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Here are a few helpful tips & techniques
When dealing with large models, you
may receive the error message below:
"File sharing lock count exceeded.
Increase MaxLocksPerFile registry entry. continue?"
One way to resolve it is to increase your
MaxLocksPerFile setting in the registry of your computer.
To do so, please
- open the registry of your computer,
by choosing "Run" from the start-menu and typing
"regedit" (without the quotes) in the box, click
on OK
- in the registry go to:
For 32 Bit Machines:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Jet\4.0\Engines\Jet 4.0
For 64 Bit Machines:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Jet\4.0\Engines\Jet 4.0
- double-click on the MaxLocksPerFile
entry on the right hand side and increase the value (you
can set it to decimal first)
- you can try increasing it to 200,000
for example and increase it further if you still get the
same error message.
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To better understand the “R,Q Targets” inventory policy, let’s
quickly review the regular R,Q inventory policy. The regular
R,Q inventory policy is a fixed replenishment point/fixed
replenishment quantity inventory policy. When the inventory
level on-hand falls below a certain replenishment point,
R, the site will generate a replenishment order for a
certain quantity, Q, of this product. When using this
policy, the Reorder Point field is set as the trigger
level. The Reorder/Order Up To Qty field will be the exact
number of units reordered.
The “R,Q Targets” inventory policy allows the user to change the reorder/order
up to Quantity based on a period of time designated by
the user (year, quarter, month, day, etc.)
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The regular s,S policy is a minimum/maximum
inventory policy that says that when the inventory on-hand
falls below a certain minimum s, the site will request for
a replenishment order that will restore the on-hand inventory
to a maximum number, S.
“s,S Targets” inventory policy
is just like the regular s,S policy except that you can
specify re-order and order-up-to points for a certain period.
You can define the period as days, weeks, months, years,
quarters etc.
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A mode is defined
as a transport lane for a source-product-destination combination.
The mode parameter is simply a way to rank order and label
multiple modes. If you only have one mode, you can leave
the mode parameter blank (it is treated as mode 1).
For multiple modes, you can use any numbering
system, but we recommend keeping it simple (1,2,3,4 etc.).
We want to leave it open for the future, so text labels
could be used for modes (call mode 1 "least cost",
mode 2 "expedited" etc. At this time, however,
mode labeling is not supported.
So in summary, use mode
parameters when you have multiple policies that use the
same source-product-destination combination. Label them
1,2,3 etc. Mode 1 is considered the "primary"
or first mode, and the mode logic for selecting which mode
to use (for simulation) should be in the mode logic field
of the primary mode (mode 1).
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I'm sure you're all aware
of the six distributions used in Supply Chain Guru: Normal,
Exponential, Uniform, Triangular, Poisson and Lognormal.
These are the only distributions mentioned, but because
we use ProModel as our simulation engine, you can actually
use any valid distribution supported by ProModel.
Running distributions other than the six
mentioned above may seem tricky, but it's really quite easy.
Let's say that you want to model quantity as a gamma distribution.
You could plug in G(4.2, 1.1) in the quantity field and,
the model will run! This approach can be useful for complex
expressions that the sim engine can understand, but error
checking can't. For example (P(5)+U(0,1)) * Forecast [CLOCK(DAY)].
This expression will work if Forecast [ ] is a valid user
defined array.
Our newest distribution, Empirical or "M"
distribution is not in the field guru, but works works when
manually entered. If you type M(.75,1,.25,10) the distribution
will return "1" 75% of the time and "10"
25% of the time. Guru allows up to 10 probability pairs.
Try this and see if you can improve your
model. Remember to be careful when altering your model,
save and backup your work frequently.
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If you have used probability
distributions in your model, a simulation run becomes more
than a simple calculation. It becomes a statistical sampling
method. Thus, if you make multiple simulation runs, each
time using a different random number sequence for probability
distributions, you will get different results each run.
The output statistics of any given run are simple single-point
estimates of the true performance measures (population statistics).
Supply Chain Guru can run repetitions of the same time period,
using different random number samples each time if there
is a number greater than 1 in the multiple replications
field. Your output statistics will then reflect the averages
of the simulation replications.
You can view the results of a particular
replication after multiple replications have been simulated.
For example, if you put the number 4 in the multiple replications
field and you simulate the model, the output statistics
will only reflect the average of the 4 replications. If
you want to view the results of a particular replication,
let's say replication #3, then you place "@3"
in the multiple replications field and re-simulate. This
allows you to view the results of the third replication
only.
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Sometimes during the model
building process, an occasional question comes up. If you're
unsure of the answer, the context sensitive help system
might be of use.
If you're having trouble with a particular
field in the data table, simply place the cursor in the
troublesome field and press F1. The help system automatically
opens to information about that particular field in the
data table. This feature can help you put correct information
into the data tables, which, in turn, makes your supply
chain simulation and optimization more accurate.
The help system can also be accessed by
clicking on the Help menu and selecting "Getting Started
with Supply Chain Guru". Beginner users might find
the quick start tutorial useful in understanding the abilities
of Supply Chain Guru and making a basic model. Advance users
might find the scripting information useful for customizing
models.
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To use forecasts in Supply Chain Guru, you have to enter a forecast in a table and set the inventory policy to DOS-Forecast based.
The forecast is only used for driving inventory targets. When you use a DOS policy, you are setting “days of supply” targets. The Reorder Point and Order Up To levels in the inventory table set the number of days of supply to hold on hand. This gets converted into specific quantity numbers by multiplying the “number in days” by the estimated 1 day of supply (which is the average of daily demand over some window.)
When using DOS-Demand, Guru tracks daily demand and uses the average as the basis; when you use DOS-Forecast, Guru uses the associated Forecast table for that site-product to generate daily demand quantities. It then calculates the moving average # to multiply by your targets.
When your forecast anticipates demand, you need to 1) Determine how long your simulation will run. 2) Define the length of the time period over which you are forecasting demand 3) Define the anticipated quantities corresponding to the time period.
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We are seeing an error when running Supply Chain Guru that is caused by a Windows automatic update. The Auto-update unregistered a Microsoft file that Guru uses.
Symptoms: At the end of Simulation, when the files are being written back to the model. This dialog box will appear
Solution:Register the Microsoft module dao360.dll
- Start -> Run -> cmd (this opens a command prompt)
- cd “C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\DAO”
- regsvr32 dao360.dll
This dialog box will appear
Supply Chain Guru - Web Updates for Machines with VISTA
It is important that customers understand that an update from the web will only work on Vista machines if they have set the scguru executable to ‘run as administrator’. Otherwise, they will get an error as soon as they click Help -> Check for updates. To adjust the Update setting on Vista:
- Locate the scguru.exe file in the Supply Chain Guru folder
- Right click on the file
- Select Properties
- Select Compatibility tab
- Change setting on bottom to checked for ‘run as administrator’
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Here are the instructions for opening the demo models:
To run the demo models in Supply Chain Guru version 4
- Open Supply Chain Guru
- Select File -> Add an Existing model
Browse to “C:\Program Files\Supply Chain Guru\Projects” (where ‘C:\Program Files\Supply Chain Guru’ is the location that you installed the software)
- Select one of the four demo types
- Select the model
- You can now simulate or optimize the model.
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R,Q
Targets Inventory Policy