Business news :Nike Partners with LLamasoft for Sustainable Supply Chain Innovation

Nike Inc. has entered a strategic partnership with LLamasoft, Inc., to co-develop supply chain solutions that offer both logistics and environmental benefits. Nike has been a customer of Michigan-based LLamasoft for two years. Today's announcement of a formal commercial relationship, in addition to a minority investment from NIKE, signals the intent to leverage the strengths of both companies to co-develop new solutions for international supply chain efficiency.

"Innovation and sustainability are core to Nike Inc.'s operations and this new partnership with LLamasoft represents unique opportunities in both of these areas," says Hans Van Alebeek, Nike's Vice President of Global Operations & Technology. "Through working with LLamasoft as a customer, we recognized the potential to collaborate on innovative supply chain solutions that offer real time logistics benefits and the potential to positively impact our efforts around carbon reduction."

Supply chain design is a vital business process for companies with a global footprint, as organizations work to balance factors including cost, service and environmental impact in an unpredictable global marketplace. By leveraging the LLamasoft software platform, Nike expects to drive efficiencies through its supply chain and significantly reduce the associated carbon footprint.

Donald Hicks, CEO of LLamasoft, said the relationship with Nike will enable the company to accelerate the development of new technology. "This partnership allows us to build on our work with Nike faster and more collaboratively than ever before. We admire Nike's leadership and we're excited to work together to define new levels of performance in global supply chain design."