Bangkok--25 Jul--M-Focus ILOG PLANT POWEROPS 3.0 Takes Production Planners to New Level for Managing Demand Variability and Building Executable Schedules ILOG has unveiled ILOG Plant PowerOps 3.0, the latest version of ILOG's integrated planning and scheduling solution that increases production planners' ability to generate feasible and optimal plans and better control demand and manufacturing variability through industry-first features like a material rebalancing engine and improved rescheduling capabilities. The new ILOG Plant PowerOps (PPO) also features multidimensional product and time-aggregation capabilities that enable planners to better analyze and manage complex manufacturing environments that requires the consideration of multiple product characteristics. ILOG PPO is now part of the ILOG LogicTools Supply Chain Applications Suite and is supported by a global team of manufacturing and supply chain professionals. Leveraging investments in existing ERP, SCM and/or Manufacturing Execution systems (MES), ILOG PPO targets Food and Beverage, Pharmaceuticals and Chemicals and extends the value of existing IT investments by providing dramatic improvements in production efficiency and flexibility without an expensive system replacement project. New features in ILOG PPO 3.0 developed in real-world manufacturing settings in the process industries areas include an industry-first material rebalancing engine that helps planners align manufacturing with demand. It accomplishes this by re-optimizing the production quantities and batch sizes of a given schedule, which improves the synchronization of plans between intermediate products and finished products and between finished products and stock coverage requirements. The material rebalancing engine can also change the production quantities of finished products for a given (fixed) schedule of intermediate products. Therefore planners are able to postpone decisions on the finished products (i.e. packaging) to better cope with demand variability issues. ILOG, www.ilog.com.