Οικονομικά Στοιχεία

Introduction

Nowadays, the price of a product of the consumer market consists of 20% production cost and 80% distribution cost. This means, in effect, that one is able to compete even at higher production cost, provided a reduction of distribution costs could be achieved.

The planned project offers the opportunity to reduce distribution costs by 40% and production price by 30%, so that EC companies in consumer goods industry become much more competitive and the return of investment (ROI) will be fast achieved. A prediction module plays a crucial role within the overall system to be developed by the DELPHI Project.

Τhe DELPHI Objectives

The overall objective of this project focuses on the development of an advanced prototype built of object-oriented modules that will be used to reduce the overall costs for selling goods in the consumer market. The aim of the project is to have at the end an advanced prototype in an industrial environment offering the opportunity to develop a product for different branches and countries.

The project offers a new concept and a new Information Technology (IT) system affording optimisation of the Supply Network Management from producer down to the Point-Of-Sale (POS) with regard to market assessment, production, and distribution of goods and storage. DELPHI integrates the entire process chain by building a comprehensive process model, which takes into account the end consumer and his behavior as a main feature, as well as the whole chain of logistics and production. This model is the basis for planning and controlling the entire process chain.

Two pilot sites from the fashion and toy industries have been chosen. Both pilots consist of about 50 independent POS, which will be directly linked via INTERNET to the two DELPHI systems.

The overal DELPHI approach to consumer-driven production is intended to lead to a completely innovative procedure that will be used to reduce the total costs for selling goods in the consumer market. The aim of the project is to have at the end an advanced prototype in an industrial environment, offering the opportunity to develop similar products for different industrial branches and different countries.

From various industrial sectors, which produce goods and distribute them through different distribution channels, the DELPHI project has selected the toy industry and looked at it more closely. The idea and conception of DELPHI are based on a customer demand driven approach for controlling the product design, the material purchase policy, the production process, the logistics and distribution, and the advertising and sales management. To achieve the relevant developments, the DELPHI project is structured into nine workpackages as follows:

The prediction module plays a crucial role within the overall DELPHI system (Figure 1). By using a suitably designed approach to forecasting, it must provide estimates of future sale numbers (by article and by customer) and trends, based on past and current data. These data are related to weather, season, advertisement effort, previous sales numbers, and other factors that influence the variables to be forecasted.

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