We have created a visualization application to help in formulating business strategy in the customer service arena. Currently, stocking levels at hardware replacement part depots are optimized to find the lowest cost solution, given a particular set of customer service targets. The targets are treated as inputs to the optimization, as it is impossible as a practical matter to express the benefit of a particular service strategy mathematically. Visualization is used to allow an intuitive understanding of the relative costs of different service strategies, thus allowing cost-effective targets to be chosen for input to the optimization algorithms.
By: Donna Gresh, Eugene Kelton
Published in: RC23084 in 2004
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