Definition

  • Activities are the means by which users can put costs, times, distances, and emissions into scenarios.  An activity can be assigned to a lane or a node.  

  • There are two types of activities:

    1. User-defined - these are input by a user either through an upload or by entering it by node or lane in the interface.

    2. System-defined - some activities are automatically created by the system. Lanes will automatically generate freight activities when a lane is created or changed and nodes will be assigned lease, labor, and inventory activities if certain settings in the configuration panel are set.


Example - User-Defined Activity

  • A user left clicks on a plant node and expands the inspector (clicks on it again in the right panel) then clicks the (+) to add an activity.  The user adds the name "Handling" and gives it a cost of 0.01$/unit.  Now for every unit that passes through the node, it will incur a cost of:

    1. "HANDLING" COST = [FLOW] * [ACTIVITY COST]

  • Note: If the user had defined the activity as a fixed cost, then the total cost of the activity would be zero if no flow is through the node and [ACTIVITY COST] if there is flow through the node.


Example - Automatically Generated Activity

  • A user goes to the configuration panel (scenario selector>>configuration>>facility tab) and assigns a warehouse to have 100,000 square feet of area.  The system will put a lease cost on every warehouse that will be calculated by:

    1. LEASE COST = [AREA] * [LOCAL LEASE COST] 

  • Note: The LOCAL LEASE COST depends on the postal code of the warehouse and is drawn from reference data.


Process