Abstract: Techniques are disclosed for designing a supply chain distribution network. A network design tool may be configured to facilitates strategic decision making for a producer/distributor of a commodity products (e.g., molecular gas mixtures stored in cylinders) by incorporating transportation costs (i.e., operational decisions) into the strategic decision making process. Further, the network design tool may also integrate investment decision costs, which are usually considered ‘tactical decisions’, into the strategic decision process (e.g., which filling tools are assigned to which plant/hub location). The network design tool implements different algorithm approaches allowing a user to obtain optimal, near-optimal, and approximate solutions.

Abstract: Techniques are disclosed for designing a supply chain distribution network. A network design tool may be configured to facilitates strategic decision making for a producer/distributor of a commodity products (e.g., molecular gas mixtures stored in cylinders) by incorporating transportation costs (i.e., operational decisions) into the strategic decision making process. Further, the network design tool may also integrate investment decision costs, which are usually considered ‘tactical decisions’, into the strategic decision process (e.g., which filling tools are assigned to which plant/hub location). The network design tool implements different algorithm approaches allowing a user to obtain optimal, near-optimal, and approximate solutions.

Abstract: Techniques are disclosed for generating a delivery schedule for distributing commodity products to a group of customers grouped by clusters. For example, a distributor/producer of refined gasses distributed via cylinders may create a proposed delivery schedule limiting the days at which product is delivered to different customers. A delivery planning application may include a clustering module a set of input data to generate a set of clusters representing groups of customers, e.g., using a Greedy Algorithm optimized using a Tabu search. Once the clusters are generated, a planning module may be used to affect trucks (or other delivery vehicles) to clusters. A truck affected to a given cluster by the delivery planning application is then scheduled to deliver cylinders to that cluster. The delivery schedule may provide a reusable two-week plan for servicing a group of customers in a supply chain network.