Supply chain students at Cranfield to use CAST software

Global supply chain planning company, Barloworld Supply Chain Software (Barloworld SCS), will be taking a number of sessions at Cranfield School of Management to support its logistics and supply chain courses.

The CAST Aurora software from Barloworld SCS will be used in both the full time MSc in Logistics and Supply Chain Management and the Executive (part-time) MSc in Logistics and Supply Chain Management.

“We believe that the use of market leading technology, CAST Aurora software from Barloworld SCS, will enrich our logistics and supply chain courses,” says Dr Andrew Palmer of Cranfield School of Management. “It will support the academic theory of supply chain planning with ‘hands-on’ problem solving experience in an advanced supply chain planning software environment.”

CAST Aurora, a decision support software application used for supply chain modelling, strategic network design and optimisation,is the next generation in CAST Supply Chain Modelling software. CAST Aurora helps companies across various business sectors to identify savings and enhance efficiency within their supply chains, and users can typically expect to achieve a 10-15% saving on their supply chain costs.

Barloworld SCS specialists, including Jim Wilson, Strategic Planning Product Manager, will take sessions at Bedfordshire’s Cranfield School of Management, part of Cranfield University and one of the world’s leading business schools, to demonstrate the software to the students and provide expert answers and practical advice.

“These hands-on sessions will be supported by a case study and project examples” explains Jim Wilson of Barloworld SCS. “By offering tangible, real-world examples of how companies have re-engineered their supply chains, through the application of advanced supply chain planning theory and optimisation software, we hope to enhance the delegates’ learning experience.”

After a short introduction to the concepts and application of network design the candidates will be challenged with a spread sheet based exercise where they must find optimum distribution locations to service a European demand. They will then look at how this problem is constructed and solved using CAST software.

Barloworld SCS specialists will cover the fundamentals of the different optimisation techniques, before allowing the candidates to access the CAST software to model a range of network optimisation challenges focussing on cost, service level and capacity utilisation.

“The knowledge and expertise that the Barloworld SCS specialists can offer will be invaluable to the students,” adds Dr Andrew Palmer.  “Having the experts that use and have developed that software, is going to be a real asset to the course.”

Picture: Jim Wilson