Thanks for sharing Mike! I'd missed this. Great to see the theory being really used, connecting strategy to tactics to ops, etc. and building it into a process - so much cross-applicability even at a much watered down scale. Plus as you mention, to get the CEO of such a company to endorse the OR efforts is amazing! Just a shame they built it in-house, I know a tool that could do most of it ;-)
Looks like Walmart is taking Network Design to a new level leveraging several OR techniques. Right in the alley of a project I'm currently working in which we're looking on how to bridge the long term recommendation (10 yr) vs the year by year plan.
Question: For the simulation engine that Walmart uses to marry long term and execution, is that more like a "scenario management" application but still network optimization running in the background? or is there any discrete simulation (with stochastic variables included) utilized?
Great stuff!!, I really enjoyed and shared within my team!
That is timely that you are thinking about bridging the gap. The Walmart solution sounds like something you could set up. They gave enough details that it sounded like a multi-time period model with the end-state fixed. It may be a bit tricky to set up with all the fixed costs and constraints on the timing of capital outlay-- but possible.
I couldn't figure out exactly what the simulation was doing. It was doing more than scenario management. It helped to figure out the mid-term capacity needs (how much warehouse capacity, trucking capacity). It looked like it did this using inputs from the network design and the load planning. And they iterated a lot-- so I'm guessing they fed it multiple solutions from network design to see which led to good short-term capacity needs.
Unfortunately, I don't think they will publish a paper on this until Jan 2024. They might be willing to share info with you if you contact them.
Thanks for sharing Mike! I'd missed this. Great to see the theory being really used, connecting strategy to tactics to ops, etc. and building it into a process - so much cross-applicability even at a much watered down scale. Plus as you mention, to get the CEO of such a company to endorse the OR efforts is amazing! Just a shame they built it in-house, I know a tool that could do most of it ;-)
Thanks for sharing Mike:
Looks like Walmart is taking Network Design to a new level leveraging several OR techniques. Right in the alley of a project I'm currently working in which we're looking on how to bridge the long term recommendation (10 yr) vs the year by year plan.
Question: For the simulation engine that Walmart uses to marry long term and execution, is that more like a "scenario management" application but still network optimization running in the background? or is there any discrete simulation (with stochastic variables included) utilized?
Great stuff!!, I really enjoyed and shared within my team!
Erik, Great to hear from you.
That is timely that you are thinking about bridging the gap. The Walmart solution sounds like something you could set up. They gave enough details that it sounded like a multi-time period model with the end-state fixed. It may be a bit tricky to set up with all the fixed costs and constraints on the timing of capital outlay-- but possible.
I couldn't figure out exactly what the simulation was doing. It was doing more than scenario management. It helped to figure out the mid-term capacity needs (how much warehouse capacity, trucking capacity). It looked like it did this using inputs from the network design and the load planning. And they iterated a lot-- so I'm guessing they fed it multiple solutions from network design to see which led to good short-term capacity needs.
Unfortunately, I don't think they will publish a paper on this until Jan 2024. They might be willing to share info with you if you contact them.
Good luck with the project.