Configure and run a Consolidation Optimisation

What is a Consolidation Optimisation?

A Consolidation Optimisation reduces costs by merging inefficient flows and leveraging spare capacity across your network. It can increase or decrease throughput at existing facilities, and simulate the shutdown of underperforming ones — provided capacity exists elsewhere to absorb the flow. Crucially, no new facilities are opened.

If you haven't already, we recommend reading the Optimisation Overview article in the Knowledge Base, which covers all available optimisation types.

Prerequisites

To run any optimisation, SimPath needs three things from your scenario:

• Forecast: where supply starts and demand ends
• Operations: how network capabilities link together to satisfy demand
• Costs(recommended): fixed facility costs, operation costs and transport costs

Costs are not mandatory, distance-based optimisation is always available. However, configuring costs unlocks multidimensional optimisation and surfaces the trade-offs between competing cost drivers.

A scenario with sufficient information to optimise will display a blue "Optimisable" badge next to its name.

Running the Optimisation

1. Scroll to the bottom of your optimisable scenario and click Optimise.
2. Name your scenario and select the optimisation dimension.
3. Click through to the Optimisation Configuration page.

In a Consolidation Optimisation, you work with optional locations: facilities the optimiser is allowed to shut down or consolidate into.

Example configuration

Setting Flex Capacity is important: the optimiser needs facilities with headroom to absorb consolidated flows. Flex Capacity can also be set on a per-location basis, and specific locations can be excluded, mandatory or have their flows fixed.

When you're happy with your configuration, click Save.

Monitoring Progress

You'll be taken to the optimisation page, where a pink indicator confirms this is a Consolidation run. A live progress view shows your chosen cost metric falling as the optimiser works through alternatives.

Reviewing Results

The Optimisation Results page lists all optimised networks alongside their performance across cost metrics. For a true-scale network, this typically yields dozens of alternatives. In this training example, all three results are cheaper than the base network.

Comparing networks

Select the lowest total cost network and open the Compare view to do a side-by-side comparison against the base — or between any two optimised networks.

In this example, the comparison reveals:

• ~4% total cost saving, driven primarily by reduced facility costs
• A factory in the North West and a Distribution Centre in Yorkshire were shut down
• Their volumes were absorbed by remaining facilities with spare capacity
• Transport costs increased slightly, but facility savings more than offset this

The geographical map comparison makes this concrete: the North West factory visible in the base network is absent in the optimised one. Retailers that previously relied on it (via the Yorkshire DC) are still fully served, just from different facilities.

This is the trade-off SimPath is designed to surface: higher transport costs versus lower facility costs, and whether consolidation makes sense for your network.