NOVA: Reimagining Supply & Profit Optimization for the Enterprise

Traditional supply planning assumes a stable world and a single goal. MRP/MPS heuristics and black-box optimizers “balance” supply and demand on paper—but ignore profitability, risk, tariffs, cash constraints, and the fact that every decision happens at the order line. Plans look neat in a deck and crack under pressure in the field.

NOVA was built for reality.
It plans at order-line granularity, propagates demand through your entire network and BOM, enforces business rules, optimizes across multiple objectives, and—when needed—switches to stochastic mode to answer: What happens if volatility spikes or a risk event actually hits?

1. Order-Line Planning & Forecast Consumption

The pain: Legacy tools aggregate demand into buckets and averages. Forecasts, CRM opportunities, and ERP orders get blended, then planners spend days reconciling “what’s real” vs. “what’s just a signal.” When the plan rolls down to execution, exceptions explode.

NOVA difference: NOVA plans at order-line granularity from the start—ERP sales orders, CRM opportunities, and open forecast lines after a flexible Forecast Consumption process. Nothing is lost in aggregation. Each line carries its priorities, dates, and economics.

Business value: Clear, auditable alignment between plan and execution. Less reconciliation, fewer surprises, faster cycle time from signal to action.

2. Propagation Through the Network & Down the BOM

The pain: Most systems “clip” the planning horizon or stop at the finished good. BOM explosions, supplier dependencies, and upstream constraints are approximated—so shortages appear late, and expediting becomes the norm.

NOVA difference: NOVA propagates demand upstream across your entire network—plants, DCs, suppliers—and down the BOM to every required component. It pegs each demand line to the specific supplies (inventory, production, transport) that will fulfill it, all the way to supplier POs.

Business value: Fewer last-minute shocks. Earlier visibility to component risks. Better supplier orchestration and lower expediting cost.

3. Business-Grade Matching Rules (By Demand/Supply Type)

The pain: One-size-fits-all pegging makes nonsense plans: forecast lines steal ATP from live orders; QC stock gets promised to customers; special-handling demand pegs to the wrong inventory.

NOVA difference: Define demand/supply matching rules at the type, sub-type, and order-line level. Example: Forecast may peg to stock under QC inspection; ERP sales orders can only peg to unrestricted stock; CRM opportunities peg conditionally by probability and window.

Business value: Plans reflect how your business actually runs. Promises you can keep. Less firefighting, more credibility with customers and the field.

4. Full Landed-Cost & Margin Intelligence (with Price Elasticity Guardrails)

The pain: “Feasible” plans can still be unprofitable. Tariffs, duties, labor, overheads, and transport are often approximated—or ignored. Pricing teams operate separately from supply planning, so margin leakage creeps in unnoticed.

NOVA difference: NOVA calculates granular landed cost (direct material, direct labor, tariffs, logistics, overheads) down to the order line. It ingests price-elasticity curves (from AURA) by customer segment and enforces floor/target margin guardrails to prevent unprofitable fulfillment or discounting.

Business value: Profitable plans by design. Pricing guidance that keeps deals inside guardrails. Early detection of margin leakage on ERP sales orders.

5. EO Profiles: Executive Control of Constraints & Objectives

The pain: In most optimizers, constraints and objectives are buried in code. Business leaders can’t steer the engine without a project.

NOVA difference: Enterprise Optimization (EO) Profiles let you configure the run—no code. Set any constraint as hard / soft / N/A (storage, labor, capacity, transport, shelf life, etc.). Choose objectives beyond service and cost: margin, cashflow (minimize DSO + DIO – maximize DPO), carbon, risk exposure, ROA/ROIC—and weight them for the scenario.

Business value: Strategy becomes a dial, not a rewrite. Finance, Ops, and Sustainability finally pull in the same direction—explicitly.

6. Deterministic Today, Stochastic When It Matters

The pain: Deterministic plans pretend volatility doesn’t exist. When reality deviates (lead times slip, scrap rises, a lane shuts down), the “optimal” plan collapses.

NOVA difference: Run NOVA deterministically for day-to-day velocity—or switch to stochastic mode to simulate thousands of network futures. Model volatility (lead times, scrap, OEE) from history plus a volatility adjustment factor. Layer explicit risk events (e.g., 20% probability of a Taiwan blockade; 4-month TSMC chip shortfall). NOVA returns full PDF/CDF distributions for KPIs like service, margin, and cost-to-serve (P50/P75/P90).

Business value: Choose plans that hold up under stress, not just on paper. Quantify Value at Risk and set buffers precisely—no more blunt over-inventorying.

7. Profitable-to-Promise (ATP) & Deal-Desk Guidance

The pain: Classic ATP answers “Can we ship it?”—not “Should we?” Feasible orders get promised that later bleed cash, while high-value deals wait for approvals.

NOVA difference: NOVA’s ATP is Profitable-to-Promise. It confirms orders only if they meet profitability guardrails (from price elasticity + landed cost). It also feeds pricing guardrails (floor/target) back to CRM so deal desks discount intelligently and spot margin-eroding exceptions.

Business value: Commit with confidence. Keep promise dates and margins. Speed up approvals by giving sales the rules upfront.

8. Tariff Pass-Through & Policy Playbooks

The pain: Tariff shocks create chaos—who absorbs what, and where? Most teams scramble, then apply blanket markups that either lose deals or lose profit.

NOVA difference: NOVA quantifies tariff cost impact by route/customer/segment and recommends how much to absorb vs. pass through, grounded in elasticity and competitive context. It operationalizes the policy in ATP and pricing guardrails.

Business value: Fewer knee-jerk reactions. Smarter, segmented responses that protect share and profit.

9. Pegging Networks, Gating-Factor Analysis & Revenue-at-Risk

The pain: When orders slip, the “why” is opaque: was it supplier delay, capacity, shelf-life, transport, or a rule conflict? Leaders see the result, not the root cause—or the financial exposure.

NOVA difference: NOVA renders a pegging network for every order line and shows the gating factor that’s driving lateness. It quantifies Revenue at Risk if a supplier shuts for two weeks, a PO is delayed, or a critical lane is lost—and prescribes mitigation (alternate source, re-pegging, policy tweak).

Business value: Root-cause clarity in minutes, not days. Targeted fixes that save revenue now and harden the network for next time.

The NOVA Advantage

NOVA is more than an optimizer. It’s an enterprise decision engine that brings together order-line truth, full landed cost, margin guardrails, multi-objective optimization, and risk-aware simulation—then pushes profitable-to-promise commitments back into ERP/CRM.

In a volatile world, this isn’t “nice to have.” It’s how you protect service, defend margin, accelerate cash, and build a supply network that doesn’t break when reality hits.

Ready to see NOVA on your network?
Let’s run a scenario with your data and compare P50 vs. P90 outcomes—service, margin, and cashflow—side by side.