July 8, 2002 - A lot of companies talk about the importance of real-time data. But up-to-the-minute information is useless unless you can act on it immediately. Despite what most software vendors say, very few products on the market allow companies to react instantly to sudden spikes in demand or a delayed shipment from a key supplier. But that’s about to change.

Sapphire demo

BiosGroup, a Santa Fe-based consulting and software development company, has been working for the past year with SAP of Germany to develop an inventory early warning agent. The system, which is already being piloted by SAP customers, studies patterns and learns to anticipate when a store might run out of a certain item. It then provides a list of possible options to remedy the situation.

SAP demonstrated the system at SAP’s Sapphire user conference in Orlando in early (see SAP Demos Supply Chain of Tomorrow). The demo featured half a dozen 200-ml bottles of Jack Daniel’s sitting on a small smart shelf. When the shelf recorded more purchases than the consumption plan had forecast, the smart agent signaled SAP’s Advanced Planner & Optimizer, which could arrange for more Jack Daniel’s to be sent from a distribution center, or even a nearby store.

"The Sapphire demonstration was a little simplistic," says Brian Potter, who spearheaded BiosGroup’s development work for SAP. "The real capability of the agents is based on getting information over time. They begin to learn based on historical information."