Simulation for analysing transports

by Mathias Bös

In the transport sector, competitive pressure and the competitive situation are extremely high. Transport companies are therefore forced to constantly optimise and further develop their business processes.

One aspect of this concerns transport companies that are active in the contract logistics sector, among others. This involves not only the provision of pure transport services, but also supplementary logistics services such as warehousing, order picking or value added services (VAS). A key cost driver here is the question of the optimal location of the site where goods are stored and picked for one (or more) customers and from where they are distributed to delivery points. The more favourable (in terms of the resulting total transport performance) this location is selected, the more competitive a company can be in bidding for such business.

More and more companies are using new digital planning methods, such as simulation, to find an optimal location or to evaluate the location of their own site. This applies to both shippers and logistics service providers. In this way, it is possible to compare cost and service aspects in the search for the optimum location. In extensive research and development projects (e.g. EffizienzCluster LogistikRuhr), these methods have been standardised so that they are now offered as web services on the Internet.

One such application is the search for a service-optimised logistics location. The delivery points are distributed throughout Germany. Only the address of each delivery point and the annual transport performance are required for the location simulation. The necessary geo-coding of the addresses is carried out automatically by the application (see Fig. 2). The addresses can be provided in MS Excel format for the simulation. For each simulation run, the user can also specify how many locations the simulation should take into account.
As a result, the user receives a detailed analysis for each scenario analysed. One result is the calculated transport performance (in total kilometres) for each scenario (see Fig. 3).

Furthermore, the delivery quantities (for several locations, separately for each location) or the corresponding delivery volume are determined (see Fig. 4 and 5).

For detailed analyses, it is also possible to determine the resulting total length of all delivery tours of a location or their duration (see Fig. 6 and 7).

All results can also be evaluated with costs. In addition to the total transport costs determined, the annual transport costs per delivery point, the transport costs per region, per location, etc. can also be calculated. In further analyses, the impact on the environment can also be determined, e.g. the emissions generated or saved (CO2).