Simulation of in-transit services in tracked delivery of project supply chains: A case of telecom industry

Network construction projects in telecommunication industry require large amounts of materials and components available at multiple sites. Items are often customized, valuable and delivered following design specifications subject to frequent changes. When design changes occur, lack of real-time item visibility and traceability can lead to excess inventories at sites, errors, and inefficient transportation. Supply chain digitalization based on Internet-of-Things can mitigate these waste and inefficiency risks. This work aims to estimate the potential benefits of in-transit services based on in-transit control for project network construction operations. Two services are analyzed: Re-direct service based on item rerouting to and reusability for other sites; and Call-back and delivery-on-request services based on centralized collection of items temporarily unneeded at any sites any longer. These services are simulated and evaluated for a telecom network project case study. Experiments show that the in-transit services lead to remarkable improvements mainly of component waste and dwell times.