Forever pain for supply chain designers and modelers:
– For seasoned supply chain designers, a major hurdle in network design is the time-consuming process of creating a baseline model, which can stretch from 6 to 10 weeks. This often leads to a lack of understanding from both colleagues and management, as they wonder why it takes so long to establish an accurate representation of the existing network. Furthermore, this extended timeline hampers the ability to explore optimization scenarios.
– The reason behind this prolonged duration is that network design tools require a balanced flow of goods in and out of the network. This entails ensuring that, over a specified time frame (e.g., one year), the quantity of inbound goods matches the quantity of outbound goods for each product and site. In reality, such balance is rarely achieved due to factors like excess inventory, new product introductions, or seasonal fluctuations in shipping volumes. Consequently, significant effort is expended in the data-cleansing process, making numerous assumptions to reconcile inbound and outbound flows.
– During this baseline construction phase, modelers often grapple with infeasibility issues, which hinder progress.
– Once the baseline model is eventually completed, the next step involves relaxing constraints and creating various scenarios. In essence, the baseline model primarily serves as a reference for mapping and cost calculations.
Solution:
– The introduction of Sophus has revolutionized this labor-intensive process, reducing it to just one week from the previous 2-3 months.
– In the Sophus platform, there is no longer a need to balance inbound and outbound flows. The new rapid baselining features enable users to construct a baseline model using pure transaction data and rates, allowing for the creation of a financial baseline. This results in a model that provides flow information, output data, and maps, much like a typical model. Users can easily compare scenarios by using maps, output graphs, and charts.
– The feature also eliminates infeasibility issues. The model will now run smoothly, even in cases of imbalances or constraint violations.
Benefits:
– Users save valuable time previously spent troubleshooting infeasible models and attempting to balance them. The significantly reduced baseline building time means that people can allocate their valuable time to creating model scenarios and storyboards.
Contact us for a demo of the rapid baselining and request for a free trial!
