Logistics Workstation.

This report delineates a logistics workstation design which will provide planners with state-of-the-art modeling and analysis capability in a user friendly interactive environment. The workstation will provide a powerful tool to overcome the burdens of developing models and procedures, structuring data, and formatting results so that the user can analyze logistics problems and design logistics systems. A prototype has been developed to address basic vehicle routing and warehouse location. It contains fundamental functions for data manipulation, graphical data display, optimization, and reporting. Building on the knowledge gained from the prototype, the report describes a design for a more general logistics workstation which could operate in different modes production, analysis, etc. depending on the sophistication of the user and the desired analysis. The report includes the necessary modeling and control structures for the logistics workstation. It also describes a variety of functions to be included in the workstation design, together with their inputs and outputs. The microcomputer software detailed for the workstation, including the optimization and computational algorithms, is all currently available. However, most of the technology will have to be specially coded to integrate into the workstation framework.