Clear Abacus (http://www.clearabacus.com) offers optimization software via subscription for multi-modal transport planning. Founded in 2012, Clear Abacus is a small company but brings excellent software and consulting practices to early adopter clients. Typical clients are companies in the retail, FMCG, chemical, or life sciences industries operating a supply chain with complexity due to large number of shipping locations, complex product requirements such as temperature controls or multi-SKU kits, and who are finding regular examples of transport which was more expensive, prone to delay, or inflexible than could have been with better planning support. Based in Basel, Chicago, and Shanghai we have broad geographic coverage for a company of our size.
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Introduction to Clear Abacus
1. Introduction to Clear Abacus 1
Introduction to Clear Abacus
info@clearabacus.com
www.clearabacus.comVisit us:
Contact us:
2. Introduction to Clear Abacus 2
Document Scope
① About our product
② Case studies
③ Pilot projects
④ About our team
3. Introduction to Clear Abacus 3
Our Product:
• A transport planning & optimization engine accessed through a RESTful web service
• Software used to model and optimize transactional transport decisions
Software in Brief
Customer
Data:
-Carrier rates & schedules
-Locations & operating hours
-Product profile for upcoming shipments
Transport Plan:
-The load & route plan for all products
-The expected cost of the transportation
-Identify any products which can’t make
their deadlines at destination
Clear
Abacus
4. Introduction to Clear Abacus 4
Is Tailored for:
• Transport decisions made once per day up to once per week.
• High-complexity transport problems (temperature control, hazardous goods, SKU kitting,
multimodal, multiple overlapping carrier contracts, complicated constraints, and so on)
• Complex optimization goals, such as a blend of transport cost reduction, inventory
carrying cost balancing, capacity smoothing, and risk management
And Differentiated by:
• Subscription basis, without up-front charges, commitment periods or minimum spend.
• Cloud computing (no hardware costs, no license fees)
• Narrow but deep feature set. No attempt to be a complete TMS nor to be a portal for
collecting data from multiple parties
• Strong underlying optimization technology (data model, algorithm implementation,
natively built for SaaS and parallelization)
Software in Brief
5. Introduction to Clear Abacus 5
Software Details
Data Input and Output
• Our client’s provide a snapshot
of their supply chain setup
(costs, locations, vehicles or
other resources, business rules,
etc.) along with the data on
products which must be
transported. This comes as a
single XML file
• The XML is submitted using a
REST API web service. This can
also be uploaded manually
through our Flight Control
website.
• Data is not persisted to a
database by Clear Abacus, nor
do we accumulate and
integrate multiple data sources.
This simplifies data
management and security.
Optimization
• Clear Abacus takes incoming
optimization jobs and manages
them through a queuing system
called “Flight Control”
• The queuing system spins-up
new “agent” servers on a cloud
computing provider
• The job is assigned to multiple
heterogeneous agents
• The agents represent unique
algorithmic approaches to the
optimization task, or similar
algorithms but with diverging
configurations
• Every 1-2 seconds the agents
report their best personal best
plan. The overall best is made
available at any time for
downloading
Other Features
• For clients who are not
comfortable constructing XMLs
from their core IT systems we
offer an Excel integration
option
• Highly effective modeling
language for quickly setting up
a client for optimization
• Especially effective for
optimizations running in longer
time periods
• Little or no software screens to
learn for the user… in fact, it
can be run as a “solver”
engine behind a client’s
preferred front-end system.
6. Introduction to Clear Abacus 6
Key Features
Load and Route Optimization
• Load building and routing, including factors such as typical equipment requirements, complex timetables for transport activities, multi-
leg transport planning, etc.
Multi-Stop Vehicles:
• Easy modeling of multi-stop vehicles, including pickup or delivery actions at each stop, and dynamic or fixed routes.
Resource-Enabled Transport Planning:
• Transport plans can be enabled by resources (such as a route which can be executed using different vehicle sizes). The resources add
a secondary dimension of constraint and optimization
• Support for sub-resources as well, such as a vehicle with variable partitions which must be optimized in terms of size or temperature
settings.
Restrictive Attributes:
• Restrictive attributes can be added as categorical variables or continuous variables, and are used to control the transport planning.
Clients Declare Units:
• The application supports new units which will drive the optimization, declared by the client at run-time, including unit-to-unit
relationships, i.e. declaring a pallet as being part of a sandwich pallet.
Cloud Deployment & Scaling:
• On-demand spin-up of new agents including checkout and installation on cloud virtual machines
Supply Chain & Solution Visualization:
• The application generates a number of reports and visualizations of the client’s supply chain and the optimal transport plan.
7. Introduction to Clear Abacus 7
Examples of Optimization Results:
Visualization of the Transport Network:
Visualization of the Best Solution:
http://www.clearabacus.com/download/supply_chain_graph.pdf
http://www.clearabacus.com/download/solution_graph.pdf
8. Introduction to Clear Abacus 8
XML
XML
Option 1... System Integration Approach
Customer
RESTAPI
QueueDistribution
Virtual
Machines
New Job
Most Recent
Best Plan
Assign
New Job
Each Agent
Anounces
Their Personal
Best Plan
Pool of
Heterogenous
Optimization
Agents
Machine
Checkout /
Checkin
9. Introduction to Clear Abacus 9
XML
XML
Option 2... Excel Integration Approach
Customer
RESTAPI
QueueDistribution
Virtual
Machines
New Job
Most Recent
Best Plan
Assign New
Job
Each Agent
Anounces Their
Personal Best
Plan
Pool of
Heterogenous
Optimization
Agents
Machine
Checkout /
Checkin
Excel
Mapping
Tool
Master Data
or New Job
11. Introduction to Clear Abacus 11
Case Study Overview
Case Study Data and Goal
• Overland transport focus, particularly trucking
• High and low security freight, temperature controlled, and ambient freight
• 22 Vehicle types, ranging from double-deck lorries to inner-city vans, with various security and
temperature-control capabilities
• Temperature control ranges on most products
• 42 locations… a mix of pickup, destination, and cross-dock locations
• Usual per-day volumes: ~150 transport orders, ~1,000 pallets, and 300k chargeable kilos
• The client asked for a comparison between the Clear Abacus software’s best plan and a manual
solution from their transport analysts for all products being shipped on a selected day
Case Study Highlight
• Directly compared manual vs. Clear Abacus solutions
12. Introduction to Clear Abacus 12
Results Comparison
Simple Manual
• Emphasis on Route Planning
• 1.5 hours of staff time
• 141 equipment reservations
• 17 Orders given multi-leg routes
• Two equipment types used
• Total Cost = 72,152 EUR
Best Manual
• Emphasis on Load Building
• 3 hours of staff time
• 88 equipment reservations
• 17 Orders given multi-leg routes
• Two equipment types used
• Total Cost = 52,829 EUR
46% cost reduction compared to best manual solution
Clear Abacus
• Evaluated loading and routing
• 2 hours of optimization time
• 82 equipment reservations
• 26 Orders given multi-leg routes
• Six equipment types used
• Total Cost = 28,315 EUR
14. Introduction to Clear Abacus 14
Case Study Overview
Case Study Data and Goal
• 12 vehicle types
• Two to three transit time options for most lanes
• 7 origins, 2 cross-docks, 139 destinations
• ~700 transport legs, about evenly split by service level and across 8 carriers
• ~40k rates based on chargeable weight, equipment used, security, and source - destination
• Temperature control and ambient, as well as high-security freight
• ~11k orders… 55 million Kilograms and 150k pallets
Case Study Highlight
• Multimodal context
• Large scale testing, in terms of parallel computing and data volume
Case Study Goal
• The client asked for a complete optimization of one year of operational data, run on a day-by-day
basis as it would have in real life.
• The goal was to prove cost savings and also to do “load testing” on our parallelization ability
15. Introduction to Clear Abacus 15
Optimization Results:
• Overall 24% savings. In Clear Abacus plans over baseline plans
• 182 individual optimizations were run, each focusing on a 48 hour
window of product availability
• The 48-hour window represents the visibility the client had at the time
the original planning decisions were made allowing for a realistic
comparison of results
17. Introduction to Clear Abacus 17
Gather
Data
•Agree on scope for pilot (region, product class, etc)
•Client sends Clear Abacus related network & shipment data
•Agree on general business rules
Optimize
•Clear Abacus formats data as needed
•Optimizer is run for agreed time, matching
expected operational limits
Critique
Results
•Results are compared to a known baseline, and reviewed for
feasibility by the client’s staff
•Possible need to re-run with different business rules if something
was missed
Clear Abacus Piloting Process & Timeline
~2 weeks duration
Contact us: info@clearabacus.com
19. Introduction to Clear Abacus 19
Who is Clear Abacus?
Strategy
Vision
Bring new technologies to
supply chain optimization
Develop market-leading software for
transport planning decisions in the
once-per-day to once-per-week time
range
Software offered on a subscription basis
Product
20. Introduction to Clear Abacus 20
The Team
Josh Bryan:
• Co-founder
• BS @ University of Missouri, Columbia
• MS @ University of Illinois, Chicago
• Published researcher in artificial
intelligence
• US patent holder
• Responsible for technology &
development
Ryan Zhao:
• Principal Consultant
• BSE @ University of Michigan,
Ann Arbor
• Background in supply chain
software implementation
• International work experience
• Responsible for solution
consulting
Jonah McIntire:
• Co-founder
• BS @ University of Missouri, Columbia
• MS @ University of Missouri, Columbia
• Published researcher in supply chain
visibility
• Broad global work experience
• Responsible for solution consulting