The Impact of Product Portfolio Complexity on Fleet Size
Name
Mollard_Bello_2019.pdf
Size
2.98 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
41be0523cb198c1e66e2e95322d2d355
Author(s)
Mollard, Juan
Buitrago, Sebastián
Date Issued
2019
Abstract
The assortment of products that a company offers is one aspect that affects the complexity of their supply chain: the greater number of products, the greater the complexity. This project aims to measure how reducing the number of products affect the multi-compartment fleet size in a construction chemical industry company. The reduction of products, called replacement, was done by aggregating the demand of products that have similar characteristics but different density and concentration, without affecting the revenue. The analysis was performed by running 8 scenarios of a Monte Carlo simulation for each of the 11 plants the company operates. The scenarios accounted for seasonality by running one scenario for each quarter, and for product reduction by running each quarter with and without product replacement. The results obtained show a reduction of 7.2% in the number of trucks required for the operation. Most of the reduction (approximately 90%) is explained by the use of higher density of replacement products, which are more concentrated, and the remainder through more efficient loading due to reduced complexity with fewer products. A sensitivity analysis was also carried out on several parameters, such as average distance per trip and average demand, among others. For this problem context, it can be concluded that other factors such as the reduction of the average distance per trip or the decrease of the time per stop have a greater impact on the reduction of the fleet than the reduction of the number of products in the portfolio.
Subjects
Transportation
Simulation
Strategy
Persistent DSpace Link
