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Press Release Smart Software Awarded National Science Foundation Innovation Research Grant
New research to improve service and spare parts planning for the multi-billion dollar aerospace, automotive, high tech, and utilities markets
Belmont, Mass., November 28, 2012 - Smart
Software, Inc., provider of industry-leading demand forecasting, planning, and
inventory optimization solutions, today announced that it has been awarded a
Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the National
Science Foundation (NSF). Smart Software will investigate new statistical
methods to forecast intermittent demand, with the ultimate objective of helping
enterprises worldwide reduce inventories by tens of billions of dollars.
The new research will build upon Smart Software's patented solution for
forecasting slow-moving or intermittent demand, developed with the support of a
previous NSF grant. The current method, commercialized as part of the
company's flagship product, SmartForecasts®, evaluates historical
demand for each item and establishes the optimum level of inventory that will be
required to achieve service level objectives. The new research seeks to
extend demand forecasting beyond individual products and parts, identifying and
interpreting interactions across clusters of items whose demands fluctuate
together. The new forecasting capabilities will benefit customers in several
significant ways:
- A more dynamic statistical model of parts will enable forecasts to better
reflect a variety of external factors that include part usage by itself or in
combination with other products, as well as the impact of macroeconomic and
environmental factors.
- Research results will provide planners with a dynamic model of item usage,
enabling planners to develop functional maps of the interrelationships of
large numbers of parts. Knowing which parts have demands that co-vary can be
useful in at least two ways. First, item managers can be assigned to work with
coherent clusters rather than arbitrary collections of miscellaneous parts,
and second, parts can be co-located in warehouses for more efficient storage
and retrieval.
- Another benefit from this new approach will be improved forecasts of
"aggregates" where intermittent demand is present, such as all items in a
product line, or all items at a particular warehouse. Better forecasts of
aggregate demand across groups of parts will also be useful for raw materials
purchasing, as well as for financial planning when parts are a source of
revenue.
According to Nelson Hartunian, president of Smart Software, "Any organization
that builds or supports capital equipment experiences intermittent demand for
some portion of its inventory. This grant is a terrific opportunity to impact
one of the biggest forecasting challenges facing these organizations -
accurately forecasting parts and optimizing inventories. Ultimately, the goal is
to have the right part at the right place at the right time. The research we are
undertaking will make this goal more achievable."
The Small Business Innovation Research grant program from the National
Science Foundation is extremely competitive. More than a thousand companies
compete in a two-stage screening: one for intellectual merit, and the other for
commercial potential. This Phase 1 grant is the third Smart Software has
received.
About Smart Software, Inc.
Founded in 1984, Smart Software, Inc.
is a leader in providing businesses with enterprise-wide demand forecasting,
planning and inventory optimization solutions. Smart Software's flagship
product, SmartForecasts, has thousands of users worldwide, including customers
at mid-market enterprises and Fortune 500 companies, such as Abbott
Laboratories, Otis Elevator, Mitsubishi, Siemens, Disney, Nestle, GE and The
Coca-Cola Company. SmartForecasts gives demand planners the tools to
handle sales seasonality, promotions, new and aging products, multi-dimensional
hierarchies, and intermittently demanded service parts and capital goods
items. It also provides inventory managers with accurate estimates of the
optimal inventory and safety stock required to meet future orders and achieve
desired service levels. Smart Software is headquartered in Belmont,
Massachusetts and can be found on the World Wide Web at www.smartcorp.com.
SmartForecasts is a registered trademark of Smart Software, Inc. All
other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
For more information, please contact Smart Software, Inc., Four Hill
Road, Belmont, MA 02478.
Phone: 1-800-SMART-99
(800-762-7899); FAX: 1-617-489-2748; E-mail: info@smartcorp.com Back to Press Releases
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