HOW MY USUAL DAY GOES

Want to share with you guys my usual day routine and how we can associated with what we had had learn in class. My day might be not that interesting but keep reading if you want to find out 🙂

I usually wake up at 7:00am because I go to the gym from 8:30 to 9:30 (try to :P) and my everyday breakfast is banana oatmeal. I have a reorder point method with my oatmeal because is something I consume every day, when the oatmeal reaches this point(picture) I usually go to mercadona to buy more. Why I use this method? The holding cost of having many boxes of oatmeal would be high for me because I don’t have the available space in my food cabine for a periodic review method and Mercadona is very close to my house, so my transportation cost is low.

In a very busy day I can say that my distribution network is a milk run strategy with a direct shipping, Before going out of the house I will consolidate all the things I need for the day including food, sportswear, school supplies, every day needed things, etc. picking is directly from the reserve areas (my room, kitchen) and then to the consolidating area (my bed) I pack everything with a full truck load(my backpack) and leve.

My First stop is the gym, the transportation cost is going to be low because of my distribution network, but it would be difficult to control all the products I need for the day, I have to get Valenbici because I have a milk run strategy with a full truck load, and Valenbici is my best option to arrive quickly to my first destination.

Later after the gym, I get a shower and go to the library, here we usually get a study room and I notice that every book has their own identification, not necessary from GS1, but having identified each book can improve their inventory controls.

A 2:00 we take a break of studying and go for lunch, sometimes I’m in the mood for a salad in school, the queue sometimes are very long, but they grow due to variability and not disappear due to utilization.

After lunch, I usually go back to my warehouse to reload the truck, this time I only need less than a truck load because I have left only one more delivery of the day.

Later, I go to El Saler and pick up a girl I’m babysitting, here the picking process of the kids is like Amazon’s warehouse, the kids pick you. There are so many kids that their parents usually stay in their meeting point and the kids finds them, this way is more easies, like Amazon drone Warehouse (otherwise it would be impossible to find my kid XD)

Finally, I get back home around 21:00, usually have to get Valenbici, but it’s impossible to find a parking space at that hour, Even though the information flow of Valenbici is quite good, because technologies like their app, are able to communicate the final consumer their availability or parking in real time.

My route layout

 

That’s my usual Monday to Thursday day routine, thinking about it, we can find logistics in everything, it’s very interesting, didn’t notice it before..hope you guys enjoy it 🙂  

Where does the journey start?

Sometimes we ask ourselves this question, and look in the label for an answer, here we can find where the products are produce and maybe who distributes them, but for example if we want to know where does the raw material comes from, or how many transformations process have been, it’s necesarry to have a good traceability process. Also, when we talk about logistics we usually think on how the product starts from raw materials until it reach the final consumer, but we never notice the importance of having the ability to track the products backwards. Many companies don’t think about this situation, or don’t even recognize the terminology.

What is Treaceability?

In simple word Treaceability is the ability to track and trace the source of raw materials to the final destination of the product. The supply chains of products continue to increase in scope and complexity. Companies operate more globally. Trading partners, regulators and consumers need and demand more information about the products they purchase and use. With this added complexity the ability to track the product becomes ever more important. Traceability enables products to be made visible across the supply chain, helps to building the fundamental blocks within quality control the risk management and other types of systems.

What information is need to have an efficient Traceability?

For managing a successful traceability we need three type of information:

• Master data – data which is permanent or relatively constant over time and provides descriptive attributes to the identification of products, parties and physical locations (e.g. name of company, contact details, address)
• Transaction data – data created from trade transactions triggering or confirming the execution of a function within a business process such as loading or unloading, or a business process in a business arrangement (e.g. time of production, best before date)
• Visibility event data – data detailing physical activity of products or other assets answering the “What, When, Where and Why” at real-time (e.g. temperature log)

Besides the theory, I want that you guys understand the importance of traceability. For example in the food industry, if you get sick because you eat a Big Mac, you as a customer go and complain; What should Mc Donalds do? Imagine they do not have a good traceability system, they don’t have all their products identifies with barcodes and they have no idea where does their products come from.

Without this information they don’t know where to start searching for the possible causes of the complain. With a good traceability system where all the supply chain works together and identifies each product, when it comes to looking for possible causes of a problem is very easy, to know the supplier that delivered their product, the exact batch number of the raw material used in that specific Bic Mac, and with this information they don’t have to implement radical general solutions such as closing the restaurant.

If you guys want to know more about traceability and identification, here you can interact in a very dynamic way with all supply chain, and discover all the types of identification needed.

Really cool, check it out —> http://discover.gs1.org/cpg/

Where do we start? – QUESTION

After almost 3 month of logistics class we have seen so many different topics, theory, methods, and information regarding how we can have the best practices of logistics, In my opinion I find this subject very interesting because it’s challenging for me to keep up with all the lessons and try to replicate the excels afterwards (which I find it very difficult) but what I have concluded of all the classes we had is that there is not a correct solution to a situation, there can be many solutions and all of them are correct, it al depends on the situation and the objectives of each business.

But how do we know, whats the best solution? Does it always depend on the option of the lowest price? Does it depend what the client wants?

Taking into consideration the Dulce o Truco task, I imagine myself as a consultant and the firm hire us to manage to all the layout of the logistics process, my team and I always have the same question before doing a logistics task. Where do we start?

What do we have to think first? there are so many topics that my team doesn’t know exactly where to start, they wonder if there’s a standard path to begin with to solve such a wide task, I would like to share what I think it’s an easy way to start.

Where to start?

I think we must start from the end to the beginning in the supply chain process, we need to answer simple questions first.

I know that there can be many other questions regarding each part of the process, but if we start with this basic three questions, we can start designing the layout of each process and further the layout of the hole logistics process.

If someone considers I’m wrong or that I’m missing some basic important information, feel free to complement my answer. 😊

RUNWAY QUEUES

Everyone experience long lines at airports: at the check-in counter, the departure gate, and in boarding a booked flight, but even after we are already buckled in our seats, the waiting may continue — when a plane leaves the gate, the queus continue for the airplane before departure and  after our queues theory class, I wonder if the theory can be apply to the runway queues.

After searching I found about a queuing model developed by MIT that predicts how long a plane will wait before takeoff, given weather conditions, runway traffic, and incoming and outgoing flight schedules. The model may help air traffic controllers direct departures more efficiently, minimizing runway congestion. For example, if a controller knows that a plane is unlikely to take off for half an hour, he may choose to keep the plane at the gate to avoid contributing to runway backups.

Queuing theory include several characteristics like arrival pattern of customers, service patter of servers, queue discipline, system capacity, number of service channels and number of service stages.

The conclusion of the class was that queus grow due to variability and not disappear due to utilization, analyzing the runway queues we can see that almost all characteristics can be control. For example, arrival pattern of customers, in this case airplanes can be control when are they supposed to depart, the queue discipline its also control, the number of service channels it’s the only characteristic that cannot be modified in a short period, the departure runway are usually one or two for all the planes, and they have to manage to organize all the departure and landing towards the airport runway capacity.

Although, the queuing theory can be applied to this case, in my opinion this queue is much more complex not only the departure but the air traffic queues, there have been many accidents because of human error in the control towers and one error can cause possible deaths. Even though it would be interesting to know how exactly they manage such complex air traffic and queues control of the airports…

 

Maybe we can have visit the airport control tower? 😛

 

MIT Model –> http://www.mit.edu/~hamsa/pubs/SimaiakisBalakrishnan_TS2014.pdf

 

CONCERT LOGISTICS – HOW IT WORKS

Two years ago from today I experience one of the most mind blowing concert of my life, Coldplay is one of my favorite bands and being able to see them for the first time was everything I ever imagine, but looking into the logistics that needs to be done I cant imagine how such big performance can get ready so quickly knowing they are in different cities almost every day.

I start to research, and I found out that A Head Full of Dreams Tour had a total of 122 shows across Latin America, Europe, North America, Oceania, and Asia.  They had 109 universal crew, 32 trucks and nine bus drivers; apparently the biggest bands usually have two huge stage set ups which toured around the world. Their entire stage, video and lighting is duplicated so while one stage is being set up in one city the other one was on it’s way to another town ready to be set up in another city. When the show rolls into a city the management employs a local company to supply the local road crew, usually they combine different freight modes—local trucking, cross-country trucking, air freight, and ocean freight.

These cargo companies handle everything from imports, exports, customs and carnets for the tour schedule, using trucks, air and sea freight. Musical instruments, tools and electronics are packed into custom-made steel cases and “work boxes” so they can be transported safely. These boxes are very heavy and the need to stay upright, they are rolled onto pallets and wrapped tightly so they are safe when in transit.

Providing transport for the European tour was supplied 32 Megacube trucks and trailers on the main production, the amounts of equipment being moved (which was in excess of 200 tonnes) means that physically getting the equipment between shows is a limiting factor for booking dates, South America was a touch tricky in that they had on average 20 hours to get 100 tonnes of equipment from door to door.

Not only can inventory and logistics control help the touring company keep track of everything, different technology can also help with promotional activities. Being able to use QR codes that are bound to help raise interest and brand recognition of the musical tour. By using this type of codes the band can give away free downloads of songs or videos, offer discounts for tickets or tour souvenirs, or hold a promotional giveaway for backstage passes, the uses for these codes are really only limited by your own creativity, and they help the tour connect with the exited people attending the show.

Here’s a small video clip of the concert 🙂

https://www.instagram.com/p/BEK2z2gAyPL/?taken-by=valefico320

View at Medium.com

https://medium.com/speedbox-is-typing/the-logistics-behind-concert-tours-7656f488b6c8 https://www.tpimagazine.com/coldplay-a-head-full-of-dreams/

 

View at Medium.com

 

HOW DO THEY DO IT?

I think everyone have made this same question regarding how do the “Chinos” in Valencia keeps their inventory controls, for me it’s always a very big dilemma each time I enter to one of these stores and think about how a nightmare should it be to keep track to every single product they have in their stores. I observe that many products are identify with barcodes but at the same time there are many that are not. I also notice that their inventory controls are manual, there is usually a man counting and writing how many products are in the shelves, can you imagine how much time they must spent counting each product!! It’s crazy!! (can’t imagine their excell sheet) their products may have barcodes, but they do not fully use their advantages and uses, one of them is clearly having a lector and just scanning the barcodes, this make the process much faster, and with a good information system it can keep track of how many products enter the stores, how many are in stock and how many have been sold.

Working for GS1 Colombia for two years had taught the importance of the barcode identification (although there are many other types of identification). It’s really interesting now to notice the type of identification of different products, I’m usually turning over each product and trying to figure out from which country the product is and other details. Before this professional experience I didn’t notice at all the barcodes and didn’t fully understand the importance of them, how do they exactly work and their advantages, I realize most people are like that, and with this blog I want to explain in a simple way why they are important.

Can you imagine if we didn’t have any personal ID? How many Maria’s, Laura’s, Manuel, Javier are in Spain.. how could any institution can fully identify you, Height? Weight? Haircolor? It’s very difficult because there are so many people and so many differences. So, each country has a local ID number right? but what happen if you want to go abroad, you usually go with your passport number because that number is accepted in any other country.

Barcodes works the same way, there are so many different products and so many characteristics there was a need to standardize and make every business speaks the same language. People ask, what happen if I don’t want to use GS1 Codes and identify my products with an internal number, well, it works like the Local ID situation, it can works with your information system but if you want to share your information with other actors in the supply chain or sell your products in other countries, they are not going to understand the meaning of your internal number, that’s why is necessary to have a standardize number for the hole supply chain.

In the Chinos stores is like being back in the time where there was no barcodes and the local stores had to count everything manual, having no control over their inventory levels and having high human errors. Imgine big retail stores like Mercadona counting every product… in each store in Valencia..Imposible! Barcodes really had improve not only the retail industry but also the healthcare, foodservice, and Transport industry, in the Chinos store case they can improve their inventory control system only by using the barcodes that already come with the product and asigning barcodes to the one who don’t have and with a good barcode lector system, it can make less horrible their control process.

This is only one of the many advantages there are of using barcodes identification, inventory control. But we can find many other advantages that can make logistics process more efficient…. interested? stay tuned for next posts 🙂