What is Blue Yonder Transportation Modeler?
Blue Yonder Transportation Modeler determines the best way to set up and run an existing transportation network operationally, using an optimization and analysis environment that supports planning for future business and profitability analysis.
In the high-stakes world of logistics, you cannot afford to 'guess and check.' If you close a distribution center to save rent, you might inadvertently double your transportation costs. Transportation Modeler—and Blue Yonder Transportation Modeling, its SaaS counterpart—help prevent these mistakes by enabling advanced network modeling and testing. It takes your actual historical data (shipments, rates, locations) and allows you to run experiments. 'What if fuel prices rise by 20%?' 'What if we switch from Truckload to Intermodal on the West Coast?' The Modeler tells you the answer in dollars and cents, allowing you to make data-backed strategic decisions.
Why It Matters: The 'Safety Net' for Strategy
- Risk-Free Innovation: Using modeling from Blue Yonder you can simulate radical changes (e.g., 'Stop using Carrier X entirely') to see what happens to your service levels without risking any customer orders.
- Cost vs. Service Trade-Offs: It finds the balance. It visualizes the curve: 'We can save $1M in freight if we accept a 1-day delay in delivery.' Executives can then decide if the savings are worth the service hit.
- Procurement Validation: Before you sign a contract with a new carrier, you can run their proposed rates through the Modeler to verify that their low rate actually translates to a low total cost once you factor in service impacts and capacity constraints.
Key Capabilities
- What-If Scenario Management: You create a baseline (historic view) and then create multiple scenarios (future possibilities). You change variables—carrier mix, mode, hub locations, business rules—and the system calculates the result for each.
- Baseline vs. Project Comparison: It presents a side-by-side comparison of the scenarios: Baseline (Cost = $10M, Service = 98%), Scenario A (Cost = $9M, Service = 95%), and Scenario B (Cost = $10.5M, Service = 99%).
- Constraint-Based Modeling: It respects the rules. It allows you to model constraints like 'Carrier A has only 10 trucks per week' or 'The warehouse can only receive on Tuesdays,' ensuring the simulation is realistic.
- Network Flow Visualization: It generates flow maps that visually demonstrate how freight patterns will shift between scenarios.
The Blue Yonder Difference
Transportation Modeler lets teams evaluate changes to their transportation network using their own shipment, rate and location data before committing to them in the real world. For organizations moving to SaaS, Blue Yonder Transportation Modeling offers the same purpose as an easy-to-use SaaS application, built on a native SaaS optimization service. For more details, see the Transportation Modeling pages.