The importance of SAP in logistics planning

Logistics planning is an indispensable part of supply chain management, whereby companies ensure that everything flows optimally.

A few months ago I did an internship at Amcor, a multinational company responsible for the packaging of many of the packages we consume on a daily basis.

Amcor logo

There I discovered a lot of things and learned the importance of planning, raw material control and even the importance of the packaging process.

The programs I used all the time were basically two. Excel to do the planning of the machinery. In the factory there were industrial printers, industrial cutters and an extruder. And SAP, a completely unknown programme for me, I had never used it before and I hardly knew about its possibilities. SAP is a computer programme that falls into the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) category, which stands for enterprise resource planning. The purpose of SAP is to manage in an integrated way the main areas of a large company, such as human resources, financial resources, accounting and administration, logistics and sales.

Thanks to SAP we were able to control the following aspects:

• Raw material supplies.
• Production planning.
• Inventory management.
• Goods delivery planning.
• Real time information for decision making.

One of the functionalities offered by SAP, specifically with its MM and WM modules, is the control of incoming and outgoing goods with records of all movements made and quantified monetarily, optimisation of warehouse space, detecting items with low turnover and controlling shrinkage, improving the level of customer service by reducing stock breakages.

SAP facilities

In short, SAP provides software products and services to solve business problems arising from the global competitive environment, the development of customer satisfaction strategies, the needs for technological innovation, quality processes and continuous improvement, as well as compliance with legal regulations imposed by governmental institutions. In turn, SAP serves to provide information. It feeds on the data that is uploaded and processed within an environment, and then produces useful information that can guide decisions within the environment.

SAP is very broad, thanks to this internship I was lucky enough to learn a small part of this powerful software.

Global Management Challenge

A few months ago, I received the typical email sent from my university:

Are you a university student, and do you want to change the world? Would you like to understand how a company works and learn how to make decisions related to its management?

And as a good restless person, I quickly forwarded the email to two other people who might be more restless than me and would surely be attracted by this proposal of intentions.

And so it was that graduates in Industrial Design Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, and Translation and Interpreting came together to start a challenge completely unknown to them.

But what is GMC?

Global Management Challenge is the world’s largest simulation-based business strategy and management competition. Using the competition format challenges participants to manage companies in a highly competitive and challenging context. Highly contrasted model, certified and used in business schools and universities to train their students in business management.

Participating teams must make decisions as if they were the company’s board of directors. Initially, they receive historical information on their company’s decisions and results for the last five quarters. Based on the analysis of the information, they must define their strategy and make successive decisions over the next five quarters.

Decisions are made at the board level. In each quarter a total of 77 numerical decisions must be made affecting the areas of Marketing, Operations, Human Resources, and Finance, these decisions include:

• Advertising (corporate and products)
• Pricing (products and markets)
• Transportation (containers to distributors)
• Quality (R&D, improvements, assembly, materials)
• Operations (materials, maintenance, shifts, web)
• International Trade (EU, NAFTA, Internet)
• Commercial (recruitment, commission, support)
• Environment (environmental impacts)
• Personnel (recruitment, training, salary)
• Finance (shares, dividends, loans)

The winning team is the one that manages to give the highest return to its company’s shareholders at the end of the fifth quarter of management, this is measured in terms of share value, modified by shares issued and repurchased, as well as dividends paid to shareholders.

In the Valencian Community, 32 teams competed, divided into 4 groups of 8 teams each. After 5 weeks of decisions, the two best teams in each group would advance to the regional final.

My team was lucky or rather, we managed to be one of the teams that qualified for the regional final.

But we did not always have the confidence to go to the final, as you can see in the graph, we did not start very well.

We are the green color, at the beginning we made bad decisions, we reduced the price of the products too much, by doing this, the production did not satisfy the demand and therefore we did not supply the market. As a consequence, consumers were rating our products negatively on the internet and this influenced one of the most important parameters, IP (Investment Performance).

However, as the weeks went by, Outreaching was improving and understanding new concepts that we did not know and we qualified for the regional finals.

We started the contest badly, maybe the logistics were not correct, now we are preparing for the final, so as not to make those mistakes, also now we have more knowledge and not only thanks to the contest but also thanks to our respective training.

The final is this Thursday, March 31, all day long, wish us luck!

What is wasting time?

Human history has advanced through revolutions
searching for the most precious property we have: time.

Computers allow us to calculate in seconds
operations that would take hours for a human being,
cars allowed us to reach our destination faster than on
foot, and then planes excelled cars by reaching greater
distances at higher speeds.

If it is so obvious that the lack of time, the fear that
our lives will end, is the great incentive for the great
advances in society, why do we assume that wasting
time is normal.

A study by the website Get Your Guide has drawn up a ranking in which it tells us how many hours we “waste” waiting in queues in the main tourist cities.

London Eye: 2.5 hours
Anne Frank House (Amsterdam): 2.5 hours
Eiffel Tower (Paris): 2 hours
St. Peter’s Basilica (Rome): 2 hours
Vatican Museums (Rome): 2 hours
Colosseum (Rome): 2 hours
Casa Batlló (Barcelona): 1,5 hours
Sagrada Familia (Barcelona): 1.5 hours
Tower of London: 1.5 hours
Van Gogh Museum (Amsterdam): 1.5 hours
Empire State Building (New York): 1.5 hours
Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam): 1 hour
Saint Paul’s Cathedral (London): 1 hour
Louvre Museum (Paris): 1 hour
Top of the Rock (New York): 20 minutes

And these are just a few tourist sites, but we find queues in many places we use every day, from getting on the bus to getting into class or going to the pharmacy.

Thanks to or because of the last logistics class, I spend time thinking about how to improve some of the queues I see. How long does the customer wait? How long are the servers empty? How much can the system get out? At what rate?

You may delay, but time will not. – Benjamin Franklin

Hyperloop and the logistics of the near future

You have probably witnessed this scene waiting in line at a supermarket: a cashier takes a big wad of bills and puts them in a plastic capsule. Curious, you have followed the fate of the bills with your eyes, which are already inside a tube. The cashier closes the opening and, without blinking, presses a red button. Before you know it, the capsule shoots up the tube and disappears from the scene. 

If you have ever wondered if you could travel like this yourself, you are in luck. Thousands of engineers around the world are working to enable you to travel hundreds of kilometers in vacuum tubes. If it becomes a reality, you would be able to reach a speed of 1000 km/h, traveling from Madrid to Barcelona in half an hour. And all this with electric power and in a more environmentally friendly way than current alternatives. We introduce you to what will be the new means of transportation: welcome to the hyperloop era.

Hyperloop is being designed to become the the world’s least polluting method of large-scale, high-speed transportation. It may be considered to have a greater visual impact than other modes of transportation, however, its design would allow for reduced noise, operational and maintenance costs, and dependence on weather conditions.

Traditional transportation systems are becoming increasingly polluting and are reaching saturation, confirming the need for a new method of fast, emission-free transportation. Given current pollution levels and governments’ commitment to the SDGs, the hyperloop is intended to be powered by renewable energies such as photovoltaics.

• HyperloopTT (USA)

HyperloopTT released the Great Lakes Hyperloop Feasibility Study, which details the economic and technical feasibility of its Hyperloop. The study states that the passenger and freight market will generate sufficient revenue to cover all capital and operating costs with an economic return of 11.8% nominal.

• Virgin Hyperloop One (USA)

Virgin Hyperloop successfully launched a two-seater prototype that was powered by two employees. The Hyperloop traveled 500 meters and reached 172 kilometers per hour in 6.25 seconds. The company says it conducted more than 500 tests in Las Vegas and recently posted a new explainer video on Twitter.

They are planning routes in Dubai, India (between Mumbai and Pune) and in the United States, North Carolina and Texas.

• DP World Cargo Speed ​​(EAU)

Virgin Hyperloop One and DP World partnered to create DP World Cargospeed Systems with a focus on transporting “urgent, high-priority goods such as medical and electronic supplies.”

• Hardt Hyperloop (The Netherlands)

The company participated in the development of the European Hyperloop Center (EHC) in 2020, an innovation center opened in Groningen – The Netherlands. The EHC plans to open a 2.7 km long test track with a loading scale tube suitable for speeds up to 700 km/h in 2023 to test Hyperloop technologies.

• Nevomo (Poland)

Nevomo takes a three-step approach:

A passive maglev train running on existing train tracks at speeds of up to 415 km/h. This hybrid solution allows both magrail and conventional trains on the same track.
Conversion of this train into a vacuum system called “Hyperrail” with a maximum speed of 600 km/h on existing tracks.
Creation of new tracks for Hyperloop so that its vehicles can travel at up to 1,200 km/h.

• Transpod (Canada)

Unlike a traditional hyperloop, the TransPod system uses moving electromagnetic fields to propel the stably levitating pods from the ground surface instead of compressed air. The technology is in the pod and not in the infrastructure.

• Zeleros (Spain)

The startup is currently collaborating with leading companies such as Altran, research centers such as the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPM), and is backed by Silicon Valley investors Plug and Play Tech Center, Climate-KIC, the leading European climate change initiative, and Angels, the investment fund of businessman Juan Roig. It has also joined the acceleration program of Trenlab, the accelerator promoted by Renfe and Wayra, after a call that has had more than 240 registered companies.

Engineering is the tool we humans have to make the most amazing dreams come true. Only it will tell when and how this project can be materialized in a tool that brings us closer to each other, in a more sustainable and efficient way.

The full importance of an epoch-making idea is often not perceived in the generation in which it is made. – Alfred Marshall