questions & answers

Since February 2024, flexis is owned by Blue Yonder. Read the Press Release

We cooperate on joint projects with various Fraunhofer Institutes, KIT, the University of Hohenheim, DFKI, and the Technical University of Munich. But we are also well positioned internationally: For example, we work on projects together with the Politecnico di Milano, the Universitat Autonomo of Barcelona, the National Technical University of Athens, MTA Sztaki, the University of Patras, and the Vienna University of Technology.

The flexis hybrid architecture approach combines the best of both worlds. flexis works with the customer to create a solution design that is adapted to the customer's framework conditions. This enables the customer to implement a solution that fits his needs. Within the set up solutions, the planning solutions include options for parameterization and customization of the solution by the customer himself without the need for further support from flexis. This way, solutions are implemented that represent the best fit for the customer and are flexible for further development within the customer organization.

ERP and MES systems with integrated planning functionality lack clean digital planning twins that offer the necessary freedom for optimizing your scenarios. Typically, ERP and MES providers are generalists. flexis, however, offers best-of-breed solutions. flexis solutions are used where complex material structures and multi-stage production processes meet customers' high expectations of delivery reliability. flexis powers digital planning twins and thus enables rapid scenario analyses. We develop solutions that reduce planning effort, lower inventories, and at the same time increase delivery reliability. flexis solutions begin where ERP and MES systems end in their performance.

The flexis Engage-Deliver-Stay model ensures that projects are developed in partnership with our customers and that jointly developed content is poured into scalable solutions. flexis takes responsibility for the results and guides the customer through the development process. The customer's role is to ensure that the process know-how is provided. Furthermore, the customer must ensure that the data is provided in appropriate quality at the interfaces to the customer IT landscape.

The maintenance costs are part of the SaaS fee and are calculated according to the complexity of the solution and the usage model.

flexis supports its customers in the early phases of the project by outlining the target solution and creating the business case. If required, flexis can also provide recommendations from its partners, who can support the customer internally in creating suitable cases.

Yes, flexis enables automatic planning and rescheduling processes. These can either iteratively plan or reschedule entire planning scenarios. In the Engage phase, customer requirements are worked out and integrated into a later solution, taking into account the customer's target process landscape.

Yes, in contrast to ERP systems where planning is limited to known volumes, products, and product groups, in the flexis S&OP solution additional products can be created and placeholders defined in scenario planning. In addition, flexis enables an early connection between the product and material level and thus also the planning of derived requirements.

Yes, all planning solutions can be extended as required with any additional attributes and parameters that are relevant for planning or that are useful for validating the planning results.

The flexis Scenario Manager component can be integrated into all flexis planning solutions. It enables the collaborative development of parallel planning scenarios, which can be developed and managed in whatever way needed. This allows qualified what-if analyses to be performed and approved results to be transferred to live operation.

Yes, flexis S&OP can handle heterogeneous input data, e.g. the combination of manually entered sales estimates, forecasting plan data, and real customer forecasts, as well as different planning scenarios. The processing and validation of this data can be done intuitively directly in the planning environment.

Yes, flexis is currently involved in well-known Industry 4.0 initiatives. flexis' solutions are characterized by integrated horizontal approaches from integrated long-term S&OP planning to medium-term planning to detailed planning, and they operationally connect the Supply Chain End2End from the supplier to the producer to the customer. flexis is able to create a digital twin of reality, which creates plans, transfers them to the execution, processes feedback in real time, and transfers the plans into new planning instructions.

Yes, we and our customers are proud of the solutions we have implemented. With our Engage-Deliver-Stay approach we accompany our customers even after a successful implementation and therefore keep close contact. We would be happy to enable you to exchange views on comparable solution scenarios at a late stage in our Engage model.

flexis offers its customers different support models, which are anchored in SLA models. In addition, flexis offers different availability levels: standard office hours up to 24/7 models.

flexis adapts the project approach to the customer's requirements, as our experience shows that this leads to better results. flexis suggests a mixed approach to project implementation: Waterfall with Quality Gates after scoping and after creating the frame design, with parallel Agile rapid prototyping, where 95% of the effort of the prototype is usable in the real system. Once the overall framework is established, a refinement phase is added in a fully agile approach to fill the gaps in the finished solution. Within the flexis project organization, a sprint-based Agile development model is used for both the framework design and the refinement phase. flexis follows a transparent project development approach, which allows the customer to determine the depth of involvement in the Agile development organization.

flexis has already realized during its foundation and the development of the first solutions that existing databases are not sufficient for complex real-time optimization. For this reason, flexis has invested in the further development of in-memory technology for the past 20 years, and all flexis solutions are designed to take advantage of this technology. Within the framework of the requirements of Industry 4.0 for the networking of information and the integration of previously segmented areas, the use of this technology is of great importance. In-memory enables massive speed advantages in AI environments, as well as the connection of algorithms to data objects in real-time to support real-time collaboration. Many software vendors, including well-known ERP vendors, are therefore now also beginning to switch to this technology. However, they are currently facing the challenge of both adapting their data models to these new possibilities and gaining experience with this new technology.

flexis SaaS solutions are continuously kept up-to-date after consultation with the customer (minor releases). Larger updates are offered on average every 1.5 years (major releases)

Yes, flexis solutions are offered as SaaS. Microservices and standard components as well as customer solutions and platforms are provided for customers.

Yes, the flexis HYBRID architecture supports deployment in the flexis Cloud as well as in private customer clouds or public clouds (e.g. AWS, Azure, Google). flexis Cloud solutions are deployed containerized and are therefore TrueCloud services.

Yes, flexis supports different interface formats and transmission types. Interface formats are available for integration into SAP.