Manhattan Assoc. and the future of supply chain software

By Staff -- Modern Materials Handling, 6/1/2007

Innovation in supply chain software. That was the theme at provider Manhattan Associates' annual customer conference last month as executives emphasized the company's commitment to research and development and detailed their vision for supply chain software.

Eddie Capel, senior vice president of product management, offered a glimpse of how mashups of different technologies may soon help them manage transportation of their inventory. He demonstrated how Manhattan could combine its warehouse and transportation management applications with online maps and live weather and traffic feeds. Logistics managers could use such technology, he suggested, to change inventory and transportation plans in advance of a crippling snow storm.

Labor management is another area ripe for innovation, according to Manhattan's Peter Schnorbach. The labor paradigm is about to shift dramatically, he said, as Baby Boomers retire and “Millennials” join the workforce. To attract and keep good workers, employers will have to offer training, reward programs and flexible schedules, he said, and they'll need labor management software to keep track of it all.

“There's going to be a lot of innovation in labor management,” Schnorbach says, “because it will be about more than just saving costs.”

Another target for innovation, said chief technology officer Pervinder Johar, is cross-application optimization—optimizing processes across an entire business, not just in functional silos. To make this easier, he said, Manhattan is investing much of its R&D budget into better integrating its solutions. For example, when a company's transportation management system is well integrated with its warehouse management system, he said, it's easier to see how a new policy that increases transportation costs might decrease warehousing costs enough to lower the overall cost of business.