X

SAS looks to deliver the goods

The company is readying a new set of software products designed to help manufacturers keep supplies in stock and run factories more efficiently.

Alorie Gilbert Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Alorie Gilbert
writes about software, spy chips and the high-tech workplace.
Alorie Gilbert
SAS is readying a new set of software products designed to help manufacturers keep supplies in stock and run factories more efficiently, the company said Monday.

The set of products, called SAS Supply Chain Intelligence, is designed to work with manufacturing software from companies like SAP, i2 Technologies and Manugistics. The SAS software slices and dices order and inventory information captured by such programs and creates models showing, for instance, how changes in pricing or promotions could affect production.

Two components of the package, SAS Value Chain Analytics and SAS Supplier Relationship Management, are available now. SAS expects to release two others, SAS Demand Intelligence and SAS Process Intelligence, by the end of the year. The package also includes data-mining and warehousing tools. Each component costs between $200,000 and $700,000 to license, an SAS representative said.

SAS, a privately held company that makes data analysis systems, said it has introduced a set of supply chain tools because many companies have complained about the shortcomings of traditional supply chain applications.

A recent study from Nucleus Research reported that several companies using software from i2, which makes one of the most popular lines of supply chains applications, said their investment in the software hasn't paid off. The companies were touted by i2 as successful projects.