Optimization Tools for Logistics

Optimization Tools for Logistics

Jean-Michel Réveillac

Table of Contents

Cover image

Title page

Copyright

Foreword

About This Book

Introduction

I.1 What is logistics?

I.2 A history

I.3 New tools and new technologies

1: Operational Research

Abstract

1.1 A history

1.2 Fields of application, principles and concepts

1.3 Basic models

1.4 The future of OR

2: Elements of Graph Theory

Abstract

2.1 Graphs and representations

2.2 Undirected graph

2.3 Directed graph or digraph

2.4 Graphs for logistics

3: Optimal Paths

Abstract

3.1 Basic concepts

3.2 Dijkstra's algorithm

3.3 Flyod–Warshall's algorithm

3.4 Bellman–Ford's algorithm

3.5 Bellman–Ford's algorithm with a negative circuit

3.6 Exercises

4: Dynamic Programming

Abstract

4.1 The principles of dynamic programming

4.2 Formulating the problem

4.3 Stochastic process

4.4 Markov chains

4.5 Exercises

5: Scheduling with PERT and MPM

Abstract

5.1 The main concepts

5.2 Critical path method

5.3 Precedence diagram

5.4 Planning a project with PERT/CPM

5.5 Example of determining at critical path with PERT

5.6 Slacks

5.7 Example of calculating slacks

5.8 Determining the critical path with a double-entry table

5.9 Methodology for planning with MPM

5.10 Example of determining a critical path with MPM

5.11 Probabilistic PERT/CPM/MPM

5.12 Gantt chart

5.13 PERT-MPM costs

5.14 Exercises

6: Maximum Flow in a Network

Abstract

6.1 Maximum flow

6.2 Ford–Fulkerson algorithm

6.3 Minimum cut theorem

6.4 Dinic algorithm

6.5 Exercises

7: Trees, Tours and Transport

Abstract

7.1 Fundamental concepts

7.2 Kruskal's algorithm

7.3 Prim's algorithm

7.4 Sollin's algorithm

7.5 Little's algorithm for solving the TSP

7.6 Exercises

8: Linear Programming

Abstract

8.1 Fundamental concepts

8.2 Graphic solution method

8.3 Simplex method

8.4 Duality

8.5 Exercises

9: Software

Abstract

9.1 Software for OR and logistics

9.2 Spreadsheets

9.3 Project managers

9.4 Flow simulators

10: Operational Research Using a Spreadsheet

Abstract

10.1 Note

10.2 Dynamic programming

10.3 Scheduling

10.4 Maximal flows

10.5 Transport model

10.6 Linear programming

11: Dashboards, Spreadsheets and Pivot Tables

Abstract

11.1 The spreadsheet: a versatile tool

11.2 The database: example

11.3 Multiple databases

11.4 Limits to and constraints on calculated fields

11.5 Conclusion

12: Scheduling and Planning with a Project Manager

Abstract

12.1 Reminders and information

12.2 An example: designing and making a machine-tool

12.3 Monitoring the project

12.4 To conclude

13: Computerized Flow Simulation

Abstract

13.1 To begin

13.2 The example we will use

13.3 Entering the project in the ExtendSim 9 software

13.4 To conclude

Conclusion

Appendix 1: Installing the Solver

A1.1 Introduction

A1.2 Microsoft Excel 1997, 2002 and 2003 for Windows

A1.3 Microsoft Excel 2007–2010 for Windows

A1.4 Microsoft Excel 2013 for Windows

A1.5 Microsoft Excel for Mac 2008–2011

Appendix 2: Standard Normal Distribution Table

A2.1 Use

Glossary

Bibliography

Index

Copyright

First published 2015 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Press Ltd and Elsevier Ltd

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address:

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Notices

Knowledge and best practice in this field are constantly changing. As new research and experience broaden our understanding, changes in research methods, professional practices, or medical treatment may become necessary.

Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility.

To the fullest extent of the law, neither the Publisher nor the authors, contributors, or editors, assume any liability for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions, or ideas contained in the material herein.

For information on all our publications visit our website at http://store.elsevier.com/

© ISTE Press Ltd 2015

The rights of Jean-Michel Réveillac to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

ISBN 978-1-78548-049-2

Printed and bound in the UK and US

Foreword

In a society, where the fundamental role played by transport only occurs to ordinary people when it does not work or works poorly, logistics is not subject to prejudice. Citizens do not know the ins and outs of how it works and in most cases barely know anything about it, understanding it to be something vaguely related to the transportation and movement of goods. Constituting a social representation about logistics would require developing not only a view about the geographic division of work, but also creating an awareness about the infinite consequences of the mass consumer system, described by E. Durkheim¹ as a total social phenomenon.

The term logistics covers the three fundamental dimensions of the flow of goods encountered by all companies involved with goods manufacturing: supply, flows within the enterprise – known as production management – and distribution. Any movement – near or far – of people or goods requires the consumption of space, time and energy. Understood as a general discipline for the management of flows, logistics is strange in that its effectiveness is inversely proportional to its visibility. The better it performs, the less it is seen with both local and global economy players only becoming interested in it when, for various reasons, it is unable to respond to the complex problems it is asked to solve.

"Thought stems from action before becoming action once again,"² stated H. Wallon. If there is any universe where this quote is true, this is certainly logistics. Logistics is to transportation and movement what thought is to action. Though, as the section on the history of logistics in this book demonstrates, militaries have for centuries thought about displacing their armed corps, it was not until the second half of the last century and the banalization – in Western societies – of movement, the advent of a global division of work and a globalized mass consumer society that the rationalized organization of flows was imposed as a discipline vital for the productivity of firms. Named in accounts as an expense, most enterprises involved in providing goods still equate it with loss. It is high time that it becomes an asset.

Logistics is constituted from empirical knowledge which is modeled to offer tools to rationalize movement. Each logistics concept or model is immediately faced with the reality of being effective: change the shape of the packaging of your product and we immediately change the characteristics of the transportation. Change suppliers and we change supply chain and storage techniques. Create a new product and we have to remodel our own production chain.

We may face the task of delivering four packages to two different points. Easy! But we may face the task of organizing the rounds of 140 drivers each of whom have in their vehicle (some of which belong to our enterprise, some of which are rented and some of which are subcontracted) over 10 tons of goods divided into over 250 packages that are to be delivered to 50 different points. Some of these delivery points may belong to the same client and be several tens or hundreds of kilometers apart. And so we find ourselves confronted with a puzzle with over a million options. Cartesians would take the straight line and lose time, space and money. Adopting the view of Pascal and modeling management on uncertainty would be better. However, developing a systematic and complex vision of the reality of flows and of their necessity to be really effective requires going beyond the triviality of common sense.

Until the oil crises in 1970s, the demand for transport was increasing daily. Consequently, there was little concern about vehicle fill rate, the pollution caused, the global cost of stocks as long as the trip was profitable.

At the beginning of the 21st Century conditions changed. In the international context of sustainable transport, for reasons of productivity, traceability, quality etc., it is no longer possible to ignore flow optimization, to be unaware of logistics. Knowledge accumulated by logisticians has to be shared, distributed, made common knowledge so that transport can be seen as a fundamental part of sustainable development and an inescapable dimension of the profitability of production. A product can only be called complete when it is available to who needs it: making this product available, logistics is an integral and inescapable part of the industry.

Each and every trade of goods requires information to be exchanged between the players concerned. Nowadays, industry players have to find the best match between geospace – territories and infrastructure – and cyberspace – the virtual word of data exchange.

Logistics is everywhere all the time. Certainly not everything is logistics but there is logistics in everything. However, knowledge about logistics is currently only shared between specialists. The aim of this book is to give meaning to, explain the modeling that is the result of the knowledge accumulated by logisticians and to find real applications for it. Containing countless graphs and images, this book is not merely a collection of decision support techniques: its aim is to bring the knowledge to a wider audience, an audience beyond the experts. My friend Jean Michel Réveillac has in this book purposefully reduced the number of long mathematical demonstrations to make flow management modeling understandable and favor operational research.

Logistics seeks the best match between all the coercive systems involved with movement so as to transform it into accessibility. And this must no longer be improvised because ultimately, in enterprises, it is humans who decide the actions of other humans.

Pascal Mauny

Director of the IUT of Chalon sur Saône

University of Burgundy

August 2015

¹ Emile Durkheim, 1858–1917, French professor of philosophy, considered to be the founding father of modern sociology.

² Henri Wallon, 1879–1962, French philosopher, psychologist and politician, De l'acte à la pensée, 1942.

About This Book

Countless books have been written about logistics, operational research, decision support, graph theory, dynamic programming and so on, but very few have brought together all these domains to present a synthetic view which distances itself from aspects of pure mathematics, though without neglecting it completely, while offering lots of practical exercises.

The majority of the tasks presented in this book can be worked out with a simple calculator, a sheet of paper and a pen or with classic bureaucratic tools such as spreadsheets, or more specialist tools such as project managers and flow simulators.

The techniques presented and their domains of use are many and I am sure that a student, logistician, developer, technician, engineer, computer scientist, decision maker and you, dear reader, will find unexpected practical applications for them in your professional and even personal life.

Target audience

This book is aimed at anyone facing logistical problems related to flow management, decision-making, route or round optimization, meeting an objective when faced with multiple constraints, the creation of dashboards and relevant simulations, etc.

The tasks in this book require a minimum level of mathematical knowledge: a second year student reading science or economics should not encounter any major difficulties. I have tried to keep things simple and get straight to the point when it comes to theory and not concern myself with long, seemingly unnecessary demonstrations.

For the practical exercises, on a microcomputer, a good knowledge of the operating system (path, folders and directories, files, names, extensions, copy, displacement, etc.) is essential.

Lots of the tasks use a spreadsheet and so you will need to be able to use the basic features of this type of software competently. A basic knowledge of how to use pivot table type data handling tools is also beneficial.

If you are a follower of the visual basic application (VBA) language or one of its equivalents, you will be able to fully understand, improve, enrich and create new solutions to certain problems.

Finally, if you know the foundations of database management systems and relational algebra then you will be completely at ease in all the domains we will cover.

The organization and content of the book

This book is divided into two broad parts which have different aims.

The introduction and Chapters 1–8 discuss theory.

They present in turn:

– an approach to logistics;

– an overview of operational research;

– the foundations of graph theory;

– calculating optimal routes;

– dynamic programming;

– planning and scheduling with PERT and MPM;

– calculating flows in a network;

– spanning trees and rounds;

– linear programming.

This first part contains the fundamental concepts required to understand the remaining chapters in the book. Countless examples are presented alongside the theory and each chapter closes with a series of exercises and their solutions.

Chapters 9–13 focus on calculating different exercises using different software, respectively:

– a presentation of the different software for O.R. and logistics;

– operational research with a spreadsheet;

– dashboards with a spreadsheet and pivot tables;

– scheduling and planning with a project manager;

– simulating computer flows.

Each chapter centers around a number of examples built using classic (such as spreadsheets) or more specific software.

The conclusion, as its name suggests, attempts to assess the current state of logistics, its tools and future development.

Appendices 1 and 2 provide some additional information. They detail, in turn:

– installing a solver in Microsoft Excel;

– the table of the normal centered reduced law.

To follow up what was presented above, the bibliography contains a list of internet sites.

There is also a glossary to explain certain acronyms and terminology specific to logistics and operational research.

Conventions

This book uses the following typographic conventions:

– italics is used for quotations, mathematical terms, comments, equations, expressions or variables or theorems presented in the theoretical and practical chapters in the examples and exercises;

– (italics) are terms in a foreign language;

– CAPITALS are used for names of windows, icons, buttons, folders or directories, menus or sub-menus. They are also used for the elements, options or commands in the window of a program.

– bold is used for important terms the first time they are used in the text. These terms are generally found in the glossary at the end of the book.

– The notes are indicated by the keyword: Note. They are used for important comments to add to the explanations already provided.

,which indicates a soft return.

All the figures and tables have a key to help readers interpret them.

Vocabulary and definitions

As is the case for all techniques, optimization tools for logistics have their own vocabulary. These words, acronyms, abbreviations and proper nouns may not always be familiar to readers. Please refer to the aforementioned glossary.

Thanks

I would like to particularly thank the team at ISTE Press and my editor Chantal Ménascé who trusted me. I extend my thanks to my very dear friend, Pascal Mauny, Director of the IUT of Chalon en Saône and Lecturer at the University of Bourgogne, for his time, attention and listening skills and for writing the Foreword to the book.

I would finally like to thank my wife, Vanna, who has supported me throughout the time I was writing this book.

Introduction

I.1 What is logistics?

Answering this question is a difficult task. It is easier to describe its utility, or rather its utilities, and even its uses or roles, of which there are many, than to formulate a definition. Nevertheless, I will try, by referring to various sources. Let us start with a good reference tool, the dictionary.

French dictionary Larousse 2015: "Set of methods and means relating to the organization of a service, an enterprise, etc. including storage, transport, packaging and sometimes supply."

The definition is clear, but vague, so let us look elsewhere.

Encyclopaedia Universalis 2015: "In current usage, the term logistics refers to activities involving the transportation of materials or goods whose domains of applications are primarily military or relating to the military, for example, humanitarian aid during conflicts or famine. However, though logistics remains one of the major components of the art of war, it has since the late 1960s been increasingly practiced in the context of enterprise."

I will not present all the definitions I found in different dictionaries and encyclopedias, but there is one point that must be made: whenever the term logistics is mentioned, another term immediately appears at its side, that is, military.

Let us finish with two other definitions. First, the official definition provided by AFNOR¹ (standard X50-600): logistics is a function "whose aim is to meet the expressed or latent needs in the best economic conditions for the enterprise and for a determined level of service. Needs are of an internal nature (supply of goods and services to ensure the operation of the enterprise) or an external nature (satisfying clients). Logistics calls upon a number of professions and know-how that contribute towards the management and control of physical flows and flows of information as well as methods. Second, the definition found in countless (particularly French) articles, which for my taste remains a bit simplistic as it focuses too much on distribution: Logistics is guaranteeing the availability of a product or service in good conditions, at the right time, to the right place, to the right client, at the right price."

I.2 A history

The term logistics has military origins. It is thought that Baron Antoine Henri de Jomini², a great strategist who published a number of books in the early 19th Century, is its founding father. At that time, logistics consisted of moving armies over a terrain while ensuring they received provisions (food for soldiers and horses, supply of arms and ammunition and simultaneously the implementation of means of transport).

Figure I.1 Antoine de Jomini Source: Wikipédia

Over time logistics has developed and though the term appeared just three centuries ago, some of its techniques seem to have been around since antiquity (Julius Caesar mentioned in his writing the problems he faced getting provisions to his legions).

It was not actually until the 17th Century that the real foundations of modern military logistics emerged (the creation of supply stores, management of horse and vehicle parks, appearance of the service corps).

In the wars of 1870 and 1914, the railway made its entrance and fully participated in the military supply chain, particularly with regards to ammunition.

The war of 1939–1945 saw the motorization of armed forces that were able to travel quickly and across considerable distances, crossing the borders of different countries. The implementation of proper supply chains became an absolute necessity using all means of transport (road, rail, water and air). The multiplicity of transportation processes made a war expanding over an immense geographic area increasingly complex. What is more, a motorized army requires large volumes of fuel. Operation Neptune, for which preparations were made for over two years, turned out to be a real logistical challenge for the military that became critically important. At this time, countless innovations emerged, including, among others, the creation or the arrangement of special means of transport, the design and use of packaging units (containers, palettes, wrapping, etc.) and the design of storage and distribution infrastructures.

During this progress, logistics would join up with mathematics via operational research (OR). Scientists would enter the domain and determine by calculations, while taking into account certain constraints, the key values that would characterize the itineraries, the sizes of convoys, supply rounds, the size of warehouses, etc. Modern logistics was thus born.

As the decades passed, computer science entered the industrial world causing a real revolution. The first planning and scheduling techniques emerged (PERT, MPM, CPM³, etc) and became digitized. The materials resources planning or manufacturing resources planning (MRP method), specializing in combinatorial problems linked to supply management, manufacturing ranges and assembly ranges, combining compounds and components, were used increasingly widely. Its second version, MRP II, became the flagship technique of production management. Stock management and monitoring became increasingly accurate and it was even possible to predict future supplies by statistically organizing purchases and future client demands. Computers made everything possible, with calculations that could not hither to be worked out in a reasonable amount of time being resolved in several seconds.

A notion (that was nevertheless not new) assumed great importance: the flow.

The first oil crisis of 1973 and then the second of 1979 saw the emergence of new methods. Just in Time (JIT), pull or push flows arrived, copying the management systems used in Japan, particularly by Toyota. The main objective is cost reduction; staff in the production chain become players and they are surrounded by machines, automated systems and robots. Less and less work is done manually, machines build other machines as humans monitor, while the quality constraints governed by standards, such as the famous ISO 9000⁴, are respected.

Quality management would lead enterprises to divide up the tasks they perform by following a set of completely standardized processes. Workshops would be reorganized and production would be incessantly improved and increasingly rationalized.

Everything becomes logistics or rather logistics is everywhere. There is no such thing as one logistic, but rather there are logistics: logistics of transport, production, distribution, supply, and so on.

Since 2000, the integration of flow management has enabled digitized simulations of all types of processes to be performed. The internet and local networks favored exchanges and got rid of the notions of distances and borders along the way. Machines, humans and systems communicate, exchange, dialogue, transfer data at exponential speeds and in exponential volumes. This is the era of globalization. Information has become the watchword and it is logistics that supports, creates, transforms and distributes it.

Nowadays, at least two logistics groups exist within companies: logistics of services and logistics of material goods. Both groups are processes that improve distribution, service and information networks to respond as fast as possible and at an optimal cost to an order placed by a buyer. Logistics groups can even go beyond this task by forecasting sales or purchase orders.

All these processes must integrate perfectly with the environment, whether it is human, technological or ecological, while generating a flow of information that will enrich the record of past or future transactions without ever neglecting financial constraints.

Over time logistics has become one of a number of keys to general strategy in the world of business. It became so present that the term logistics strategy was born, using a set of decision-making and tactical principles to make clients extremely satisfied.

I.3 New tools and new technologies

Since the advent of enterprise resource planning (ERP⁵), which