Manugistics Group Inc. is taking on the supply chain—from a different perspective. The company announced yesterday at its enVISION2003 user conference in Washington, D.C., a new grid architecture for distributed supply chain processes. Today, Manugistics announced software to both secure and synchronize supply chain data.

Manugistics' Emergency Planning and Simulation software provides a framework for helping companies plan for internal supply chain event management and at the same time adapt to unexpected external events that might affect the supply chain—sweeping fires in Southern California or terrorist attacks in the Middle East, for example.

The EPS solution brings to the table real-time asset visibility, monitoring and simulation to help companies confirm the status and integrity of goods. New functionalities like RFID and GPS data provide data quality for more accurate measures.

Separately, Manugistics announced its Demand and Revenue Management software to help manufacturers synchronize demand forecasting with pricing, promotions and trade-fund planning.

The Trade Fund Optimization capability helps consumer goods companies create a forecast that takes into consideration consumer response to promotional incentives at the level of category, brand, key account or store, officials said.

A Markdown Optimization feature evaluates the impact of a retailer's mark-down plan prior to and during execution, while a Promotion Optimization feature allows for the creation, comparison and evaluation of promotional plans.

A self-learning Price List Optimization capability takes in the results of previous pricing actions—including things like sales and promotions—to recalibrate forecasting and optimization plans. The software also identifies optimal prices for products.