Optiant Demonstrates Continued Leadership in Growing Inventory Optimization Market

Boston, Mass., March 29, 2006 - Optiant, the leading provider of inventory planning and optimization solutions, continues to reinforce its leadership position in the rapidly advancing inventory optimization market. At last week's Supply Chain World-North America Conference, Optiant and customer Black & Decker co-presented a real-world case study entitled, "Developing Creative Supply Chain Strategies In Highly Competitive Markets." The case study focused on three main themes: Inventory Rightsizing; Sourcing and Acquisitions; and Value Chain Strategic Design. Using Optiant's multi-echelon inventory optimization and strategic analysis solution, Black & Decker has designed a more responsive and resilient supply chain that accounts for uncertainty and interdependencies while balancing resources, total costs and service levels.

A recent acquisition fueled Black & Decker's desire to re-evaluate several sourcing strategies to account for variability across its global supply chain. Optiant's powerful sourcing analysis compared the associated costs and interdependencies between three potential sourcing options and revealed the best, most cost-efficient location for Black & Decker's sourcing dilemma.

Additionally, Black & Decker took a holistic, end-to-end approach for creating an advanced value chain strategic design optimization to determine the right supply chain design for one of its highest growth product line. Not only was Black & Decker able to identify enormous opportunities for cost, service and flexibility, but it was able to use data driven numbers to unlock hidden value in non intuitive solutions.

"We needed supply chain flexibility," said Dan Harmeyer, global value chain leader for Black & Decker. "With Optiant's solutions, we gained an agile supply chain and have been able to optimize our safety stock levels, balance identified opportunities to reduce our inventory investment and increase service level yield and consistency. We truly are achieving more with less."

"We're excited about being a key component to our customers' success. Not only was Black & Decker able to achieve immediate value of satisfying their needs at the lowest total supply chain cost, but they can now explore endless opportunities" said Matthew Menner, Optiant's senior vice president and co-presenter at Supply Chain World. "Continuing our leadership position in the supply chain design and inventory optimization market, Optiant is dedicated to helping Global 2000 companies realize significant cost-savings that positively impact the bottom-line."

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, Gillette (a Procter & Gamble division), Henkel, HP, Imation, Intel, and Sonoco.

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. The 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.

CONTACT: Suzy Watson
+1 312 873 3423
This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it