Logistics and supply chain management (Masterclass Gold)

Manage demand and plan ahead by applying the five pillars of planning: strategic networking, sales and operations planning, master production scheduling, order planning, and production activity control.

Allocate human and non-human resources through resource planning. Use capacity planning, capacity requirement planning, nominal and net capacity, queue, and short term and long term measures.

Forecasting guides demand planning by projecting future events and restocking needs using past ERP data, while recognizing patterns like random, stable, trend, seasonal, and cyclical variations.

Account for forecast errors in logistics, using average forecast error and mean absolute deviation, and tune exponential moving average with alpha to reduce deviations.

Learn how consolidation pools goods from multiple routes at a central hub into larger hauls, reducing trucks, congestion, and costs while lowering CO2 emissions.

Plan routes from a terminal by clustering customers for picking and delivery within a traffic area, and apply the sweep method to consolidate goods and load the truck to capacity.

Use the savings matrix to identify the most profitable routes by calculating AB, BC, and AC savings, select AB as highest, then plan routes and trucks.

Apply a network optimization model to minimize shipping costs by defining the decision variables, the objective function, and capacity and demand constraints across warehouses and distribution centers.

Explore how to build and solve a network optimization model in Excel to minimize total shipping cost, using the decision variables, an objective function, and supply and demand constraints.

Explore how terminals function as hub-and-spoke logistics hubs, balancing local and long-distance gates. See how night sorting, gate designation, and inter-terminal links enable around-the-clock cargo movement.

Explore procurement in logistics through supply contracts and market factors, covering direct competition and strategic contracts, fixed price, cost related, escalation, quantity flexible, buyback, revenue sharing, and sales rebate.

Evaluate suppliers using criteria such as product significance and financial strength. Assess quality, process development, technological status, procurement and production processes, and environmental policies.

Explore time delays and the bullwhip effect in supply chains, and how make-to-order challenges, information sharing, and information systems reduce delivery time and wastage.

Explore collaboration concepts in logistics, including optimization of administrative work and materials management with vendor managed inventory and customer managed ordering, plus joint material flow with planning, forecasting and replenishment.