Determination of best transportation guidelines
Embodiments of the invention include a system to determine the best transportation guidelines for shipping a set of resources from a source location to a target location. The system may include sorting a set of shipping guidelines based on the cost of shipping the set of products. The best transportation guidelines may be selected based on a combination of the best cost and best utilization of transport capacity.
1 . An apparatus comprising:
a demand order module including a set of products to be shipped to a target location;
an order guideline module including a set of constraints for a shipment from one of a set of a source locations to the target location;
a route determination module to select the set of source locations having the set of products based on a cost factor and a utilization of a capacity of a set of transports; and
a processing device to execute the route determination module.
2 . The apparatus of claim 1 , further comprising:
a storage device to store at least one of the demand order module, order guideline module, and the route determination module.
3 . The apparatus of claim 1 , further comprising:
a loading module to simulate a loading of the shipment of the set of products into the set of transports.
4 . A method comprising:
identifying a set of source locations having a set of desired resources for a target location;
prioritizing a set of shipping rule groups based on a cost factor associated with the set of source locations and the target location; and
selecting a subset of the set of source locations and a subset of the shipping rule groups based on the cost factor and a utilization of a capacity of a set of transports.
5 . The method of claim 4 , wherein selecting comprises:
searching iteratively through the set of shipping rule groups in order of priority for a shipping solution.
6 . The method of claim 4 , wherein selecting comprises:
simulating iteratively the fulfillment of each group of the set of shipping rules in priority order until the set of desired resources is loaded into the set of transportation units.
7 . The method of claim 4 , wherein the set of shipping rule groups includes a default group of shipping rules.
8 . The method of claim 4 , wherein the utilization of the capacity of the set of transports is a maximum utilization.
9 . The method of claim 4 , further comprising:
altering a size of a shipment to utilize a maximum capacity of the set of transports.
10 . An apparatus comprising:
a means for determining a set of source locations of a set of resources;
a means for ordering a set of shipping rule groups based on a cost of shipping to a target location from the set of source locations; and
a means for selecting a subset of shipping rule groups based on the cost of shipping the set of resources from a subset of the set of source locations to the target location and utilization of a set of transports.
11 . The apparatus of claim 10 , further comprising:
a means for simulating the loading of the set of transports.
12 . The apparatus of claim 10 , wherein the set of shipping rule groups includes a default shipping rule group.
13 . The apparatus of claim 10 , further comprising:
a means for determining all source locations having the set of resources.
14 . A machine readable medium containing therein a set of instructions which when executed cause a machine to perform a set of operations comprising:
identifying a set of source locations having a set of products for a target location;
prioritizing a set of order guidelines based on a cost factor for shipping the set of products from the set of source locations to the target location; and
determining a subset of order guidelines based on the cost factor and utilization of a capacity of a set of transports.
15 . The machine readable medium of claim 14 , having further instructions stored therein, which when executed cause a machine to perform a set of operations, further comprising:
searching iteratively through the set of order guidelines in order of priority for a shipping solution.
16 . The machine readable medium of claim 14 , wherein the set of order guidelines includes a default order guideline.
17 . The machine readable medium of claim 14 , wherein determining comprises:
simulating iteratively the fulfillment of each order guideline from the set of order guidelines in priority order until the set of resources is loaded into the set of transports.
18 . The machine readable medium of claim 16 , wherein no product of the set of products is associated with more than one default order guideline.
19 . The machine medium of claim 14 , having further instructions stored therein, which when executed cause a machine to perform a set of operations, further comprising:
altering a size of a shipment to utilize a maximum capacity of the set of transports.