In the exciting automotive landscape, industry leaders are constantly seeking innovative ways to stay ahead of the curve. Blue Yonder, a renowned name in supply chain management solutions, has taken a significant stride towards reinforcing its market position with the strategic acquisition of flexis. In an insightful interview with Automotive Industries, Salim Shaikh, Corporate Vice President, Industry Strategy – Automotive at Blue Yonder, delves into how this acquisition aligns with the company’s strategic goals and enhances its end-to-end platform capabilities within the automotive supply chain.
The automotive industry is undergoing transformative changes, moving from a traditional push-based make-to-stock (MTS) model to a more dynamic push-pull system that emphasizes configured-to-order models with lower inventories. Shaikh points out that by 2030, a vast majority of new vehicle purchases are expected to occur online, with a significant shift towards direct consumer sales. This evolving consumer behavior demands a business-to-consumer (B2C) experience akin to major e-commerce platforms like Amazon, emphasizing personalization and real-time responsiveness.
The acquisition of flexis is a pivotal move for Blue Yonder, strengthening its portfolio and enabling it to better serve its automotive and industrial manufacturing clients. Shaikh explains that flexis’ capabilities in volume planning, feature and mix planning, forecast order generation, parts requirements planning, order slotting and sequencing, and logistics fulfillment are crucial for meeting the growing demand for customized and configurable vehicle options. This acquisition not only enhances Blue Yonder’s market-leading position but also aligns with its mission to build sustainable, profitable end-to-end supply chains.
As the automotive industry shifts towards electric vehicle production and digital purchasing models, the need for sophisticated, flexible, and integrated solutions becomes paramount. Shaikh highlights that flexis’ cutting-edge technology will allow Blue Yonder’s customers to offer more personalized options and configurations while maintaining visibility into the impact on manufacturing and delivery timelines. This enhanced capability ensures that customers receive real-time updates and accurate delivery estimates, thereby improving the overall customer experience.
The integration of flexis into Blue Yonder’s comprehensive supply chain solution promises to address various industry challenges, from material availability and transportation capacity planning to logistics constraints. By leveraging flexis’ advanced technologies, Blue Yonder aims to offer a seamless, customer-centric experience that bridges the gap between inventory availability and scheduling.
Moreover, the recent acquisitions of Doddle and flexis demonstrate Blue Yonder’s commitment to providing a holistic supply chain solution that covers every aspect of the process, from first and last-mile delivery to manufacturing and supply chain planning. These strategic moves position Blue Yonder as a leader in supply chain transformation, offering unparalleled end-to-end capabilities on a single platform.
In the following Automotive Industries interview, Shaikh emphasizes the synergies between Blue Yonder and flexis, underscoring their combined potential to deliver a superior customer experience. By integrating flexis’ solutions with Blue Yonder’s existing platform, the company is well-equipped to meet the demands of a rapidly changing automotive industry, ensuring resilience, efficiency, and customer satisfaction in the process.
Automotive Industries interview with Salim Shaikh, Corporate Vice President, Industry Strategy – Automotive, Blue Yonder
Automotive Industries: How does the acquisition of flexis align with Blue Yonder’s strategic goals and contribute to its position as an end-to-end platform in the automotive supply chain?
Shaikh: The automotive industry is going through a period of significant upheaval and change. The industry is pivoting from a traditional “Push” make-to-stock (MTS) characterized by “Flood the Zone” model, where dealers maintained 60 to 80 days of inventory to a hybrid “Push” and “Pull” based on the Configured-To-Order model with lower inventories. It is anticipated that by 2030, 80% of new vehicle purchases will occur online, and a significant portion (60% to 80%) of new cars will be directly sold to consumers. Present-day consumers are increasingly seeking a business-to-consumer (B2C) experience akin to Amazon. Due to the adoption of the B2C model, as opposed to the business-to-business (B2B) model, not only is there a wider move from customers to make their vehicular purchases online, but there is a greater demand for customization. This includes the flexibility to make specific changes to the configurations, models, and trims for their car. Knowing how these configuration changes will impact timeframes for manufacturing and deliveries, as well as pricing in real-time is also equally important to customers.
Based on some of the industry trends noted above, this acquisition strengthens Blue Yonder’s portfolio, particularly within the automotive and industrial manufacturing sectors so that we can better serve our customers. As a result, manufacturers will be better positioned to deliver a superior customer experience with enhanced personalization, fulfillment, and planning capabilities. The addition of flexis further strengthens Blue Yonder’s already market leading position in the automotive and industrial sectors with unprecedented end-to-end capabilities ranging from volume planning, feature and mix planning, forecast order generation, parts requirements planning, order slotting and sequencing, configure to order, transportation capacity planning, and logistics fulfillment. Through this acquisition, Blue Yonder will continue to be able to fulfill its mission of building more sustainable, profitable end-to-end supply chains.
Automotive Industries: Duncan Angove mentioned “exemplary service to customers” with flexis’ capabilities. How do these capabilities enhance customer experience, especially in an automotive industry marked by evolving customer demands, such as electric vehicle production and customization options?
Shaikh: In terms of exemplary service to customers, it boils down to the kind of enhanced services, products and experiences Blue Yonder can offer them because of this acquisition. As a result of flexis’ cutting-edge technology, customers will have more flexibility to personalize options, configurations, and other customizations on their vehicular purchases, while maintaining visibility into any impact these selections will have on shipping and fulfillment dates. During the customer’s vehicle ordering and configuration process, the Blue Yonder platform can offer a real-time inventory and pipeline search. This enables customers to check the availability of a vehicle with the desired configurations within the dealer network or in the pipeline, providing them with a real-time estimated time of arrival (ETA). Should the desired vehicle and options not be available in the dealer network or pipeline, customers can obtain real-time quotes as to when they can expect their personalized purchase because of the real-time order slotting and sequencing capabilities, which look at material, time, capacity, buildability, and transportation constraints, as well as vehicle routing and scheduling to provide expected dates.
The capabilities Blue Yonder acquired from flexis coupled with Blue Yonder’s integrated planning and commerce solutions enable companies with an unprecedented ability to promise and to efficiently fulfill highly configurable products to their customers. This greatly enhances transparency in the process between the manufacturer and customer and allows the customer to have a greater role in tailoring a purchase for their specific needs and wants.
Automotive Industries: In the context of a changing automotive industry (electric vehicle production, digital purchasing models), how will flexis help Blue Yonder’s customers adapt to the challenges and opportunities presented by these industry shifts?
Shaikh: Personalization is currently in high demand and will eventually become the industry standard. To meet this market demand, companies must begin integrating solutions and operations that will allow them to accommodate this growing need for personalization from customers. Blue Yonder is preparing for this demand through its acquisition of flexis. Through flexis, Blue Yonder will have the capabilities needed to adapt quickly in this burgeoning area and become nimbler and more customer-centric in their configure-to-order process right across sales and operation planning. flexis’ technology will allow Blue Yonder to respond to any customizations quickly, with little disruption, and consider any constraints that can add or remove time to an order.
Not to mention, flexis’ technologies better enable Blue Yonder to plan around supply chain disruptions and global events. For instance, with the Red Sea crisis, customers will have greater visibility into which components of their order will be impacted by the crisis and will have the option to stick to any configurations that will be impacted, or make changes that will ensure their product arrives at an earlier date. OEM’s will be able to visualize the real-time impact analysis of any parts shortages on the customer fulfillment date. This flexibility in a moment of crisis ensures production remains ongoing, and customers remain as minimally impacted as possible.
Automotive Industries: How does flexis specifically enable manufacturers to address the industry trend towards personalization, especially in terms of flexible scheduling, order sequencing, and integration with order management systems?
Shaikh: In addition to personalization, replanning production lines based on real-time orders will need to account for things such as material availability, transportation capacity planning, and logistics constraints, and flexis offers the resources to plan accordingly and efficiently execute to customer centric requirements and selections. In turn, customers can readily make their selections with minimal worry and manufacturers have the resources needed to accommodate changes in product selections, market changes, and other factors and still deliver excellent customer experiences.
Blue Yonder’s customers will be able to integrate these new capabilities seamlessly into their current planning solutions and operations, and as rapid personalization of products becomes the norm, will be able to bridge the gap between inventory availability and scheduling.
Automotive Industries: In light of Eric Thompson’s comments on improving supply chain sophistication, accuracy, and efficiency, how does the combination of Blue Yonder’s cognitive platform and flexis’ solvers provide a unique solution tailored to the challenges faced by automotive manufacturers?
Shaikh: One of the unique focal points of this acquisition is that Blue Yonder’s capabilities, and now flexis’ will exist on ONE platform and a single data point of ingestion – the data cloud, or in this case, Snowflake – with unprecedented end-to-end capabilities ranging from volume planning, feature and mix planning, forecast order generation, parts requirements planning, order slotting and sequencing, configure to order, to transportation capacity planning and logistics fulfillment. Regardless of whichever facet of the process someone is involved in, and the challenges faced in that process, having a core cloud-based central platform to integrate, orchestrate, and execute actions helps to build sustainable and resilient operations, mitigate risks, and provide end-to-end visibility.
Having these components run on a single platform streamlines many processes for customers and allows them to easily extract data when needed. As Blue Yonder integrates flexis’ functions into this platform, granular data extracted from the cloud can be used to assist with issues that arise during the granular order slotting and sequencing processes, transportation, aggregated sales and operations, or any facet of the process.
Automotive Industries: With the recent acquisition of Doddle focused on the first and last mile, and now flexis in manufacturing and supply chain planning, can you elaborate on how these strategic acquisitions position Blue Yonder in the broader landscape of supply chain transformation?
Shaikh: Blue Yonder’s recent acquisitions are strengthening the organization’s end-to-end supply chain solution portfolio. The supply chain has multiple layers to it and can easily become a fragmented space. Blue Yonder has prioritized breaking down these silos by acquiring and innovating technology that can be integrated and coupled with various solutions to create a seamless flow of operations every step of the way. From planning and forecasting, to order sequencing, configuration, fulfillment and reverse logistics, the organization is successfully positioning itself at the forefront of supply chain’s future.
Blue Yonder’s recent acquisition of Doddle enables the supply chain provider to offer a complete returns management platform to its customers. Stepping into reverse logistics has created a whole new area of expertise for Blue Yonder, within the supply chain. The Doddle and flexis acquisitions are perfect examples of how Blue Yonder is listening to customers across verticals and making strategic decisions based on the feedback they’ve heard. Taking various pain-points and goals into account, while developing solutions that span the broad landscape known as the supply chain, is what sets Blue Yonder apart from other providers.
Automotive Industries: In the competitive landscape of supply chain solutions, how does Blue Yonder plan to leverage the capabilities acquired from flexis to differentiate itself and maintain its leadership position in the market?
Shaikh: The capabilities acquired from flexis are the key to customer success. Providing manufacturers with the ability to let their customers tailor all aspects of their vehicle before it is built, and receive insights into accurate timing, creates that open line communication between the customer and manufacturer, which is becoming increasingly desired today. This is what keeps customers coming back. They want to be notified of a delivery change, product shortages, or even just an update on the status of their purchase. The capabilities Blue Yonder acquired from flexis coupled with Blue Yonder’s integrated planning and commerce solutions enable companies with an unprecedented ability to promise and to efficiently fulfill highly configurable products to their customers. This enhanced visibility into production and accurate forecasting will enable Blue Yonder to maintain its leadership position in the market, as the company continues to innovate with a customer-first mindset.
Automotive Industries: How do the API-based microservices architecture and solutions offered by flexis integrate with Blue Yonder’s existing comprehensive supply chain solution? Can you provide insights into the technological synergies that will enhance the overall capabilities of the combined offering?
Shaikh: Both Blue Yonder and flexis had a real-time API based microservices architecture, allowing the integration to flow seamlessly. From sales and operations planning to slotting and sequencing, the Blue Yonder Order Management System (OMS) combined with the flexis Online APIs enables not only batch-based order slotting and sequencing, but real-time order slotting and sequencing on ONE platform and a single data point of ingestion – the data cloud, or in this case, Snowflake. This supports the end goal of providing a seamless customer experience through a combined offering.
Automotive Industries: Philipp Beisswenger mentioned contributing to Blue Yonder’s mission. Could you elaborate on how flexis sees itself contributing to Blue Yonder’s mission of transforming supply chain management through a full-scope, end-to-end platform?
Shaikh: flexis provides Blue Yonder with the capabilities to unlock a differentiated, superior, customer experience which sits at the forefront of Blue Yonder’s mission. Product and service innovation is driven by the external factors our world is currently experiencing such as EV production, digital purchasing models, and configure to order customization. flexis contributes optimizations to support and keep up with these factors, which are humanly impossible to generate. The integration of Blue Yonder and flexis is providing customers with the largest potential for growth in both scale and profitability, while completing the ecosystem needed to support a resilient end-to-end supply chain in today’s ever-changing world.
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