In today’s fast-paced, unpredictable world, businesses depend more than ever on agile and efficient supply chains. To stay ahead, leaders must navigate global volatility, optimise their operations and build sustainable, robust networks.
Supply chain modelling has become an essential tool in this effort, enabling leaders to create digital representations of their supply chains and analyse how different elements within their networks interact.
Though this can help organisations identify opportunities and improve efficiency, relying on supply chain modelling alone often falls short in driving meaningful change. Leaders struggle to make informed decisions, a challenge worsened by dependence on outdated and expensive tools, which often obscure or hinder the path to optimal transformation.
Traditional supply chain modelling and network design tools cannot typically handle the complexities of modern supply chains, limiting true innovation. Built on linear programming, these retro-fitted tools rely heavily on inputs and steers, forcing leaders to assume what they’re trying to find out.
Consequently, leaders using these tools make assumption-led decisions, causing value leakage across the supply chain.
To unlock the full potential of supply chain modelling and drive transformative ROI, organisations should complement this capability with unconstrained search - powered by genetic algorithms, simulation and scenario exploration. This approach reveals critical insights - identifying potential risks, uncovering hidden cost savings and generating high performing, sustainable network designs that will thrive in our increasingly unpredictable world.
Technologies to Augment Supply Chain Modelling
Scenario exploration: navigating the impacts of change
To guide strategic transformation, supply chain leaders require more than static models; they need a proactive and analytical approach to make smarter, risk-free decisions.
Traditional modelling tools depend on rigid assumptions, limiting their adaptability to real-world volatility. Scenario exploration helps leaders overcome these constraints by simulating various “what-if” situations - from demand fluctuations to strategic shifts like adding or removing facilities, inventory optimisation and transitioning to lower emission transport routes. By exploring these trade-offs, leaders can design networks that maximise efficiency, resilience and sustainability while balancing stock, service levels and costs.
Testing transformation in a virtual replica of their supply chains allows leaders to visualise outcomes of proposed innovation and optimise the initiative before implementation. This de-risks decision making, accelerates innovation and helps businesses gain competitive advantage through improved CX from building more robust supply chains.
Simulation: driving smarter, faster supply chain transformation
With powerful simulation, backed by unconstrained search, leaders can explore thousands of alternative structures in parallel within just minutes. Traditional network design and supply chain modelling tools can, in comparison, usually only generate a few synthetic network designs in the same timeframe.
Unlike one-size-fits-all solutions, our highly configurable technology adapts to each client’s specific needs. This means they can define parameters of transformation and set rules for our simulations, ensuring the insights and visualisations our technology generates helps them drive growth and unlock desired business outcomes.
This is how our groundbreaking simulations reveal the optimal network structure for our clients’ proposed transformations.
Pairing simulation with supply chain modelling, leaders can move beyond reactive firefighting and embrace proactive, predictive decision making. This empowers businesses to better manage uncertainty and thrive despite the unforeseen.
Unconstrained search: unlocking hidden optimisation opportunities
Most supply chain modelling and network design tools rely on inputs steered by legacy assumptions and groupthink, limiting capacity to explore a vast range of alternative network structures and scenarios.
Unconstrained search, powered by genetic algorithms, overcomes these constraints and can explore thousands of network configurations without limitation. Through crossover and mutation, the system continuously evolves toward high-performing network designs that are significantly more resilient, cost-efficient and sustainable.
Breaking free from constraints with powerful network design technology
Traditional, one-size-fits-all network design and modelling tools limit businesses from uncovering hidden optimisation opportunities. SimPath, our revolutionary network design technology for complex supply chains and logistics networks, is changing the game.
Powerfully combining network science, supply chain modelling, simulation, scenario exploration and unconstrained search, SimPath enables leaders to break free from legacy constraints, and uncovers high performing network designs for proposed transformation.
By leveraging unconstrained search and genetic algorithms, SimPath applies principles of natural selection to generate optimised structures that evolve over time. This approach allows businesses to maximise trade-offs between KPIs such as cost reduction, carbon footprint and operational resilience, ensuring that supply chains remain future-proofed for long-term success.
The AI driven insights from our digital models help uncover rules of thumb across the most performant synthetic networks, revealing drivers of high performance. Our clients use these heuristics to inform strategic decision making and drive transformation with confidence.
The future of supply chain modelling has arrived
In an era of increasing complexity and disruption, SimPath stands out as a critical tool for businesses striving to overcome unique challenges and drive impactful transformation.
For supply chain and logistics leaders looking to reduce costs, manage uncertainty and accelerate Net Zero targets, our groundbreaking technology offers a unique approach to network design.
The insights from our digital models enable leaders to challenge legacy assumptions, cut through complexity and drive innovation with confidence. This creates transformative value, helping our clients save hundreds of millions each year.
Ready to take the smarter path to supply chain transformation? Book a demo today to see our technology for yourself.
