Release Notes

SC Navigator 4.03.06

Date September 19, 2023

• Bug Fixes

  • The data for Base Case Volume was not handled correctly when it was specified for {To location} group. It was handled as a regular group, meaning that the model was using the same value for each to-location in that group. In most cases, this would lead to an infeasible model.

SC Navigator 4.03.05

Date September 15, 2023

• Improvements

  • On page Results - Warehouse, the minimum of the y2 axis is now set to 0 for the Throughput and Inventory chart.

• Bug Fixes

  • The backwards compatibility logic did not copy the "use description" settings from the configuration to the dataset.

  • Switching Business Units could lead to the loss of dataset type information, which can result in Network Scenarios failing to load correctly.

  • The Rate Card data validation has been updated. There will now just be a warning if a package does not fit in any rate card band and there is another mode of transport available between the locations for the product and period combination. If there is no alternative lane, the validation still gives an error.

  • The model would return an incorrect fatal error when loading a dataset that had a {product group} capacity specified for a transportation type that uses rate cards.

SC Navigator 4.03.04

Date September 8, 2023

• Improvements

  • The Excel input template now has a filter set for each attribute and the top row is frozen by default.

• Bug Fixes

  • On page Results - Warehouse, the opening inventory was incorrectly calculated for group periods.

  • On page Data - Customer, after adjusting demand or lead time, the demand or lead time was not updated when the data was not saved in a dataset.

  • In some cases, when a result dataset was loaded, the order of period elements changed. This could cause the model to become infeasible.

  • The E2E volumes could be incorrect in models when there were multiple Production Facilities in one location.

  • The dialog to notify you about a new version could incorrectly appear after loading a results dataset.

  • The data validation for Forced Flow and Base Case warehouse data no longer gives an error when inventory for the product is present at the warehouse with conflicting Force Flow or Base Case Volume.

  • A model that took more than an hour to optimize would result in an error and no results would be retrieved, even when the timeout limit was set to something higher than 1 hour.

  • The Minimum and Maximum Capacities for Mode of Transport groups are now functioning properly.

SC Navigator 4.03.03

Date August 25, 2023

• Bug Fixes

  • Loading a previously saved Results dataset, could trigger an error stating "value '' is outside the range domain set". This error led to improper loading of the result data.

SC Navigator 4.03.02

Date August 22, 2023

• Improvements

  • The Manage Data page and the Select Results Dataset dialog now only show results datasets that the user can load. A user can load all self-created datasets and datasets that were shared by other users when pushing the 'Results Visible for Everyone' toggle when saving the dataset.

  • More Data Validations for negative input data have been added.

• Bug Fixes

  • In some rare instances, when solving the base case model, it was possible to receive a warning "A problem occurred during the optimization", or the model could be incorrectly noted as infeasible.

  • In some cases when there was inventory cover specified, the model could be incorrectly noted as infeasible.

  • When there was inventory cover specified for the last period, an incorrect data validation message occurred, while in that case the model is just feasible as well.

SC Navigator 4.03.01

Date August 10, 2023

• New Features

  • The application now offers the ability to define roundtrips for transportation. This allows you to define opportunities for backhaul trips with own or 3rd party products. The optimization then takes these backhaul/roundtrips into account. More information about the Roundtrip functionality can be found in the documentation: SC Navigator - Roundtrip Functionality.

• Improvements

  • The background color for tooltips in map widgets has changed for better readability.

  • The generated template is now called "Template SC Navigator.xlsx" instead of "Template SC Navigator Input of Default configuration for SC Navigator.xlsx". You are still free to change it to any name that you want to, but we believe that a shorter default name would be better.

  • The Control Panel page has been redesigned. Several widgets moved to a different, more logic, position and there are two major changes:

    1. The data from widget Run Time Options is now located at the bottom part of the Model Control widget.

    2. Instead of always showing three Custom Objectives by ... widgets, we only show one, but with the ability to control which one to show via a widget action.

  • The KPI dialog page no longer shows the Custom Objectives table if there are no Custom Objectives in the model.

• Bug Fixes

  • In some cases, the data validation that checks whether there are multiple rate card drop sizes associated with a transportation lane, could incorrectly result in an error.

  • When setting all data for an attribute to 0 without first saving the data to a dataset, could result in the original value being used.

  • On page Results - Warehouse, in the Capacity Violation - All Periods chart (top left), an inactive warehouse could be marked good (green) instead of inactive (gray).

  • On page Scenarios - Transport, the middle widget (in which you can specify the change for an attribute) becomes invisible when the selected attribute does not include data. This made it impossible to create scenarios for empty attributes.

  • After a batch run, the map on the main Results page did not show the lanes because the Period Slider was no longer initialized.

  • For some users, the Product Update dialog page was shown multiple times for the same SC Navigator version. SC Navigator will now show this page only once, the first time a version is opened by a user.

  • In some rare cases, the data on the 'Results - Cost To Serve' page and the 'Results - End To End' page could be inconsistent with the rest of the results.

  • In some cases, the Main map customizations were not initialized and could get lost when a dialog page was opened.

  • On the Cost to Serve page the table header was not consistent with the value that the column showed. Now it is corrected and the value in the column depends on the selected objective filters.

  • In some cases it could happen that the included objectives may not have been consistent with the Model objective. Now the appropriate objectives are included.

SC Navigator 4.02.04

Date July 25, 2023

• Improvements

  • A new button has been added to the Data Issues page to rerun data validation before saving the dataset. The button is only available if the data has not been saved yet. It allows you to trigger the data validation manually after you have modified the data in the browser in an attempt to fix any data issues that you had before.

  • Previously, data validation ran when new data was loaded, but there was no data validation before the data was saved. Now if the data is modified before saving as a dataset, the data validation will be rerun.

  • The Excel file created via Download Solution contains two new sheets: BOM Product and Production BOM. BOM Product shows how much of each product is created or consumed for each Bill of Material. Production BOM provides insight on how much of each bill of material is produced at each production facility and its impact on the capacity and cost.

  • When selecting Maximize Cost on the Control Panel page, it automatically checks all objectives to be included in the objective.

  • In cases where the model had two equivalent solutions, one with 'In Use' true and the other one with 'In Use' false, the model did not always pick the expected solution ('In Use' being false). This can happen if the Volume is zero, but there is no Fixed Cost, no Minimum Throughput and no Force Open. In that case, the model could decide to either open or close the facility. In the new version, it will set 'In Use' to false.

  • On the Control Panel Scenario page, it is now possible to also use '% Change' and 'Value Increment' to create scenario data for the selected attributes: Min and Max Locations/Suppliers/Warehouses/Productions. Previously 'Value Overwrite' was the only option.

  • The performance has been improved for models where 'Maximum # of Source Locations' for customers is used.

  • The performance of the optimization has been been improved, especially for datasets without inventory.

  • Filters on the main map have been updated for a better user experience.

  • On the Supplier/Production/Warehouse Results page, Capacity is added to the top right and lower left bar charts and their tooltips.

  • On the Warehouse Results page, the layout of existing tables has been improved, and a new table 'Stock Progression' is added to the bottom of that page.

• Bug Fixes

  • The data validation for Forced Flow and Base Case Volume has been improved.

  • The data validation message "FATAL: Attribute 'Variable cost is for all steps' is not consistent for all steps in sheet 'Production'." did not have details in the bottom table on the Data Issues page.

  • The data validation message "ERROR: A transportation lane has negative capacities or negative 'Base Case Volume'." did not have details in the bottom table on the Data Issues page.

  • The data validation message "WARNING: A warehouse or production has data, but it is not warehouse available nor production available." was incorrectly generated for productions or warehouses with curly brackets.

  • Data validation has been added for the Force Close attribute.

  • The Force Close attribute was sometimes incorrectly linked to the Force Open attribute.

  • All filters are now reset after loading a results dataset.

  • On the Cost To Serve page, in chart Total Revenue and Cost, the tooltip had the incorrect label Revenue, while it should have been Cost.

  • On the Transport Results page, the bar chart sometimes showed incorrect data.

  • On the KPI Overview and Cost to Serve pages, sometimes the charts could become empty after loading a results dataset.

  • On the Location Product sheet the attribute description for 'Max # of source locations' and 'Max # of destination locations' has been improved.

  • When creating scenarios, curly bracket groups were treated as regular groups. As a result, the scenario data was applied to individual elements in those groups, instead of applying it to the group as a whole.

  • The 'Apply Transport Scenario' page action caused the model to use incorrect transportation data.

  • The 'Load Warehouse Scenario' page action was not able to retrieve the correct scenario data, resulting in no changes being applied to the Warehouse Scenario.

SC Navigator 4.02.03

Date June 23, 2023

• Improvements

  • On the Customer Scenario page, when creating scenarios for 'Minimum Fulfillment Rate', the 'Value Increment' and 'Value Overwrite' that were fractions previously, are now percentages. A % sign is displayed such that the user knows what type of value to enter.

  • The description about attribute 'Minimum Fulfillment Rate' in sheet 'Customer Product Data' now explicitly states that this value must be expressed as a fraction or as a percentage (in the Excel input template).

  • On the Customer Data page, the user can now directly change demand and lead time after loading an Excel file. Previously, this was only possible after saving the data as an input dataset.

• Bug Fixes

  • In some special cases, the infeasibility analysis incorrectly showed a capacity violation while there were no capacities specified.

  • The attribute 'Variable cost is for all steps' has been added to the Inventory sheets.

  • If there is a product with inventory cover, we validate to make sure that there is inventory available for it.

  • The data validation process used to take an excessively long time when dealing with datasets that contained a large number of locations and products. This data validation has now been improved.

  • On the Customer Data page, the Demand Adjustment and Lead Time Adjustment tables could still show data after a new dataset was loaded.

SC Navigator 4.02.02

Date June 9, 2023

• Improvements

  • On the Cost to Serve page, if you select a location on the map or the filter side panel, both charts and tables are now updated based on the selection that was made.

  • The attributes Force Open and Force Close are now always visible on data pages after loading input data from an .xlsx file.

  • On every filter side panels, single elements are now alphabetically ordered.

  • The documentation is improved and extended. At Template-Attributes you can read about the different attributes that you can find in the Excel input template and throughout the SC Navigator app. This will help you understanding what effects the different attributes have and how to use them. Furthermore, some smaller improvements are made to the documentation, like links to guide you to the right topic.

• Bug Fixes

  • On the Cost to Serve page, the selected node on the map is now highlighted in a different color, such that you can easily identify the node that is selected.

  • When 'Variable cost is for all steps' was set, the 'Variable Cost' columns on the result pages were incorrect. The model results and the total cost over all steps were correct, but the costs were incorrectly distributed over the steps.

  • On the Supplier/Warehouse/Production/Transport Scenario pages, certain group elements were excluded from the scenario creation if they did not have the 'Available' attribute specified. With this fix, all group elements, regardless of their availability status, can now be included in scenarios.

  • When using 'Variable cost is for all steps' there was no data validation to check if the 'Variable cost is for all steps' attribute is set for each step. Now the attribute must be defined either for each step or for none of them.

SC Navigator 4.02.01

Date May 30, 2023

• New Features

  • The Force Open and Force Close attributes can now be defined for Inventory and Inventory Product. The conditional constraints for inventory and inventory product now depend on the Force Open attribute for Inventory.

  • The application now supports groups for Modes of Transport and Suppliers. This means that if you generate a new template you will see two new sheets "Supplier Groups" and "Mode of Transport Groups", where you can specify the group definition. You can copy them to your existing sheet, if you want to. This allows you to specify data for the complete group, specify data for the group elements, and you can filter on the group elements.

• Improvements

  • The KPI Summary Dialog has a new improved layout.

  • On the Data - Transport page, the Source of Distance and the Source of Duration columns are added to the Trip Data table.

  • On the Results - Transport page, Source of Distance, Duration and Source of Duration are added to the tables whenever there is Distance data available.

  • On the Results - KPI Overview page, the (weighted average) Duration is added to the Transport tables whenever there is Distance data available.

• Bug Fixes

  • In some cases, it was not possible to load a scenario from the status bar, because the scenario category was not passed correctly to the loading scenario action. Now it is, so scenarios can be loaded from the status bar.

  • The optimization model was not using the steps in a correct way. For example, Step 3 was preceded by Step 1 instead of Step 2 so in the template the steps had to be in ascending order. Now the steps are always numerically ordered, such that the model will use them in the right order.

  • On the Results page Node Filters side panel, all node types were visible in the Filter by Node Type widget, regardless of the data in the loaded dataset. Now only node types related to the dataset are visible.

  • The color of each node type was very similar. We changed the default color of the node types, such that they are easier to identify on the map.

  • Reset map to default scale did not work. Now pressing Reset map to default scale restores the default zooming scale.

  • The maximum size of the dots on the map was too small. The maximum value has changed from 100 to 400 in the Adjusting node size option, such that the nodes can have a bigger size.

  • When single/multi sourcing is enabled, the optimality gap by default is 0.01. When multi sourcing is relaxed, it will be set to 0.001, while for relaxed single sourcing it remained 0.01. This is now made consistent, so for relaxed single sourcing the default optimality gap is now also 0.001. When the optimality gap was specified in the input Excel data file or when it is set manually on the Control Panel page, that value will be used and the defaults are ignored.

SC Navigator 4.01.04

Date May 11, 2023

• Improvements

  • The Take or Pay transportation cost can now be combined with regular transportation cost. This gave an error in the previous versions of SC Navigator.

  • It is still not allowed to combine other transportation costs. However, this now leads to a fatal error, instead of just an error as the application did previously.

• Bug Fixes

  • The Unit of Distance was not taken into account correctly for distances generated by Location IQ. This means that all those distances were in kilometers, even when the Unit of Distance was set as mile.

  • In the rare situation that the model decided that a lane was open, but with zero flow, the model could present the user with an incorrect "A problem occurred during the optimization. Please contact support." message.

SC Navigator 4.01.03

Date May 8, 2023

• Bug Fixes

  • In some cases, the Results table on Data - Manage Data page was not showing at all, while there was data for that table. In this version, it will show this table, when there is data in it.

  • The Data validation messages have been reviewed and updated for clarity. If you encounter any unclear messages, please contact us for assistance.

SC Navigator 4.01.01

Date April 20, 2023

SC Navigator 4.0 will replace the AIMMS Network Design App that you have worked with previously. It contains all the functionality that you know from AIMMS Network Design. In addition, it has some new features:

• Stock build and stock draw

• Max profit / revenue solve

• Customer fulfillment decisions

• Improved scenario management

• Improved multi period reporting

For more details on the differences between Network Design and SC Navigator 4.0, read SC Navigator vs. Network Design

SC Navigator 2 release notes can be found here:

• SC Navigator 2