December 18, 2007
LeadTime Technology, Inc. extends advanced planning and optimization capabilities to small and mid-sized businesses
Ability of FastForward tools suite enables low cost, rapid implementation to reduce inventory, improve resource productivity, and increase profitability.

WILMINGTON, DE –Lead Time Technology, a market leading provider of technology-enabled process optimization tools to reduce and right-size inventory, improve forecast accuracy and service, optimize production resources, and reduce cycle time across the supply chain, today announced the general availability of its new FastForward advanced planning and optimization tools suite. FastForward leverages all of the capabilities of the LTT enterprise tools suite in a low cost, rapidly implemented solution designed for small to mid-sized manufacturers and distributors.

FastForward can be integrated with Microsoft Dynamics to provide users with a powerful Advanced Planning, Scheduling, and Inventory Optimization solution. “With the availability of FastForward and our relationship with Microsoft Dynamics users and resellers can implement sophisticated enterprise optimization tools that until now were beyond their reach,” said Catherine Forsthoffer, Vice President, Sales & Marketing for Lead Time Technology.

According to AMR Research, operational excellence is the primary business driver in the majority of SMB businesses, “The major influence behind IT investment in 2007 among manufacturing and service companies is the application of lean practices across the organization to consolidate internal infrastructure and processes, therefore reducing and optimizing costs.”

FastForward is a fully configured, easily implemented solution for forecasting, inventory, production, distribution, and resource optimization for one location or many. The system tells you what you should make and when you should make it, so you will never run out or have too much inventory. Until now, small to mid-sized businesses found advanced planning and optimization tools were too complex and too expensive to implement.

With FastForward, companies can optimize their supply chain quickly and easily, usually within three to four weeks. The solution simplifies, automates and optimizes complex decision making for planners/schedulers utilizing sophisticated, patented algorithms in an intuitive easy to understand graphical user interface. Its process improvement best practices are based on Lean Six Sigma principles and the experience of Lead Time Technology’s practitioner founders and developers.

“Managing the supply network is all about understanding demand and cost drivers to manage tradeoffs, constraints and time,” said Rich Sherman, President, Gold & Domas Research and a Lead Time Technology board director. “By focusing on daily forecasting for each SKU and location and optimizing material flow and processes across the entire supply network, companies can implement strategies for operations excellence that leverage their competitive advantages for profitable growth and increased shareholder value.”

FastForward considers all business processes, constraints, costs, and business objectives to determine the most profitable flow of materials and utilization of resources for any given planning horizon. FastForward can be implemented at any type of manufacturer or distributor and is designed to be a low risk tool to support manufacturers’ and distributors’ business planning needs including:

• Improved customer service—anticipates customer orders
• Lower inventory—make only what is needed
• Improved data visibility across the supply chain
• Improve resource productivity and utilization
• Improve inventory and customer service levels
• Liberate working capital and increase revenue
• Pays for itself in less than six months
• Daily make/move recommendations based on available inventory, forecast and orders on the books for every SKU at every factory or warehouse

• Easy to use reports and graphics for every level of the organization

“Small to Mid-size companies face unprecedented challenges from global and larger competition that require swift and sustainable improvements in operational efficiency and flexibility,” said Mike Bonelli, president of Lead Time Technology. “With the introduction of FastForward, companies looking to optimize their operations and inventory have a highly adaptive software solution that can be implemented rapidly and within their budget.”

“Key to our approach,” added Mike Bonelli, “is that FastForward works in parallel with a customer’s current enterprise systems like Microsoft Dynamics and provides significant additive functionality to optimize and manage operating processes based on Lean Six Sigma principles as well as collaborative technology to complement already resident ERP/MRP and APS systems.”

FastForward’s rapid development cycle and availability can be attributed to the development partnership between Lead Time Technology and ColdCypress (Pittsburgh, PA) announced earlier this year. ColdCypress will also resell the FastForward product throughout the U.S.

“FastForward represents the opportunity for small to mid-size manufacturing and distribution companies to implement Lean Six Sigma best practices and realize step change inventory and operating cost reductions while improving forecast accuracy and customer service, “ said Jim Kyle, VP of Sales & Development for ColdCypress. “We look forward to building on our relationship with Lead Time Technology and being the first reseller partner to bring the FastForward product to market.”

“We needed to improve our forecasts and reduce inventory across our supply chain,” said A. J. Tosyali, president of Benchmark Rings. “We selected FastForward from Lead Time Technology based on the fact that it was affordable, could be rapidly implemented, and offered to us highly sophisticated process optimization and best practices beyond any capabilities the enterprise software vendors could offer.”

About LeadTime Technology, Inc.
Founded in 1998, LeadTime Technology, Inc. is a market leading provider of technology-enabled process optimization to reduce and right-size inventory, improve forecast accuracy and service, optimize production resources, and reduce cycle time across the supply chain including manufacturing, distribution and retail. Its applications are developed by practitioners for practitioners to achieve world class operations improvement leveraging Lean, Six Sigma, and SCOR principles supported by patented algorithms and technology.

LeadTime Technology’s™ unique combination of consulting and software enables operational decisions to be clearly correlated to financial measurements to ensure rapid ROI and increased contribution to shareholder value on a daily basis. Based on Microsoft platform technology and independent of enterprise applications, the intuitive user interface distills all supply chain complexities into a simple list of recommendations for continuous flow management and synchronization in virtually any size or type of operating environment. Contact LeadTime Technology at 423-240-0365, or www.leadtimetechnology.com for more information.

Cathy.Forsthoffer@LeadTimeTechnology.com

© 2007 LeadTime Technology, Inc. All rights reserved.