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Supply Chain: A supply chain is a network of facilities
and distribution options that performs the functions of procurement
of materials; transformation of these material into intermediate
and finished products; and distribution of these finished products
to customers. (Source: Ganeshan & Harrison - Introduction
to Supply Chain Management)
Optimization: An algorithm or process for determining
the best solution among alternatives, or the extreme value of
a variable or an objective function.
Supply Chain Optimization:
An algorithm or process for finding the best configuration of
a supply chain network.
Supply Chain Guru incorporates a powerful network
optimization capability directly into its interface.
You import or enter configuration data about your supply chain
network into a Guru model (or work directly in MS Excel, Access,
or using SQL).
Then, press the optimization button and Guru will
automatically build and solve the network optimization
model.
Results are automatically extracted and summarized
into the Guru tables. You can quickly look at solution summaries,
or dive down for an in-depth look at the details.
Guru has extensive scenario analysis capabilities
to streamline the process of analyzing your results. You can use
built-in scenario generation tools to quickly create numerous
alternatives, and then use batch-run capabilities to optimize
all of them automatically. Supply Chain Guru is the premier tool
for the Supply Chain Strategy professional looking for maximum
productivity, power, and efficiency.
Supply Chain Guru uses Mixed-Integer / Linear
Programming (MIP-LP) to solve the extremely complex supply
chain optimization problems. MIP-LP is a mathematically rigorous
algorithm that is guaranteed to find the global optimal supply
chain network structure. This is not a lightweight tool for surveys
and supply chain learning games—Guru tackles the most complex
and challenging applications in the industry.
Guru’s optimizer is “Industrial Strength”,
and can be ported to run on 64 bit systems for even bigger problems.
Additionally, Guru’s excellent and (over) educated supported
staff helps its customers with their difficult models, often finding
helpful techniques to tune-up the algorithms and make the models
run even faster.
In addition to the standard, commonly supported
network optimization modeling components, Supply
Chain Guru has additional capabilities making it the most unique
and powerful network optimization package in
the industry. Here are just a few of the many elements and constraints
in Guru’s powerful network optimizer:
- Facility sizing: set up “multi-level”
facility cost-capacity curves
- Use weight, volume, or quantity
as the throughput basis for capacity constraints
- Product specific conditional minimum
and aggregate conditional minimum flows for true multi-modal
transportation optimization
- Detailed, multi-level BOM support
- Manufacturing work centers and routings
which can model multi-step production and value add processes
for far more accurate capacity constraints
- Ability to create custom constraints
and view the model formulation directly
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- Geographical interface and mapping for visualizing
results
- Flow Chart-style interface for an interactive
“Business Process” view
- Table views and access to optimization details
for a more in depth investigation into results
- Batch running of optimizations: setup up 50 scenarios,
and kick it off to run automatically!
- Model Compare does direct comparisons of all
model input and output tables, highlighting what exactly has
changed from one scenario to the next
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