Greenfield Settings Explained

With Intelligent Greenfield Analysis (the Triad engine in Cosmic Frog), you have control over several different solve settings. For ease of use with scenario modeling, these have been placed in a dedicated table called Greenfield Settings. This allows for quick scenario building that leverages the column names. We will cover the settings which can be configured on the Greenfield Settings table and show an example of how scenarios can be used to change these settings.

Following screenshot shows the Greenfield Settings table:

1. In Cosmic Frog’s Module menu, choose Data to go to the Data module.
2. The Input Tables are showing in the Data module as the square grid icon has been selected. Output and Custom tables can be shown by clicking on the other 2 icons, the round grid icon for Output tables, and the square icon with solid top rows for Custom tables.
3. The Greenfield Settings table can be found in the Functional Tables section of the input tables list. When it is clicked it is also opened and made the active table.
4. The Greenfield Settings table has 1 record and this record is pre-populated with defaults in all Cosmic Frog models. Users can change the values of this record, either in the table itself so the setting apply to all scenarios that are being run, or through scenarios, so that the change only applies to a specific scenario. We will see an example of changing a Greenfield setting through a scenario further below.

An explanation of each setting is as follows:

• Min Number Of New Facilities – The minimum number of new facility locations to be opened during solve. This will include any Candidate Facilities that are selected as well as any Greenfield Facilities. This value is ignored if Minimize Total Facilities is set to True.
• Max Number Of New Facilities – The maximum number of new facility locations to be opened during solve. This will include any Candidate Facilities that are selected as well as any Greenfield Facilities. This value is ignored if Minimize Total Facilities is set to True.
• Minimize Total Facilities – If True, the number of new facility locations to be opened will be minimized (Greenfield Facilities and Candidate Facilities). If False, the total cost (Facility Fixed Cost and Transportation Cost) will be minimized.
• Exclude Facilities – If True, all Facilities in the model will be ignored during the Greenfield run. This value is set to False if Only Use Facilities As Candidate Locations is set to True.
• Exclude Suppliers -If True, all Suppliers in the model will be ignored during the Greenfield run.
• Only Use Facilities As Candidate Locations – If True, the selection pool for Greenfield locations will be restricted to Facilities that are Included. Facilities with a Facility Status of ‘Open’ will be forced to open and have their fixed operating cost charged in the Greenfield solve. Facilities with a Facility Status of ‘Consider’ will have the option to be opened as a Candidate Facility location and if selected, their fixed operating cost will be charged.
• Customer Max Sourcing Distance – The maximum distance that any Customer can source a flow from a Greenfield Facility, a Candidate Facility, or an Existing Facility.
• Greenfield Facility Min Throughput -The minimum quantity of demand that a Greenfield Facility must service to be selected. This will apply to all Facilities, both new and existing, for the Greenfield solve.
• Greenfield Facility Max Throughput – The maximum quantity of demand that a single Greenfield Facility can service. For existing or candidate Facilities the throughput capacity will be specified in the Facilities table.
• Greenfield Facility Fixed Cost – The fixed cost applied to each Greenfield Facility used in the solve.
• Customer Fulfillment Cost – The cost charged for all flows from Facilities to Customers on a quantity-distance basis.
• Procurement Cost- The cost charged for all flows from Suppliers to Facilities on a quantity-distance basis.
• Run Location Refinement Heuristic – If True, the Greenfield Facilities selected by the solver can be improved beyond their initial location that would be co-located with a Customer / Cluster location.
• Customer Cluster Radius – The distance that Customers should be clustered over. The UOM of this distance measure is the primary distance UOM specified in the Model Settings table.
• Auto Detect Cluster Radius – If True, large models with more than 3000 customers will be automatically clustered to have less than 3000 nodes during the optimization phase. Clustomers are then disaggregated for outputs.
• Clustering Approach -The method used to identify customer clusters. The ‘fcluster’ method requires a computation of the full distance matrix between all customers pairs which can be a time consuming process. The ‘utm’ method is based on the Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) coordinate system and looks to identify clusters in each UTM zone. While the UTM based method may in some cases be less accurate it does not need to precompute the full distance matrix between all customer pairs.

Note that the “Getting Started with Intelligent Greenfield Analysis” help article contains a visual explanation of customer clustering too.

Finally, we will look at an example where a scenario item changes a Greenfield setting:

1. From the Module menu we have chosen Scenarios to go the Scenarios part of Cosmic Frog.
2. In the list of scenarios set up in the model, there is one named 01b_7 Optimal Facilities.
3. This scenario has 4 scenario items of which the second one, named Max 7 New Facilities, is selected and this is the one of which the configuration is shown on the right hand-side.
4. The Greenfield Settings table is selected as the table to which the scenario item’s changes apply. Users can select the table from the drop-down list and one can also start typing the name of the table to reduce the drop-down list to only items containing the typed text.
5. The action is set to change the value of the Max Number Of New Facilities field in the Greenfield Settings table to 7. When starting to type the name of a field in the action box, autocomplete suggestions pop up which the user can click on to select the suggested text.