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From Plant to Distributor there are 6 possible routes in the simple example above based upon only 2 transportation alternatives for each link.  allows
any
number of transportation alternatives for each link.
What is a Link?
A Link is a Departure Location (for example, Plant #1) paired with a Destination (for example, Warehouse #1) with no intermediate stops.
What is a Transportation Alternative for the Link?
A Transportation Alternative is one of the ways of transporting a package from the Link Origin (Departure Location) to the Link Destination with no intermediate stops. Transportation Alternatives are one of the inputs to .
How is a Transportation Alternative Defined?
It is defined by the five entities: Origin, Destination, Vehicle Type (for example, a certain type of truck), Carrier (for example, ABC Trucking Company), and a unique identification code (the "ShipRoute") for report purposes.
What are the critical attributes of a Transportation Alternative?
Time and Money are critical to your business and to . Time is the travel time for a departure on a given day. Money is the cost for transporting a given package and may be expressed in a variety of ways in including by package weight, by package volume, and by minimum (and maximum) cost per vehicle trip.
Why would I input anything other than the best Transportation Alternative? Without a tool like the "best" is not known. A slower but less expensive alternative may be "best" on the same day that a faster alternative may be "best" to avoid cancellation of orders by a customer. A larger vehicle, less expensive per package, may be "best" if the ultimate destinations of each item in the entire load has been optimized by . Keeping updated on transportation alternatives for the Link is feasible for humans. will use them to form optimized complete routes as it simultaneously optimizes the rest of the integrated problem.
Why would I input anything other than the Transportation Alternatives that we have already contracted? allows a wide variety of constraints including Carrier Commitments. Wouldn't it be useful to know the bottom-line impact of a contract under consideration? Wouldn't it be useful to know the best alternative for shipments above the number contracted? Wouldn't it be useful for Contracts, Production, and Transportation to provide their respective areas of expertise as inputs to the same integrated optimization? |
