Optimiser for Minimising transport cost & transit Time:

Ashutosh

Hi All,

I've one situation where I need to build a optimizer which will minimise the transport cost & transit Time, Below are the details:

Inputs : 1) Factory Supply Qty 2) Distribution center Capacity 3) Applicability of mode of transport from Factory to Distribution Center - Mode of Transport i.e by Air, By Road or water 4) Cost of transportations by each mode from factory to distribution center 5) Lead Time i.e transit days from factory to distribution

Variable : Volume allocation on the basis of capacity, supply , lead time & Cost

Constraint : Max Capacity, Minimum Transportation cost, Minimum lead time & feasibility of mode of transport.

Can anyone give idea how to achieve this ?

Thanks

Ashutosh

Ingilavicus

Hi Ashutosh,

Sounds to me that you have a conflicting objective, minimum cost + minimum time, as probably min cost = max time and min time = max cost. The optimizer takes one single value to optimize so you have to figure out a way how to translate them both in a single value.

Based on your current description it's hard to say how far along are you in defining the objective function, but I would try to add some cost calculation to time, so you have to figure out a logic that would match your case where you monetize the transit time, this giving you the best blended option of cost+time.

Hope this helps to spark some ideas.

Andris