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Supply Chain Guru is a supply chain modeling and simulation
software application. In Guru, the user enters or imports data about a supply
chain, and Supply Chain Guru predicts the performance, operationally and
financially, of the proposed supply chain. If the current supply chain is
entered in, alternative demand scenarios can be tried, in order to see how the
current operation will function if demand falls, rises, spikes seasonally, for
one product, several products, or entire product classes.
Supply Chain Guru also lets the user try out changes to the existing supply
chain, to see what the impact will be. Thus, users can evaluate what the effect
would have been on last year's financials if they had implemented make to order
instead of make to stock, or if one of the DCs had been closed, or if inventory
had been consolidated on full trucks prior to shipping them.
Additionally, Supply Chain Guru has several built in, "intelligent
search" methods, which will automatically build and try out alternative
scenarios for the user, based on how the user limits (constrains) the search,
and what their objectives are.
The following data is needed to input into Supply Chain Guru to model and
simulate strategic supply chain designs:
Network Structure:
Products - weight, cubic, sales price
Sites - location, type of site
Demand - time and place it occurs, order quantity and required product, and
required delivery date
Network Policy:
Inventory Policy - where (if at all) is inventory stocked, how often is it
counted, when is it reordered, inbound handling costs, outbound handling costs.
Sourcing Policy - where do orders for resupply get handled, which site supplies
which products.
Transportation Policy - how are products transported (LTL, full truckload,
scheduled shipments) and how much do shipments cost.
Manufacturing:
Manufacturing can be modeled using one of three different approaches:
1) Black box: simple manufacturing lead time and production costs are used.
2) Process submodels: manufacturing process is modeled using work centers with
specific capacities, shared resources, and simple set up delays.
3) Detailed material handling submodels: every detail of the manufacturing
process is modeled, including material handling and labor, detailed setup and
work times, labor on scheduled shifts.
There are many other optional modeling elements that can be included to increase
the accuracy and detail of the supply chain design to be evaluated.
Supply Chain Guru does not have a "proprietary" format; it uses
Microsoft's Access and/or Excel as its model files directly, making Guru fully
interoperable with all existing data sources.
Once the model has been simulated, the user can get detailed statistics on
almost every aspect of the model's performance. Some of the standard outputs
produced by the model include:
Financial Summary Report:
· Network profits, total revenues, and total costs.
· Detailed network wide expenses, including production costs, transportation
costs, inventory carrying costs, and warehousing costs (inbound and outbound.)
· Detailed financials split out by site (for all products), and by product (for
all sites): production, warehousing, inventory, transportation costs.
Inventory Levels:
· Detailed time series graphs of actual inventory levels by product, by site,
as far into the future as the model is run.
· Data tables of inventory actual levels by product, by site, for the entire
run.
· Aggregated inventory investment, by site, and for the entire network, for the
entire model run.
· Warehousing space utilization, in cubic units, for each site in the model,
for the entire length of the run.
Customer Service Rates/Levels:
· Customer sales, aggregated by network, product, or site.
· Customer service rates, based on set due date or order cycle time target.
· Lost sales due to stock outs, split out by network, products, or sites.
· Time series graphs of units back ordered, by product by site, or aggregated.
· Data tables of units back ordered, by product by site, or aggregated.
Additionally, statistics about specific manufacturing work center utilization,
work resource utilization, transportation lane utilization, and transportation
asset utilization are available.
Supply Chain Guru can operate as a completely stand alone application. It uses
ProModel's market leading simulation program as the simulation component
"under the hood." Supply Chain Guru essentially builds ProModel
models, runs them, and reads the output, performing the role of "simulation
expert" for the user. The user him or herself never writes any code or does
any programming. If, however, a user wishes to examine the actual model code, or
perhaps even modify and change the underlying model, they can simply open the
Guru-generated simuation model in ProModel. A run time version of ProModel is
included with every Guru installation to support this additional modeling
capability.
With Supply Chain Guru, important and potentially risky strategic changes to the
network can be quantified, evaluated, and selected, in a safe modeling
environment.
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