Companies that dare to take the next step
the field of logistics automation will discover new opportunities for
efficiency improvements. Efficiency improvements that were previously
were previously invisible. What this requires is greater trust in systems and
algorithms. Planners will need to be freed from the compulsive urge to
understand everything themselves.
During a seminar organised by the Material Handling Forum at the end of
June, René de Koster, professor of logistics at Erasmus University, gave a
insight into some recent scientific studies. One study concerns
dock planning in a cross-dock operation. For an efficient
cross-dock operation, it is not only the dwell time of lorries that is important,
but also the distances travelled on foot or by vehicle by staff within the distribution centre.
After all, they have to move the goods from one lorry to another
of the other lorries as quickly as possible. It helps if those two lorries are
are parked close to one another.
The retailer’s distribution centre in the
example has 50 docks, whilst 250 lorries need to be
loaded or unloaded every day. The departure times of the lorries that are to
are fixed. What the planners can adjust is the timing and sequence
of the lorries arriving to deliver goods. What they are currently doing is reserving the docks
in the middle for lorries carrying incoming goods from
suppliers. The planners assign the lorries carrying outgoing goods for the shops
to the outer docks. An understandable choice for planners who
want to maintain an overview and keep a close eye on exactly what is happening.
Researchers at Erasmus University have
demonstrated that this is not the most efficient solution. They have
developed an algorithm that does not take into account fixed docks for incoming and
outgoing goods. This algorithm results in flexible scheduling, whereby
a lorry carrying goods from a supplier can be allocated to a
dock where another lorry has just been loaded with goods for
a shop. This planning results in a saving of thirty
per cent in space, time and walking distances. For the retailer in question, the
total cost savings could amount to 2.1 million euros per year.
If the retailer wishes to achieve these cost savings, it will
they will need to take further steps towards automation. Not only
in the planning department, but also on the dispatch floor. Flexible
dock planning can only be successful if it is automatically and accurately
converted into detailed instructions for the staff who
. These staff must learn to rely on the instructions they
they receive via their mobile terminals or headsets, precisely because the fixed
separation of docks for incoming and outgoing goods is being phased out. With
flexible dock planning, you can no longer leave it up to them to find the correct
goods. Nor is this any longer necessary with the automation technologies
available today.
For planners, flexible dock scheduling
also means they must learn to trust the planning system completely, even
even if they no longer understand the reasoning behind it. That will be difficult. Which
planner wouldn’t be tempted to intervene if a lorry carrying incoming
is directed to one of the outermost docks, which runs completely
against the prevailing planning logic? Transport planners struggle with this too, as
a former director of a logistics service provider made clear a while back
. What did his planners do when their system produced a schedule with 28
good and 1 bad journey? Spread that one bad journey across the other
good journeys. As a result, the logistics service provider was ultimately left with 28
bad journeys.
In short: planners will have to learn to stay away
from the schedule. Does that mean we no longer need planners? Of course we do. They
will need to monitor the progress of the process and intervene if unforeseen
circumstances allow. This is known as ‘management by exception’. In addition,
they will play a key role in monitoring the quality of the
planning process, which depends to a large extent on the settings of the
parameters and the quality of the data used as input. Their role will change,
but it will not become any less important.
Marcel te Lindert - journalist logistics and supply chain
