JDA Expands in Japan with Hardware Manufacturer Tie-In

5th December 2017

Logistics BusinessJDA Expands in Japan with Hardware Manufacturer Tie-In

JDA Software Group, Inc. and SATO today announced a new alliance representing JDA’s first Japanese hardware partnership as the company expands its presence in Japan. The technology partnership will combine JDA® Warehouse Management and JDA® Warehouse Labor Management with SATO’s Visual Warehouse Solution to help customers take advantage of digitalization technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and big data. The sales alliance will streamline the logistics process for customers leveraging JDA and SATO’s solutions together. JDA and SATO aim to deploy the solution in five leading food and beverage companies by March 2019.

Japanese companies are facing labour shortages and increasing supply chain complexity due to rising consumer demands which require diverse product lineups to meet their needs. Meanwhile, Japan ranks poorly among the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nations (18 of 35) in terms of overall workforce productivity, even as nominal labour productivity hit a new high this year*1. This highlights the room for improvement Japanese companies can realise by fully unleashing the power of data in operations. Only six percent of large Japanese corporations utilise big data and 48 percent have yet to identify how to extract value from it.*2 Among Japanese manufacturers, only 45 percent utilise big data to drive operational efficiencies.*3

In today’s ever-complex unified commerce environment, companies need to do more than track labor productivity and warehouse processes, but to turn the warehouse into a performance-focused competitive advantage. JDA Warehouse Labor Management provides a real-time view into warehouse activities, improving planning and scheduling by ensuring the right number of workers with the right skills are available when and where they are needed to fulfil order demand. And companies can get real-time visibility into labor concerns before they become issues and shift workers where they are needed. Combined with JDA Warehouse Management, companies can address real-world disruptions to drive improved performance and predictable results by sensing these shifts in real-time to respond quickly and profitably.

The SATO Visual Warehouse solution is a virtual warehouse director that fully streamlines picking route navigation for enhanced logistics and labour utilisation. An accompanying picking guidance system guides workers on the shortest possible route, with audio and visual instructions, to cut time spent and distance travelled per picking order by approximately half. The system allows inexperienced warehouse workers to achieve a similar efficiency level as more experienced workers.

 

  1. 1. Japan Productivity Center 2017 survey of workplace productivity
  2. 2. Gartner 2015 report on big data usage in Japan
  3. 3. Japan Ministry of Internal Affairs 2015 whitepaper on future society driven by ICT