Boston, MA – October 28, 2008 – Optiant, the premier provider of inventory planning and inventory optimization solutions, announces it was awarded the distinguished Wagner Prize for Excellence in Operations Research Practice at the INFORMS 8th Annual Conference. Dr. Sean Willems, co-founder and chief scientist at Optiant, in conjunction with John J. Neale, School of Management, Boston University, submitted the award-winning paper, “Managing Inventory in Supply Chains with Non-stationary Demand,” that offered breakthrough advancements in solving the challenges of managing inventory in the real-world environment of changing demand, such as seasonality. The authors described how non-stationary demand propagates in a supply chain, discussed how to apply a multi-echelon inventory optimization algorithm, then gave real-world examples of the benefits of this inventory analyses.

“As companies introduce products at a higher frequency and with shorter lifecycles, and these products are subject to seasonality and incentives, management of inventory levels to fulfill customers’ needs becomes extremely difficult,” said Fred Lizza, CEO of Optiant, Inc. “Meeting seasonal demand, while avoiding out-of-stock or over-stock situations, means the difference between product profitability and loss.”

“Our paper addressed the problem of determining inventory locations and levels in a supply chain facing stochastic, non-stationary demand with the goal to decide which locations should hold safety stock and exactly how much they should hold in each period of time,” said Sean Williems. “This is integrated into Optiant’s PowerChain suite of applications and used by numerous Fortune 500 companies. Microsoft, who uses it for safety stock planning in its S&OP process, has seen an 18-20% increase in inventory turns, a 6-7% increase in fill rates, and a decline of inventory levels to less than $1B from a high of over $2.5B.”

A committee of distinguished industry practitioners selected semifinalists on the basis of a submitted abstract and the verification of success in practice. Final papers were submitted, then the finalists delivered a public presentation at the INFORMS meeting. Selection of the winners was based on quality and coherence of analysis and originality of mathematical solutions, quality and clarity of writing, utility or success of the work in one or more real world practice applications, and satisfactory oral presentation. An award ceremony and announcement of winners followed the public presentations.

The Wagner Prize for Excellence in Operations Research Practice was named for Dr. Daniel H. Wagner, who strove for strong mathematics applied to practical problems, supported by clear and intelligible writing. This prize recognizes those principles by emphasizing good writing, strong analytical content, and verifiable practice successes. Dr. Wagner earned his Ph.D. in mathematics from Brown University. After working in operations research, he started Daniel H. Wagner, Associates, Inc., which applied itself to leading edge work in the mathematics of naval tactics, especially anti-submarine warfare, detection theory, and search planning.

Optiant’s solutions optimally balance resources, total costs, and customer service across the supply chain to deliver greater profitability, increased customer satisfaction, more efficient use of capital, and a resilient supply chain that fully handles uncertainty in supply and demand. Optiant has transformed supply chains for the world’s leading manufacturers including Black & Decker, Celanese, Hershey, Hewlett-Packard, IKEA, Kraft Foods, Microsoft, Nestle, and Procter & Gamble.

Delivering millions of dollars in returns, Optiant’s industry-focused solution, certified for integration by SAP, generates quantifiable business results within 90 days of implementation. Optiant’s solutions are based on award-winning research from MIT and decades of experience dedicated to the identification and realization of supply chain efficiencies. For more information, please visit www.optiant.com.

SAP and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries all over the world.

All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies.