Oracle(R) Helps Companies Maximize Supply Chain Efficiency with New Advanced Capabilities

New Features and Functionality Help Businesses Control Costs and Improve Customer Service

REDWOOD SHORES, Calif., Oct. 24, 2002 -- Oracle Corp. (Nasdaq: ORCL), the world's largest enterprise software management company, today announced significant enhancements to Oracle(R) Supply Chain Management, an integral part of the Oracle E-Business Suite, designed to help businesses increase their supply chain efficiency by improving execution, collaboration and intelligence. Scheduled for availability next month, the new Oracle Supply Chain Management capabilities span all critical business areas, including order management, planning, procurement, manufacturing, fulfillment, maintenance and service.

Current economic conditions have dramatically slowed corporate spending, causing businesses to shift their focus from increasing revenue to cost containment. As a consequence, companies are increasingly looking to streamline their supply chains as a means of eliminating operational costs and improving day-to-day business processes, while enhancing customer service.

"The latest enhancements to Oracle Supply Chain Management directly result from listening to and understanding what customers are telling us about their supply chain pain points," said Don Klaiss, senior vice president, Applications Development. "By infusing supply chains with advanced execution, collaboration and intelligence capabilities, Oracle is helping companies turn their supply chains into competitive weapons for reducing operating expenses while improving service levels across all business functions."

Supply Chain Execution

With Oracle Supply Chain Management, companies can improve supply chain execution by streamlining logistics and maintenance, while improving the delivery of customer service. New supply chain execution products and capabilities include:

-- Warehouse Management Solution (WMS) -- A comprehensive WMS solution built on a configurable, rules-driven architecture that can easily adapt to companies' specific business processes, Oracle WMS supports directed picking and put away, automated task management, license plates, task interleaving, cartonization, and mobile/RF devices for better accuracy and efficiency.

-- Transportation -- Oracle Transportation enables companies to efficiently prepare and monitor shipments using its rules-based carrier selection, track and trace capabilities, and integrated freight rating.

-- Service Management -- Oracle field service management solution now includes two new field engineer optimization products: Oracle Advanced Scheduler and Oracle Mobile & Wireless Field Service. Advanced Scheduler automatically optimizes field service engineer assignments based on skills, geographic location and parts availability to reduce operational costs and improve productivity of dispatched teams. Mobile and Wireless Field Service allows service engineers to rapidly send and receive information, handle exceptions and work more productively through persistently connected wireless support. In addition, Oracle's service management solution includes service parts logistics capabilities. These capabilities enable the timely movement of parts between field engineers and the warehouse, helping reduce service time and operational cost. Supply Chain Collaboration

Companies can vastly improve their supply chain collaboration capabilities using Oracle Supply Chain Management by extending and improving trading partner interactions through portals and messaging. New products and capabilities include:

-- Collaborative Planning -- Oracle Collaborative Planning overcomes traditional planning shortcomings and creates faster, more accurate plans by enabling companies to share inventory levels, identify supply/demand mismatches, and see supply constraints through a common portal integrated with Oracle Advanced Planning.

-- Collaborative Sourcing -- Now fully integrated with the Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle Sourcing solves the business challenge of linking sourcing, procurement and intelligence to significantly reduce costs. Oracle Sourcing provides all of the necessary negotiating tools, such as Internet auctions, RFx support and supplier score carding.

-- Collaborative Manufacturing -- Oracle's manufacturing solution has been enhanced to include robust collaboration between suppliers and contract manufacturers for the production of highly configured products. Specifically, manufacturing partners can exchange a variety of operational details such as schedules, material availability, capacity, quality results, shipments, and invoices from a common portal.

Supply Chain Intelligence

Built on a single, common data model that stores all data in one central location, Oracle Supply Chain Intelligence is the industry's most robust performance management application for driving continuous process improvement. Oracle's intelligence solution is a collection of pre-built reports and analytics delivered through personalized portlets. With an intuitive portal front-end, Oracle's intelligence solution enables companies to tailor delivery of information by role to ensure the right information is presented at the right level to the right person.

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SOURCE Oracle Corporation

Web Site: http://www.oracle.com/tellmemore/?1490074