Functional Overview

The solution includes the following key areas:

• Setting Up Pre Pack Configuration Runs provides a way for users to select product/location areas and optionally specify business constraints.
• Submitted runs get queued for optimization. Progress of these runs can be reviewed in the Run Queue.
• Queued Runs get optimized.
• Users can review and approve resulting Pre-Packs.

Optimization Process Overview

The optimizer estimates the cost impact of different packs for analysis. It evaluates various pack configurations that meet the specified constraints and iteratively performs mock allocations to calculate the store over and under allocation units. The units are multiplied by cost factors that can be overridden during Create Runs (comes with default values). In addition, a cost factor is applied to every pack (based on the Distribution cost factor). The optimizer finds the pack configurations that minimize the total Objective Cost.

The total objective cost for each store is for each combination of pack configurations being evaluated:

• Total Objective Cost = # of under allocated units at the store * under allocation cost factor + # of over allocated units at the store * over allocation cost factor + # of packs needed of each pack type * distribution cost factor.
• The total Objective Cost is aggregated up to the optimization level for each pack combination being evaluated. Note that there are two levels of optimization going on here: Picking the optimal pack configuration combinations and optimally allocating those pack configurations to each store to minimize overall objective cost. The resulting output is the optimal set of pack configurations as well as the resulting store allocations. In the case where fixed pre-packs are specified, the pack configuration optimization part is skipped and only the optimal mock allocation part is performed.