PSA Peugeot Citroen Chooses ILOG JRules for Its Order Management System

ILOG announced that the PSA Peugeot Citroen Group, Europe’s second-largest car manufacturer, has deployed ILOG JRules(R), a key offering in ILOG’s Business Rule Management System (BRMS) product line, in its order management system to calculate production lead times of 300,000 monthly vehicle orders in real time. Operating at a reliability rate of 90 percent, the ILOG JRules-based solution enables the carmaker to provide car production lead times with greater accuracy, improving responsiveness and customer service.

Increasing customer demands for customization and multiple brand management created significant order complexity for Peugeot and Citroen. In fact, calculating order processing times meant addressing about 500 manufacturing constraints ranging from assembly-line output to the type of engine, gearbox or wheel rim, to fabrics, number of doors or country-specific marketing characteristics. These factors drove the decision to look for a flexible order management system, which would meet needs that were not addressed by existing solutions.

With ILOG JRules, system users are informed about potential delays in real time. With better visibility into the order process, PSA can adapt quickly to changes. While the core of the order management system is common to both the Peugeot and Citroen brands, PSA’s business users can define and update daily business rules for each brand. All in all, some 18,000 rules per brand calculate the lead times for manufacturing the vehicles.

Users run five simulations per day, with each operation not exceeding 45 minutes, to account in real time for resource changes, such as late supplier deliveries or damage in a production plant, and re-evaluate the new priorities accordingly. The impacted rules are then updated every night.

The ILOG JRules-based order management system is also an efficient platform for sharing and exchanging information between the production and sales departments for the Peugeot and Citroen brands. In fact, the system serves as a link between the central ordering and central manufacturing operations to coordinate and adapt vehicle production to demand. The transparency of the BRMS-based system allows rapid problem identification and decision-making. In the future, the system will expand to address constraints from the car maker’s partners.

ILOG is a long-time partner of PSA Group. The implementation of this application follows the successful deployment of ILOG’s optimization-based solutions for the manufacturer’s on-line sales configurator. The ILOG BRMS was also selected for the entire PSA Group and is expected to be implemented in future applications including contract management and commissioning.

ILOG has consistently built on its history of product innovation to make it one of the industry’s leading providers of business rule management system software. Forrester Research has recognized ILOG as a rules platform market leader, including the leader in rules platforms for Java. Customers of ILOG’s award-winning BRMS products include eBay, Equifax, Grupo Santander, Harrah’s Entertainment, Visa, Vodafone, Zurich, and many other leading Global 2000 companies and governments worldwide. ILOG’s business rule management system (BRMS) product line includes ILOG JRules(R), ILOG Rules for .NET(R) and ILOG Rules (C++)(R).

ILOG delivers software and services that empower customers to make better decisions faster and manage change and complexity. Over 2,500 corporations and more than 465 leading software vendors rely on ILOG’s market-leading business rule management system (BRMS), supply chain planning and scheduling applications, and optimization and visualization software components, to achieve dramatic returns on investment, create market-defining products and services, and sharpen their competitive edge. ILOG was founded in 1987 and employs more than 800 people worldwide. For more information, please visit http://www.ilog.com/.