in manufacturing and logistics. This is reflected by the recent funding and unicorn valuation of o9 Solutions and the investment of Fraunhofer Technologie-Transfer Fonds (FTTF) into operaize. FTTF provides early stage venture capital for startups supported by the Fraunhofer Institute. operaize joins a select group of innovators of Industry 4.0, applying scientific breakthroughs in Machine Learning & AI algorithms to complex problems in production environments.
