Trucking Optimization

From UG

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Revision as of 22:42, 12 May 2010

Core Business Requirement

It is required to optimize total cost of domestic trucking business within one country (focus on USA now) for one company's supply chain for given time frame (let's say one year).

It is assumed that there is a constant flow of orders: O1, O2, ... , Oj, ...

Each order is about moving specific amount commodities (cargo) characterized by set of parameters: {Weight, Pieces (Num of palets + loose), Volume, Available Date, Due Date}

Commodities are to be moved together from Pick Up location to Delivery location.

For given Client Company there is a limited set of Up locations (origin doors) {od1, od2, ... , odN}

For given Client Company there is a limited set of Delivery locations (destination doors) {dd1, dd2, ... , ddM }

There are limited number of carriers (trucking companies) {tc1, ..., tcK} that can service country.

Each trucking company has its own tariff so we are dealing with {tct1, ..., tctK} - set of tariffs.

...

Suggested solutions

Number of things can be done to reduce total cost. For example:

use economy of scale to move less frequently in as large truck as possible as full as possible
use milk runs
use hub and spoke
etc (see more here: Business_Process_and_Use_Cases_for_NATP#Transportation_options)
find carrier that charge less for selected trip

Phased approach

We follow phased approach which means that in every Sprint we add new optimization methods or improve existing ones.

Phase A

This phase was released to production on May 1.

In this first phase we added version 1 of Trucking_Optimization_Report. It is designed for Business_Process_and_Use_Cases_for_NATP#One_destination_and_milk_run_at_origin method.

Read Trucking_Optimization_Report article for more details.

Phase B

Number of features were suggested and partially designed - see below.

Trucking Optimization Report Version 2

In this phase it was suggested to add version 2 of Trucking_Optimization_Report. It is based on the concept of #Zones.

Main difference is to improve precision in defining "pick up zone" for milk run by defining zone not as a state but as an any number of pick up locations that are "not too far from each other" on the map.

See Trucking_Optimization_Report#Version_2_that_is_based_on_Zones

Zones

See attempt at designing Zone object here: Zoning.

Alerts

This would complement (or replace) user's task to run Trucking_Optimization_Report periodically or receive/review from Scheduler.

Some ideas from Tira - see below.

It is an alert notification that system tells users that shipments in a particular zone location are ready to pick up. System will send an alert via email as well as show on the dashboard when there is enough shipments to fit on at least one truck. System will consider delivery location zone and pick up location zone; it is a pairing of Delivery Location zone and Pick up Location zone.

Each time shipment is created with the weight, cbm, and/or pallets information, these info will be added to a table and calculated.
- Each table is a combination of delivery location and pick up location zone
The calculation result meets the minimum space to fit in one truck
System should be able to calculate and provide information about:
- what size of truck to send
- how many trucks to send
- require Haz driver or not

NOTE: It should be automatically alert real time when there is enough shipments (pallets) that need to be pick up.

Dashboard

Dashboard is simply a page where we summarize important current info, post alerts, maybe maps, etc.

Some ideas from Tira - see below.

Create a dashboard that indicates a pair of delivery and pick-up zones, showing weight, cbm, pallets with a traffic light
Traffic light indicates whether shipments are ready to pick up
Dashboard will indicate the zone that needs to be pick up and delivery regarding due date
Zones should be sorted by the earliest due date to latest due date
Dashboard should be able to view information

Table of zones, pallets information with traffic light, how many trucks will it need and what size of the truck and Haz driver is required or not
bar and or pie charts
custom maps indicates locations, zones, number of pallets that need to be pick up and number of pallets that need to be deliver at particular location. This can be indicated by color and symbol to differentiate the locations and zone, etc

Phase C

Trips

We probably need this new business object in the system to support new features. It would describe one trucking trip from door to door with any number of pick ups and drop offs on the way.

To support this we need to add new fields to CT to be able to record any number of stops (with date/time, stop address, what commodities were picked/dropped, etc)

Visualization

Google Maps - display moves, location on the map.
Maybe Charts - TBD

Etc

Add "delivery zones" to support milk run at delivery.

Support all options from here: Business_Process_and_Use_Cases_for_NATP#Transportation_options

Use "rates module" (currently in development) to calculate rates for each carrier automatically, suggest cheapest to operator and display all if required.

Phase D

More automation.

New strategies.

Extensive use of math algorithms.

Find and apply best solutions found in industry and academia.

Preliminary Design

Preliminary Design Phase A

This phase is in production.

Preliminary Design Phase B

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Preliminary Design Phase C

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Old links and material