Logility Announces 2012 Leadership Award Winners

Craft Brew Alliance, CooperVision, PartyLite, Sonoco Products, and Stanley Black & Decker Recognized for Supply Chain Excellence at Connections 2012

ATLANTA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Logility Inc., a leading supplier of collaborative solutions to optimize the supply chain, today announced the recipients of the 2012 Logility Leadership Award. This year Craft Brew Alliance, CooperVision, PartyLite, Sonoco Products, and Stanley Black & Decker were recognized at Logility’s Connections 2012 conference for driving excellence in their operations through the use of supply chain software. For photos of the award winners, please visit: www.logility.com/sails.

“We are honored to recognize Logility customers for the impressive supply chain successes they have achieved through the use of Logility Voyager Solutions”

Logility’s annual award program recognizes a select group of companies who significantly improved their business processes, deployed an innovative solution to address their supply chain challenges, or demonstrated an on-going commitment and leadership role in the expansion of supply chain improvements. Each of this year’s award recipients demonstrated success in building collaboration, efficiency and visibility across their supply chain networks. These efforts resulted in tangible business benefits including inventory reduction, streamlined sales and operations planning (S&OP) process, increased forecast accuracy, improved manufacturing planning, reduced transportation costs, and higher customer service levels through the innovative use of supply chain management software.

Examples of the winners’ achievements in operational performance include:

• Craft Brew Alliance, one of America’s first craft breweries, was hampered by a lack of visibility into forecasts, capacity, inventory, and transportation which increased costs and created a barrier to the company’s growth goals. The supply chain team set out to build an integrated platform for Craft Brew Alliance (CBA) to decrease costs, improve efficiency and scale to support significant growth. Craft Brew Alliance transitioned from a DC-driven distribution network of 10 regional centers to a direct ship model to more than 500 wholesalers. Following the rollout of Logility Voyager Solutions, CBA was able to improve service levels to a consistent 98 percent, significantly increase inventory turns and transition to a customer distribution network with 50 times the complexity.
• CooperVision, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of contact lenses, has seen dramatic growth over the past several years through both organic initiatives and acquisitions. As the company grew, its product portfolio became more complex with over one million SKUs. The supply chain organization set out to create a more efficient global supply chain to drive a trusted demand plan, improve customer service, and synchronize inventory with demand. With Logility Voyager Solutions, a detailed forecast analysis at the item level as well as aggregate views now provides the supply chain team with both a reliable process and a significantly more accurate forecast at the item level. CooperVision can determine manufacturing frequency, impact on inventory turns and reduce inventory obsolescence. This visibility has helped CooperVision make better decisions about production assignments and inventory policies.
• PartyLite, a worldwide manufacturer and distributor of scented and unscented candles, bath products and decorative accessories for the home, relied on non-integrated, manual tools to generate its worldwide demand plan for its highly promotional business. This created higher than ideal inventory, lower than desired service levels, and a higher percentage of expedited and obsolete inventory. PartyLite set out to generate a worldwide demand plan that could be reconciled against a country, and market forecast and financial plan, and support dramatically lower supply chain working capital and inventory expense. The company also set a goal to achieve its return on investment (ROI) in less than one year. Following its deployment of Logility Voyager Solutions, PartyLite achieved a 30 percent reduction in air freight costs, reduced active finished goods inventory by 34 percent and excess and obsolete inventory 47 percent, and increased inventory turns on active inventory 94 percent. In addition, PartyLite realized its ROI several months ahead of target.
• Sonoco Products, a global provider of packaging products and services, needed to improve service levels, reduce inventory, increase forecast accuracy, and support future growth. The company instituted a formal sales and operations planning (S&OP) process. Initially, preparing the data for the S&OP process required significant manual effort and supported a very limited planning horizon for future visibility of demand and supply. Following the deployment of Logility Voyager Solutions, Sonoco Products reduced its forecasting process effort 80-90 percent at the high level giving key deployment resources the ability to drill down into more detailed forecasts and the overall S&OP process. Sonoco Products has blended the use of forecast based supply chain practices with demand pull processes to create more agile supply chains allowing for collaborative demand management, a sales & operations planning process, and a LEAN transformation and cash/cost optimization of the supply chain. With increased visibility and more comprehensive statistical analysis, Sonoco Products has reduced total forecast error by an impressive 50 percent, and has tangibly improved its inventory position.
• Stanley Black & Decker, a global manufacturer and marketer of quality power tools, hand tools, and accessories, embarked on a global initiative to implement multi-echelon inventory optimization to help improve fill rates and lower working capital. As the inventory optimization process matured, Stanley Black & Decker was able to move beyond balancing inventory investment to provide recommendations for what will help stakeholders meet Stanley Black & Decker’s needs and, in parallel, help Stanley Black & Decker determine where to focus its LEAN resources internally and in the extended supply base. Logility Voyager Inventory Optimization is being used to help assess strategic projects like manufacturing and distribution footprint changes, testing the impact of best practices on inventory planning, support of minimum order quantity and lead time reduction efforts, and evaluate customer-driven changes to distribution or terms. Stanley Black & Decker has seen tangible benefits in each phase of its inventory optimization evolution. For example, the company was able to reduce targeted finished goods days of stock from one of its largest manufacturing plants by 25 percent and reduce the amount of raw materials and components in the same plant by 17 percent with no adverse impact to customer service levels.

“We are honored to recognize Logility customers for the impressive supply chain successes they have achieved through the use of Logility Voyager Solutions,” said Mike Edenfield, president and CEO of Logility. “We congratulate each leadership award recipient and celebrate their continued success. We look forward to working with them to support their ongoing initiatives by continuing to offer innovative supply chain software solutions that enable their long-term success and tangible ROI.”

Recognized industry-wide for its rapid implementation, quick ROI and ease-of-use, Logility Voyager Solutions is a comprehensive supply chain management solution suite which features performance monitoring capabilities to increase supply chain visibility and operational efficiency in key areas including demand, inventory and replenishment planning, sales and operations planning (S&OP), manufacturing planning and scheduling, supply and inventory optimization, transportation planning and management, and warehouse management.

About Logility

With more than 1,250 customers worldwide, Logility is a leading provider of collaborative, best-of-breed supply chain solutions that help small, medium, large and Fortune 1000 companies realize substantial bottom-line results in record time. Logility Voyager Solutions is a complete supply chain management solution that features a performance monitoring architecture and provides supply chain visibility; demand, inventory and replenishment planning; Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP); supply and inventory optimization; manufacturing planning and scheduling; transportation planning and management; and warehouse management. Logility customers include Fender Musical Instruments, Hewlett-Packard, Parker Hannifin, Sigma-Aldrich, Verizon Wireless, and VF Corporation. Logility is a wholly owned subsidiary of American Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMSWA). For more information about Logility, call 1-800-762-5207 USA or visit www.logility.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements that are subject to substantial risks and uncertainties. There are a number of factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated by statements made herein. These factors include, but are not limited to, continuing U.S. and global economic uncertainty, the timing and degree of business recovery, unpredictability and the irregular pattern of future revenues, dependence on particular market segments or customers, competitive pressures, delays, product liability and warranty claims and other risks associated with new product development, undetected software errors, market acceptance of Logility’s products, technological complexity, the challenges and risks associated with integration of acquired product lines, companies and services, as well as a number of other risk factors that could affect the Company’s future performance. For further information about risks the Company and American Software could experience as well as other information, please refer to American Software, Inc’s. current Form 10-K and other reports and documents subsequently filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. For more information, contact: Vincent C. Klinges, Chief Financial Officer, American Software, Inc., [phone] or fax: [phone].

Logility is a registered trademark and Logility Voyager Solutions is a trademark of Logility, Inc. Other products mentioned in this document are registered, trademarked or service marked by their respective owners.