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We are pleased to announce that Exactech, Inc., Demand Works and AdapChain are the recipients of the 2009 APICS Technology Partnership Award.

Each year, a committee of business leaders and APICS executives evaluate dozens of business cases and select the most exceptional among them for Corporate Awards of Excellence. APICS bestows three such awards each year at its annual conference, including one for educational excellence, one for global innovation, and one for technology partnership excellence.

Exactech, Inc. is an orthopaedic company that develops, manufactures, markets, distributes and sells orthopaedic implant devices, related surgical instrumentation and biologic services to hospitals and physicians in the United States and internationally. In late-2008, they undertook a company-wide sales and operations planning and supply chain improvement project. Smoothie®, the Demand Works solution for sales and operations planning, was selected as the enabling technology.

The goals of the Exactech initiative were to improve company forecast accuracy and remove bias; incorporate internal collaboration to better coordinate and optimize inventories throughout the supply chain: improve demand and supply planning efficiency and precision; and facilitate implementation of a formalized S&OP business process.

In less than one year, Exactech achieved forecast accuracy improvements of 4-17% across five business units; safety stock inventory reductions of over $1 million; and an internally developed customer service metric was improved by 8.6%.

Demand Works integration partner, AdapChain, played a key role in enabling the business benefits, utilizing its expertise and technologies to seamlessly integrate the business forecasting, demand and supply planning software with Exactech's installed QAD ERP system.