Supply Chain Scenario Modeler: A Holistic Executive Decision Support Solution

Abstract

McKesson is America’s oldest and largest healthcare services company. IBM Research developed an innovative scenario modeling and analysis tool, supply chain scenario modeler (SCSM), for McKesson to optimize its end-to-end pharmaceutical supply chain policies. Through integrated operations research (OR) models, SCSM optimizes the distribution network, supply flow, inventory, and transportation policies, and quantifies the impacts of changes on financial, operational, and environmental metrics. The modeling work spawned a roadmap of projects with quantified opportunities, including a new air freight supply chain path, and provided new insights that have been critical to improving McKesson’s performance as a pharmaceutical industry leader. A structured data model supporting the OR models has provided a basis for additional improvement projects. The model directly links OR modeling results to a detailed profit-and-loss statement by product category for the different supply chain paths that McKesson uses. Since this effort began in 2009, McKesson Pharmaceutical division has reduced its committed capital by more than $1 billion.

Acquiring supply chain agility through information technology capability: the role of demand forecasting in retail industry

“…In addition to the impact of marketing, certain actions in firm operations also give rise to demand fluctuations. Over the years, trends such as the globalization of supply chains, the explosion of product variety and the shortening of product life cycles have made forecasting more complex and vital (Bernard Trustrum et al ., 1987; Katircioglu et al. , 2014; Chan et al ., 2015; Boone et al ., 2019a, b).…”

Problema de ruteo de vehículos con entregas y recogidas simultáneas para la recolección de leche en Galeras, Sucre

“…Constrains (5) and (6) assures the load and unload in every customer. Constrains 7and (8) establish that it makes impossible to load in the depot and from the site depot is came out with load to be discharged in every customer and the whole recollection is discharged in the depot. Constrains (9) and (10) assure that if an arc is performed by a vehicle then a quantity should be loaded and discharged.…”

“…Authors such as [8] and [9] confirm that in the current supply chains and highly competitive markets, the enterprises should guarantee the efficiency of their resources, increasing the services level to the customers and reducing the lead times and stocks. Similarly, [10] and [11] declare that global optimization of the supply chain has become in the principal purpose for many industrial companies especially the logistic distributions which aim is to reduce the cost and the productivity gain.…”

A review of tactical optimization models for integrated production and transport routing planning decisions

“…However, in today's globalized supply chains and high competitive markets, firms have to guarantee the efficiency of their resources, increasing customers' service level and reducing lead times and stocks. In this sense, the simultaneous consideration of production and transportation planning activities in an integrated manner may lead to increased efficiency and cost savings as discussed by Chandra & Fisher (1994) and reflected in companies such as IBM (Degbotse et al, 2013) and McKesson (Katircioglu et al, 2014), among others. The literature that addresses models for simultaneous production and transport planning is vast, and several state-of-the-art papers have been published on this topic (Bilgen & Ozkarahan, 2004;Bravo & Vidal, 2013;Erengüç, Simpson, & Vakharia, 1999;Fahimnia, Farahani, Marian, & Luong, 2013;Josefa Mula, Peidro, Díaz-Madroñero, & Vicens, 2010;Vidal & Goetschalckx, 1997).…”