Munich, December 1, 2021: valantic, the fastest-growing IT consulting and software company in Europe, presents release 5.1 of the sales & operations planning software waySuite. In addition to a number of functional enhancements, the most significant change is that the APS software is now fully cloud-ready and available as a service on demand – including real-time simulation of supply chain management scenarios. The wayCloud Platform complements the SaaS offering, providing a simple way to integrate suppliers and customers into planning processes. The previous wayPRO network planning center has been expanded as the wayPRO Project Manager and opens up new possibilities for comprehensive scheduling and capacity planning.
A new feature of waySuite’s release 5.1 is the usage record, an evaluation of material usage across all levels. It provides a quick overview of the material usage for a BOM item on through to the end products, which in turn reveals the effects of material shortages in components and intermediates on later processes so they can be dealt with more easily. This way, supplier cancellations can be considered better in the planning. In the scenario technique that is so crucial for solving material flow and capacity conflicts, wayRTS 5.1 introduces new views in lists and dashboards so that lists from different scenarios can be displayed together.
Project management from an SCM perspective
“Our customers’ project business has also become much more complex due to their suppliers’ bottlenecks. This makes it all the more important to quickly obtain information about the material availability for a complete project, for example by conducting a material availability check across the entire project, including all production stages and orders,” says Christian Madeschaffe, Vice President and Product Manager at valantic in the Supply Chain Excellence Competence Center. “We have extended the wayPRO module to include a variety of functions that now make it a multi-project planning tool and give supply chain managers a more detailed overview than project management software can provide.”
If previously only individual network plans could be made, now all network plans for a project can be taken into account at the same time. Cross-network layout relationships can be detected, and they can now be edited easily with drag-and-drop. In addition, it is possible to duplicate and exchange network plans between projects, automatically conduct material availability checks, and consider past events. All projects are stored centrally in the wayPRO project planning module, and they can be processed in real time. The project data is always up-to-date and available to each planning manager. wayPRO identifies dependencies and scheduling and capacity conflicts, for example, when different projects use the same resources. wayPRO can be synchronized with SAP-PS or other systems via a certified SAP standard interface.
waySuite as a Service
All waySuite modules can now be set up as private cloud solutions. But it is also possible to use it completely as an Azure cloud service. This means that the software can be used from anywhere in the world without the need for manual setup on users’ computers. The application automatically scales to the number of active users – and thus also the infrastructure costs, which are calculated exactly according to usage. Thanks to the use of a cloud platform operated directly by Microsoft in the EU, fully encrypted communication between the resources, flexible restriction of access, and consideration of corporate policies such as multi-factor authentication, the highest level of security and data protection can be guaranteed. The wayCloud platform complements the SaaS offering. Any way list can be published easily in this cloud – for example as a means of supplier control.
A treat for the eyes
An evident change in the new version of waySuite is the modernization of the user interface to reflect the current Windows and Microsoft Office look and feel. The software can now also be displayed in dark mode and – most importantly – an individual simplified ribbon can be set up. This configuration option is also available for child lists and views, allowing you to make more room on the screen and hide rarely used switches and menus.
