Abstract: A system and method for facilitating facilitating management of innovations and accompanying constituent concepts. An example method includes providing a first user option to define one or more alternate solution categories for one or more concepts, wherein each alternate solution category is associated with an innovation comprising a structure of concepts, and wherein an alternate solution category is associated with an alternate solution structure; providing a second user option to define a concept as an alternate solution concept belonging to an alternate solution category; and associating one or more metric attributes with an alternate solution concept. The user options may be provided via a user interface display screen with additional user interface controls for generating analysis pertaining to alternative concept structures in association with one or more metrics, such as supply chain risk, cost, compliance, fulfillment, and/or other product objectives or metrics.

Abstract: A method for distributed quote management includes receiving a buyer request for quote (RFQ) from a buyer. The buyer RFQ requests a quote from a seller and identifies multiple items. The method includes automatically determining a best cost of each item in the buyer RFQ. The method includes automatically generating a quote for the buyer RFQ using the determined best costs of the items in the buyer RFQ. The method includes automatically generating a bid package for the buyer RFQ that includes the generated quote and automatically communicating the generated bid package to the buyer.

Abstract: Generating an optimized supplier allocation plan includes identifying parts and suppliers associated with an allocation problem, where each supplier can supply at least one part. One or more objective functions are selected. Each objective function has part variables, and each part variable represents a quantity of a part to be procured from a supplier. At least one constraint constraining at least one part variable is received. The one or more objective functions are optimized with respect to the at least one constraint to yield a value for each part variable. A quantity of each part to be procured from at least one supplier is determined according to the values to generate the optimized supplier allocation plan.