Two and A half years ago, Cardinal Glass IG's legacy systems were making it a weak link in one key customer's supply chain. The system, a hodgepodge of homegrown and third-party applications, caused so many errors that it was "shameful and embarrassing," says Dan Peterson, director of corporate information systems at the Minneapolis-based maker of glass products. But when the customer decided that its products required delivery on a just-in-time basis, with lead times of just hours, there was no way the existing supply chain management applications could keep up the pace.

Luckily, Cardinal found that by bolting on supply chain event management (SCEM) applications from Minneapolis-based HighJump Software, it could deliver products at nearly 100% accuracy. "We probably cut the error rate by 90%," Peterson says.

Cardinal, like more and more companies, is using SCEM applications to speed up and smooth out connections with suppliers and customers.

SCEM applications let companies see -- in real time, or as close as possible -- if their existing supply chain management (SCM) systems are working. The applications run on or are attached to an SCM server and get updates on supply chain activity through software connectors. Depending on preset rules and benchmarks, SCEM software can monitor SCM applications, run simulations of supply chain scenarios, automatically take control of the supply chain or send out alerts to end users.

Anomalies, such as a discrepancy in an order, will trigger responses, making the system more sensitive to real-time needs, say analysts.

Cardinal did contemplate replacing its legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) system but felt that a new ERP system wouldn't provide the adaptability and forecasting abilities required to meet the challenges it faced in optimizing order fulfillment execution, says Peterson. Cardinal officials decided that they needed software that would address errors in the system on the fly, he explains -- something traditional supply chain management and ERP systems wouldn't be able to do.

At Cardinal, when an order is received, inventory is checked immediately for availability. If a shortage is detected, the HighJump system will send an alert via e-mail to the customer. This speeds up the supply chain, reducing lead times and meeting the customer's goals, says Peterson.

There were bottom-line benefits, too: The new system cut by about two-thirds the amount of manpower needed to compensate for errors such as inventory erroneously being marked "in" when it wasn't there or shipments being sent incorrectly.

While SCEM elements have been around for some time, the market has begun to come into its own only during the past year or so. SCEM applications attach to current SCM, warehouse management and legacy supply chain execution systems and view and report on their activities. More specifically, SCEM applications can write and modify purchase orders, mark goods received and trigger payments to suppliers. Some vendors are embedding SCEM components into their offerings -- SAP AG and J.D. Edwards & Co. are beginning to add new modules, for example -- or offering them as stand-alone products. The fledgling SCEM

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