Case Study: Large European Home Improvement Goods Manufacturer achieves optimal factory relocation and avoids unnecessary on-site production investment with anyLogistix

Manufacturing supply chain design factory relocation case

Large European Home Improvement Goods Manufacturer faced a forced factory relocation due to rising rent and had to choose among three candidate cities while preserving service levels and minimizing transportation costs. The team also needed optimal warehouse sourcing policies, budget estimates, and to test a proposal to add small on-site production at warehouses; main uncertainties were demand variability and transportation time. To support this work they used the anyLogistix supply chain software.

Using anyLogistix the analysts built a validated, stochastic simulation of the network (sites, warehouses, clients, truck/rail transport and real road routes) and ran a three-stage study: optimize regional sourcing policies, compare mean transportation costs and their probability distributions to pick the best factory location, and test on-site manufacturing economics. anyLogistix produced operational metrics (transportation costs, undelivered orders, warehouse utilization) and showed the best relocation by transportation cost and service level — and counterintuitively demonstrated that on-site production was not cost-effective, because site opening costs would not be offset by transportation savings.