Oracle Mfg Analytic Module 7.9.6.4 - Pegging Data pull query issue

7.9.6.4 version is the first release of Manufacturing Analytic module as part of Oracle's Business Intelligence Applications offering. We ran into an issue in a recent project where the out of the box query which is supposed to pull "ASCP Pegging" data from ASCP instance wasnt fetching any records.

Further analysis resulted in a possible bug with the SQL extract query for this task. Current query was trying to join Full Pegging table(MFP: MSC_FULL_PEGGING) and Plan Name table(MP: MSC_PLANS) using Organization_Id. In a typical ASCP environment plan definition is owned by a certain organization and you wunt have an ASCP plan for each inventory organization. After removing this not-needed join, the query started fetching data as expected.

Demand Analytics within Oracle, What are my options ??

The need to have access to demand data to capture insights, analyse and respond quickly and appropriately has been around for long in CPG market. The economic turmoil across the globe has added to complexity of projecting demand for CPG goods. Consumers today are spending less and wanting more and better return on their spend dollars. Social media has gone to a new high of usage and is playing a bigger role in consumer's decision making for selecting products. Amount of data present in various forms in various systems is absolutely humongous in size and scale.

Imagine a world where any data which can convey a story about market demand is available for analysis. Though getting every data out there into a system may not be do-able for every business, but atleast having access to key data streams which are classified as indicator for demand can itself be a big step forward. Some of the well known demand indicative elements are POS, Store inventory, Syndicated data, Consumer sentiment captured from big data, etc.

A business intelligence(BI) initiative to capture all such data to gain valuable insight of market/consumers has become critical for CPG companies. Like any BI initiative, few things to keep in mind while embarking a BI project journey are:

• Never forget that business goal is to gain insights by implementing BI 
• Thus ensure that these "insights" are identified upfront

We are seeing quite few companies are using Demantra as backbone for forecasting and S&OP process. These companies wish to use data lying in Demantra and S&OP in Oracle BI application for achieving a common reporting center, calling it often Demand Analytics. Building a Demand Analytics layer in your enterprise can help planners, managers and Chief's of company in various ways. Demand Analytics can quickly provide answer to questions like:

• Which are my most profitable brands?
• Which customers are giving me most business?
• How is my newly launched product doing in stores?
• Where am I running into Out of Stocks and for which products?
• etc..

Oracle BI apps are already being offered in various areas of business like Mfg Analytics, EAM Analytics, SCOM Analytics etc. For Advanced planning business users community(demand planners, supply planners, demand manager, supply managers, operations manager, S&OP planners and managers, COO, CIO, CFOs etc), Oracle has provided Advanced Planning Command Center and Oracle Demand Signal Repository as two key solutions for planning analytics space.

Oracle DSR: Oracle DSR is more focused towards capturing various demand signals/data from external and internal sources, cleansing and harmonizing it all to report in a BI presentation layer for easy reporting for business. Demand signal repository thus acts as a central warehouse for all demand related information providing business value gained from the insight of demand data in DSR. Also with data elements from DSR integrated to downstream applications like Demantra Demand Management, Demantra Consumer Driven Planning(future release), Demantra PTP, Agile PLM etc, there is richer value which downstream applications and users can realize.

(Read more @ http://www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/ebusiness/planning/053299.html)

Oracle APCC: Advanced Planning Command Center module provides a robust BI analytic layer over Oracle's Value Chain Planning modules, specially ASCP and Demantra. Latest version of APCC allows supply planners to almost do all their day to day ASCP work using simple and better APCC user interface. Additionally APCC allows publishing Demantra DM data as demand plan with option to publish 15 custom forecast&history measures and custom hierarchy into APCC. APCC also support S&OP and IBP processes using demand, supply and financial information from Demantra, SNO and ASCP modules. This module though is more manufacturer's internal operations and planning process centered.

(Read more @ http://www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/ebusiness/planning/053296.html)

A third option which we see clients considering is building a custom VCP Analytic solution using Oracle BI as platform with feeds coming from ASCP, Demantra and other planning applications. This option though is found more common among clients who find Gaps in std APCC offering due of variety of custom sources they may have. If there is lot of ETL work required for feeding APCC with required data from 3rd party sources then considering this 3rd option may become a better choice. Also for clients who already have a strong BI solution footprint are seen to prefer building additional metrics and subject areas on existing analytic solution.

(Read more about OBIEE offering @ http://www.oracle.com/us/solutions/ent-performance-bi/enterprise-edition-066546.html)

VCP 12.2 release and EBS11i source?

Key points to remember:

• VCP 12.2.X release will not be supported with EBS11i source, for customers who wish to upgrade to VCP12.2.X release in future will need to upgrade their EBS platform to either 12.1 or 12.2. 
• Customers wishing to stay put on EBS 11i will have to stay on VCP12.1.X version and on Demantra 7.3.1.X version.
• Latest released supported version for EBS11i source is VCP 12.1.3.8 and Demantra 7.3.1.4

Note: Demantra 7.3.1.5 is in making and should be released soon. Also Demantra 12.2.1 release is expected to be released sometime this year. New Demantra CDP module announcement though makes release of Demantra 12.2 during this FY improbable. 

Consumer Driven Planning Module announced @ VCP Summit

Oracle announced two new Exa system offerings which will be released towards end of FY 2013. The intend is to provide customers with Exa enterprise systems with packaged solution with faster planning capabilities.

• Consumer Driven Planning(CDP) on Exa
• Performance Driven Planning(PDP) on Exa

Consumer Driven Planning module will use Demantra system capabilities on top of Exa systems to empower customers with a system which will be significantly faster(10hours to 10 mins kindda) and will be capable to handle huge volume of consumer level POS data. Oracle indicated that CDP will be a new module(the name may change though) under Demantra Suite offering and should be released along with VCP 12.1.3.9. Later R12.2 release will embed this new module along with PDP module offering. 

Initial release of Demantra's CDP module will mainly support:

 - POS based forecasting at multiple levels within a single Demantra instance. 

 - Store level data storage and forecasting

 - Bottoms up forecasting using Sell Thru data

 - Sell-in forecast derivation based on Sell Thru forecast

 - Store life cycle management (new store launch, store closures etc) 

 - Multi Channel Sell-in calculation based of consumption data

 - Replenishment planning 

 - Configurable Safety Stock calculations(simple rule based to statistical based)

Later releases are planned to support packaged PTP and DSR Exa systems. 

Oracle understands that some Demantra customers like Electronic Arts have already implemented similar processes using Custom configurations and integration. This new module is supposed to provide such functionality out of the gate in a packaged Exa Enterprise system for customers ease. We will wait to see more information and details about the new modules from Oracle soon. 

Oracle's first "Value Chain Summit" is here..

Join fellow users, partners, and luminaries for the Oracle Value Chain Summit in San Francisco to learn how Oracle is helping companies transform supply chains into value chains to gain competitive edge. This thought leadership..

Click on link below to get more details of the event..

http://www.oracle.com/webapps/events/ns/EventsDetail.jsp?p_eventId=157624&src=7531558&src=7531558&Act=50

Trends for 2013: 'Big Data' Gets Bigger - eMarketer

"Big Data" brings great insights.. turning these insights into actionable items can lead to significant benefits for retail and CPG firms.

Emarketer.com captures the current and future probable state of Big Data in their recent article. Click on the link below to read the complete article.

Trends for 2013: 'Big Data' Gets Bigger - eMarketer

Demantra 7.3.1.3 & BranchId Multiplier parameter

Version 7.3.1.3 takes away branch Id multiplier parameter from Demantra's engine setup, new engine execution process determines number of branch Ids by itself. Though 7.3.1.3 version is seen with setting.xml file still containing the parameter due of ignorance probably, 7.3.1.4 version is fixed and doesnt have this parameter listed.

New process looks at predictable number of combinations and available number of engines in distributed engine environment to determine division of branches. This change eliminates any wrong manual settings of this parameter which used to degrade engine run performance.

Btw, Demantra's R12.2 release is still out in horizon and hopefully will be available for implementations in 2013 soon.

Demantra DB Connection Issue Resolution

This morning, ran into an issue with my local Demantra install. When connecting to Business modeler I got a DB error " ORA-12154: TNS:could not resolve the connect identifier specified." 

Additionally found that TOAD wont connect to my local DB 11g install too, giving the similar error. Checked that my DB services were running fine and TNSPING was responding well too. 

Decided to bounce my DB using cmd prompt and found below error while doing it:

ORA-00065: initialization of FIXED_DATE failed 


Recalled that last I used my DB I changed my DB settings to make it fixed date environment for some work and shutdown my DB with FIXED_DATE settings. 

To resolve the issue, I took the option of creating a new PFILE using SPFILE and then edited the PFILE to take out the FIXED_DATE settings from it. Later I was able to make this change permanent by creating SPFILE using the PFILE. 

CREATE PFILE FROM SPFILE;

Once created look for file named “initXXX.ora” where XXX stands for DB service name. e,g. VCPDB in DB Home install directory. Take out the FIXED DATE setting from init file and try starting server using :

SQL> startup pfile='uo1\dbhome_1\database\INITXXX.ORA' ;ORACLE instance started.

For making this change permanent:

CREATE SPFILE from PFILE ='u01\dbhome_1\database\INITXXX.ORA' ;

RESTART again to use the SPFILE for starting the DB. 

And... I am back in action with my local DB and Demantra install. :)