PLEASANTON, Calif., Sept. 14, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Dr. Michael Keppler, whose company ICON-SCM was a pioneer in supply chain planning, collaboration and response management, has joined Steelwedge in a solution and innovation advisory role, the company announced today. Steelwedge is recognized as the first company to deliver a cloud-based Sales and Operations Planning solution in 2000, and today leads that market as well as delivers a common planning platform for decision makers in demand, supply, supply chain, sales, finance and product roles.
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Keppler is a globally recognized supply chain, collaborative planning, and response management thought-leader. In addition to his role at Steelwedge, Keppler also serves in a supply chain advisory position for the United Nations, is a program committee member for a major German Supply Chain Congress and is an expert/reviewer for European Union research projects in the domain of future internet-enabled supply chain and logistics.
Keppler and a partner founded ICON-SCM in 1992, and in November 2010 signed an agreement giving SAP AG (NYSE:SAP) rights to resell ICON-SCM as its supply chain response management solution. Branded by SAP as SAP® Supply Chain Response Management by ICON-SCM, the solution enabled companies to react to demand and supply changes by rapidly re-prioritizing and re-planning demand and supply decisions in order to improve customer service, increase revenues and reduce inventories. Demand commitments and supply planning were synchronized according to business rules and priorities across extended supply networks, while what-if scenarios enabled exploring the business impact of different decisions before executing the best plan back into SAP’s ERP platform.
In July 2013, Keppler sold ICON-SCM to E2open, a provider of cloud-based, on-demand supply chain execution and visibility systems, as part of that company’s plan to build out its planning and response management capabilities.
“Steelwedge CEO Pervinder Johar was my customer when he was running HP’s global supply chain systems and I was running ICON-SCM,” Keppler commented. “From the time we met, we’ve shared the same vision. We both want to empower supply chains with truly integrated supply and demand on a single platform that is both proactively predictive and efficiently responsive, and that is purpose-built for collaborating internally and externally. Even the largest solution providers don’t deliver this, but it’s what people want. Now we are working together to deliver this advantage,” he added.
“Michael Keppler is a rare leader who combines vision with practical sensibility and a practitioner’s point-of-view,” Johar said. “As co-innovators when Michael was with ICON-SCM and I was with HP, we leveraged new technology to dramatically reduce costs across HP’s supply chain, as well as to improve supplier and customer relationships and expand revenue. I couldn’t be more pleased to have Michael join Steelwedge to innovate with us on making supply chains both more insightful and more efficiently responsive,” Johar concluded.
About Steelwedge
Steelwedge delivers cloud-based planning solutions and services that equip organizations to be ready to act in time with opportunity, especially in highly competitive markets where continuous forecasting is essential and efficient response to changing conditions is advantageous. The company’s action-ready planning platform combines both predictive and responsive technology to help top global brands collaborate across functions, channels, customers and suppliers to profitably align demand, supply, strategy, operations and financial decisions. Visit www.steelwedge.com.