In 1988 Commodore still sold over one million units of its C64, nicknamed “The Model T of personal computers”, and commercial logistics software was in its infancy. We have come a long way and our industry is now starting to use artificial intelligence (AI) in its supply chains. INFORM takes you on a journey to the past, present and future of cement logistics. By Dirk Schlemper and Thomas Bergmans, INFORM GmbH, Germany.
In 1988 the first International Cement Review issue was published and Microsoft released the first Windows version of its Excel® program. Although blank and empty when you opened it, the tool became – and some might say still is – the reigning champion of supply chain management. Easy to configure, it helped planners and dispatchers to manage their daily activities, analyse data, or run macros to automate calculations. But a macro is not the same as an optimisation engine and when it comes to creating complex delivery schedules and fleet configurations for the following shift(s), spreadsheet-based tools are not sufficient to support the decision-making process.
