Kinaxis Archives

Webinar: SCM – Striking a Balance between Speed & Accuracy

Posted on 31 July, 202329 July, 2025 by Keith McKinley

Live Webinar: SCM. Accuracy is important, but so is agility. The correct use of planning techniques allows us to have an accurate and agile plan.

Ever wondered what cycling and planning a supply chain have in common?

Register for our free webinar on August 23rd @ 2pm BST London time with Matt Spooner, Kinaxis and Peter MacLeod, Editor of Logistics Business Magazine. They will be discussing Supply Chain Management: Striking a Balance between Speed and Accuracy using example-based stories that will help you to understand what ‘striking the balance’ really means. Matt brings together his cycling and his supply chain experience to provide a compelling perspective in a way that you have never heard before.

Register Now here

Kinaxis delivers unparalleled supply chain agility and resilience to supply chains across the globe. We combine human intelligence with artificial intelligence and concurrency to help companies prepare for any future, monitor risks and opportunities and respond at the pace of change. Our industry-proven applications and extensible, cloud-based RapidResponse platform empowers supply chain professionals and business leaders to know sooner, act faster and remove waste so they can make the best decisions for their business, their customers and our planet.

Register today to learn about hot to achieve balance between speed and accuracy in the supply chain.

Software Executive joins Kinaxis: Growth Focus

Posted on 12 July, 202331 July, 2025 by David Priestman

Kinaxis® Inc. (TSX: KXS), a leading provider of supply chain management software solutions, today announced Margaret Franco (pictured) as chief marketing officer. Reporting to President and CEO John Sicard, Franco will lead the global marketing organisation, including advertising and brand strategy, marketing communications, product and solution marketing, digital marketing, demand generation and business development.

As Kinaxis continues to expand globally, Franco’s base in London puts her at the centre of a growing customer and employee hub and adds strength to the company’s international network with offices in Tokyo, Chennai and Rotterdam, and more than 40,000 users in over 100 countries. Franco’s experience helping companies scale to $1 billion and beyond, her pedigree in shaping global brands and her commitment to customer, partner and employee communities make her a valuable addition to the company.

“Kinaxis is at an exciting inflection point where its technique, product, people and culture are well positioned to transform an industry ripe for change. I’m thrilled to be joining John and the whole team, and looking forward to achieving something special together,” said Franco.

Headquartered in Ottawa, Kinaxis works with many of the largest global brands, including Bose, Carlsberg, Ford, HAVI, Honeywell, Merck, Procter & Gamble, Schneider Electric, Qualcomm, Unilever, and many others. Since its IPO in 2014, the company has more than tripled revenue, and in May 2023, Kinaxis was named a leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Supply Chain Planning Solutions for the ninth consecutive time.

Sicard added, “It’s rare to find someone with the depth of experience, global perspective and commitment to people and culture that are necessary to help us, and our customers, make real change in supply chain management. I’m thrilled to welcome Margaret to our team.”

Franco was previously chief marketing officer at Finastra and before that held senior marketing roles in North America, Europe and Asia at Dell during a 13-year tenure. In 2022, Franco was ranked fourth on the Financial Technology Report Top 25 Women Leaders in Financial Technology.

Everyday volatility and uncertainty demand quick action. Kinaxis® delivers the agility to make fast, confident decisions across integrated business planning and the digital supply chain. People can plan better, live better and change the world. Trusted by innovative brands, we combine human intelligence with AI and concurrent planning to help companies plan for any future, monitor risks and opportunities and respond at the pace of change. Powered by an extensible, cloud-based platform, Kinaxis delivers industry-proven applications so everyone can know sooner, act faster and remove waste.

Innovations to Orchestrate End-to-End Supply Chain

Posted on 22 June, 202329 July, 2025 by Keith McKinley

At its annual customer community conference Kinexions, Kinaxis Inc., a leading provider of supply chain management solutions, unveiled new product innovations spanning the end-to-end supply chain. Delivered during the Day One keynote, these innovations aim to empower businesses with the transparency, control and agility they need to navigate today’s volatile business landscape.

“The days of the cascaded flow of information passed down between teams are long behind us,” said John Sicard, President and CEO at Kinaxis. “Today, CEOs and boards of directors are demanding their supply chains operate in real time and with one view of information across planning and execution. The innovations we announced today make it easier for teams to collaborate and make decisions, as well as narrow the gap between planning and execution, to create both resiliency and efficiency at scale.”

End-to-End Supply Chain Orchestration

The product innovations unveiled include:
• Enterprise Scheduling, the first and only scheduling tool on the market to allow companies to create and manage a globally integrated production scheduling strategy that accounts for all plant layouts. Leveraging industry best practices, Enterprise Scheduling allows companies to orchestrate production across sites and create a comprehensive, feasible and efficient manufacturing schedule.
• Supply Chain Execution (formerly MPO) capabilities, including transportation management, order management and returns management, are now integrated with Supply Chain Planning, eliminating the siloes that exist between planning and execution. These new capabilities will empower businesses to drive supply chain orchestration from plan through delivery across all horizons, whether managing multi-year or down-to-the-second execution.
• Sustainable Supply Chain, a new solution that allows companies to embed emissions factors (including Scope 3 emissions) directly into RapidResponse® to design scenarios that will estimate, project and simulate supply chain related CO2e in real time. Not only does Sustainable Supply Chain create visibility into emissions data, but it also empowers planners to understand its impact in seconds.
• New intuitive features within Demand.AI, an advanced application within Planning.AI, will allow companies to better understand how both internal and external factors are influencing demand for their products and be able to quickly adjust plans to take advantage of these changes. Planning.AI is an analytical approach and part of the Kinaxis RapidResponse platform.

“Kinaxis has continually been on the cutting edge of what is needed and possible for supply chains,” said Robert Kugel, SVP and Research Director at Ventana Research. “The introduction of Enterprise Scheduling, Sustainable Supply Chain, and new AI capabilities for Demand Planning, are major improvements for companies. It furthers their ability to have transparency, control, and agility within their supply chains, equipping them with that they need to manage today’s disruptions.”

In addition to Planning.AI, Kinaxis is working to bring future innovation to supply chains as the only supply chain management company and industry partner of the National Science Foundation AI Institute for Advances in Optimisation (AI4OPT).

“Supply chains are growing increasingly larger, and they are expected to be more resilient and sustainable than ever before,” said Pascal Van Hentenryck, Director of AI4OPT. “As a leader in the field, Kinaxis is ideally positioned to understand these fundamental challenges through their RapidResponse technology. Kinaxis, in collaboration with AI4OPT, is exploring how the fusion of machine learning and optimisation may bring a step change in capabilities for the next generation of supply chain management systems.”

Pascal Van Hentenryck is the A. Russell Chandler III Chair and Professor, and the associate chair of innovation and entrepreneurship in Technology at the H. Milton Steward School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Alstom Trust Kinaxis to Support Industrial Planning

Posted on 5 April, 202329 July, 2025 by Keith McKinley

Kinaxis® Inc. (TSX: KXS), an authority in driving agility for fast, confident decision-making in an unpredictable world, announces that Alstom, global leader in smart and sustainable mobility, has confirmed the choice of Kinaxis’ solution to support the management of its industrial planning.

From high-speed trains, metros, monorails, and trams, to turnkey systems, services, infrastructure, signalling and digital mobility, Alstom offers its diverse customers the broadest portfolio in the industry. The company is present in 70 countries, and runs over 50 rolling stock and components production sites. Faced with increasing demand, the company has realised in recent years the need to equip itself with a powerful planning platform to engage with its customers and meet delivery deadlines and to identify and manage risks that could disrupt its supply chain and production.

The industrial complexity faced by Alstom and the increase of its production capacities, made it necessary to implement a transparent, agile, and accurate planning on all its rolling stock and components production sites, nine of which are users of the Kinaxis RapidResponse® solution since 2014. Thanks to the renewal of its agreement with Kinaxis, Alstom will progressively extend its use of RapidResponse to all its rolling stock and components’ sites.

“Kinaxis is today seen by the market as one of the leaders in supply chain planning. Our production constraints – similar to those encountered in the aeronautical industry – made us naturally turn to Kinaxis which has a strong expertise in this sector,” said Francis Henrard, Alstom Supply Chain Director. “Already mastered by our teams, its solution will allow us to accelerate our transformation plan by homogenising the processes and our methodology on all the sites and gain in efficiency.”

Kinaxis’ RapidResponse solution will enable Alstom’s teams to make the best decisions in a constantly disrupted environment by creating plans aligned with customer demand and simulating a wide range of planning scenarios while taking into account its commercial and operational constraints. This ensures that the company can most effectively arbitrate its launches, ramp-ups and potential production shifts according to its commercial commitments and corporate objectives.

The platform will integrate industrial planning to the existing ERP core model and extend end-to-end supply chain visibility to internal and external suppliers. It will also remove silos, improve business agility and planning performance.

“We are delighted to continue our collaboration with a leader like Alstom and help them gain agility and visibility in their supply chain planning.” said John Sicard, CEO of Kinaxis. “In these times of disruption, it is necessary for many companies to be agile to deal with the unexpected and to be able to get an immediate view of business risks and opportunities. This is exactly what our solutions allow Alstom to achieve.”

Everyday volatility and uncertainty demand quick action. Kinaxis® delivers the agility to make fast, confident decisions across integrated business planning and the digital supply chain. People can plan better, live better and change the world. Trusted by innovative brands, we combine human intelligence with AI and concurrent planning to help companies plan for any future, monitor risks and opportunities and respond at the pace of change. Powered by an extensible, cloud-based platform, Kinaxis delivers industry-proven applications so everyone can know sooner, act faster and remove waste.

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