The business problem
GreatLakes serves customers across multiple states with overlapping truck routes, inconsistent delivery windows, and rising fuel cost. A handful of large customers are swinging order quantities week over week, and the dispatcher's schedule shows ten truck-hours a week of wasted backhauls. Re-route the network; show whether the bullwhip is the root cause of the schedule chaos; recommend the smallest set of changes that recover the margin.
Case kit
Everything you need
- GreatLakes Delivery DatasetReal-shape network: stops, distances, time windows, current routes.
- GreatLakes — Route Optimization NotebookVisual notebook that produces an optimized route plan with a map.
- Bullwhip Effect SimulatorQuantify how the variance amplifies upstream. Use to defend the diagnostic.
Deliverable
A one-slide recommendation to the VP of Operations:
- The new network. Optimized routes, with the miles or hours saved per week.
- The bullwhip diagnosis. Which customers are the source, with the order-variance numbers.
- The fix. One operational change (information sharing, smaller batch sizes, or order policy) to dampen the bullwhip at the source.
Topics you'll be applying
- Decision 3 — Sourcing & Logistics · transport modes and the bullwhip
- Decision 7 — Scheduling · sequencing the truck assignments