First Phase - Setup

On the Setup page the user can set the basic inputs to create the solution.

Select Products

In the Select Products widget, select products or product groups to consider in the Center of Gravity calculations by using the checkboxes.

Fix Locations

This option is visible only when you have existing resource locations (e.g. DCs). In that case if you want to keep some of them fixed in the calculations, you can set these locations here as CoG.

General Settings

In the General Settings widget you can change settings that are used in both the Multiple DCs Scenario and the Drive Time Scenario.

Transportation Speed - You can change this parameter to represent your average transportation speed. When you hover over the value field, you can see the unit of this parameter (distance-unit/hour).
Primary Distribution Cost - You can change this parameter to represent your primary distribution cost. When you hover over the value field, you can see the unit of this parameter (cost-unit/THU/distance-unit).
Secondary Distribution Cost - You can change this parameter to represent your secondary distribution cost. When you hover over the value field, you can see the unit of this parameter (cost-unit/THU/distance-unit).
DC Running Cost - You can change this parameter to represent your DC running Cost. By default it is filled with the Default Fixed Cost attribute (or 2000000 if the attribute is not specified).

Settings - Drive Time Scenario

For the Drive Time Scenario there are some specific settings. The default values for these settings are set up to give a quick, rough solution to start from. Adjusting the settings can give you a more precise solution, but may take considerably longer to solve.

Grid refers to the generated locations used to solve the model. Time limit controls to how long the computation will go on before giving the best answer found yet. Optimality Gap settings control how close the given answer must be to the true best answer.

Time Limit - After this time, solving the model is interrupted, even if the desired MIP Gap is not reached yet. The default value is 0.08 hour (~5 minutes).
Optimality Gap [Input] - Indicates how fine the solution should be. A lower Optimality Gap gives a better solution, but increases the solving time. E.g. if the Optimality Gap is 5% and the optimal solution is 20 CsoG. The solve will finish when a solution is within 5% of 20 (so 20 + 1).
Optimality Gap [Output] - After solving, this parameter indicates the Optimality Gap of the given solution. This can be greater than the input gap when the time limit stopped the solve before the best solution was found. The output gap is less than or equal to the input gap when an allowed solution was found within the time limit.
Grid Distance - The distance between two locations in the grid. A smaller grid distance gives a better solution, but increases the solving time. Grid cities are generated based on the Grid Distance setting and the Maximum Drive Time. The cities close to a real grid are selected and cities that cannot be part of the solution are excluded (e.g. when there is no customer location within maximum drive time distance).
Extend Search Area - By default this setting is off. Turn it on to extend the search area to a margin equal to the drive time distance. This can give a better solution in rare cases, but increases the execution time. This setting can be of interest when e.g. you have a subset of locations near the border of the 'rectangle' around your data, but no cities close to that subset, while there are cities outside the area (and close to the subset).
Data Passes Date Limit - When your locations are close to the International Date Line (longitude ~ +/- 180 degrees) and they are on both sides of the date line, turn this switch on. Distance calculations will be allowed to cross the date line.