Overview

Safety stock is commonly defined as the spare inventory kept at the stocking locations to buffer against uncertainty in the supply chain. Typical sources of uncertainty in a supply chain are demand variability, transportation and supply leadtime variability, supply quantity variability. Safety stock level depends on the degree of uncertainty, required service levels, supply leadtimes and quantities. Especially in multi echelon supply chains, i.e multiple levels of stocking locations for the same part, the calculation of safety stock is complex.

planLM Safety Stock Optimizer is a nonlinear optimization engine determines the optimal safety stock levels at each echelon of the supply chain that minimizes the total safety stock requirement of the entire supply chain without sacrifizing customer service level targets.

Features

Variability Sources

planLM Safety Stock Optimizer considers uncertainty of demand, transportation, production and supply leadtimes, and production and supply quantities in calculating optimal safety stock levels for each storage location.

planLM Safety Stock Optimizer has inherent modeling support for slow moving parts, which is crucial in service parts industry.

planLM Safety Stock Optimizer also offers various industry specific definitions of service level.

Multi-Echelon Optimization

planLM Safety Stock Optimizer has the capability of considering multiple levels of production and distribution stages, and their effects on each other.

Multi-Period Approach

planLM Safety Stock Optimizer utilizes truly a multi-period approach that enables time varying safety stock requirements.

Scalability of 64bit architecture

Fully utilizing 64bit architecture, there is no operating system based practical limitation on the size of the optimization model.