Hello, Supply Chain lovers!

 This time, I would like to tell you a story about a recent development made jointly by the customer and the software vendor. I was present and the outcome interested me. Was it AI, or just smart?

Judge for yourself!

The customer required a new feature that would save intra-warehouse moves by cross-docking goods arriving from manufacturing directly to the shipping area. The issue was that the standard system did not consider the opportunity when the demand was already fulfilled by already stored goods, based on the assumption that it would enforce FIFO rules. Which is generally correct.

However, the manufacturing process in this case applied the same best-before dates for all goods produced over several days. So, goods arriving from the factory to the warehouse day 2 had a best-before date which was equivalent to goods that arrived day 1 and was already stored. The problem was that already stored goods were already reserved and the reservation was definite.

The required software change was to create a mechanism that could swap the reservation by revoking it from the stored goods and instead allocate equivalent inbound goods and subsequently cross-dock it. By doing so, unnecessary moves were eliminated; the goods from day 1 stayed in storage instead of moving them to the shipping area, and the inbound goods manufactured day 2 were cross-docked instead of put-away to storage. Two moves becomes just one!

That’s the background, though not the main point. Now, everyone involved in the design of the swap feature saw the need of a configuration flag that could turn this swap mechanism on and off because sometimes it was simply not desired to swap. But one guy, who had a different mindset, said: “Why do we need that flag? We already have enough configuration parameters, I don’t want another one. My warehouse workers need simpler solutions, not more complicated!”. The other project members replied: “We cannot swap in inbound area R3, because we cannot cross-dock from there!” The guy with the different mindset was silent for a few seconds, and then he spoke. “If we cannot cross-dock from R3 to shipping, why don’t we just turn that movement route off? That feature is another, already existing configuration parameter”.

The swap feature was implemented without any additional configuration needs, or any other visible signs of existence at all.

Now, this little story does not reveal intelligence at the level of Einstein. But it tells us that by applying different thinking and simplistic approaches in the design process, we can save cost – both when building the software and later, when using and maintaining it. Or as the sarcastic German saying goes:

“Warum soll man etwas einfach machen, wenn man es so schön komplizieren kann?”. Or, in plain English: ”Why should one make it simple, when it can be done so beautifully complicated?”.

So, whenever appropriate, let the system make the decisions rather than distracting users with needless thinking! That is Smart Design. Perhaps is it also intelligent?

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