Supply and Distribution Planning Support for Amoco (U.K.) Limited

The Supply and Distribution Planning System (SDS), developed for Amoco (U.K.) Limited, is designed to support routine planning of monthly and annual distribution of oil products, periodic negotiations of product exchanges and terminal throughput agreements, and strategic planning for facility location and markets. To support these applications, SDS allows users to specify the products, supply sources, terminals, markets, transport options, and time periods they want to consider for planning and then generates and solves a linear programming model of the specified supply and distribution system. SDS, which can represent supply, terminal operations, and primary and secondary distribution, is one of the few LP models that integrates functional areas in the oil industry. The system is flexible, accurate, and produces relevant reports. However, it was not adopted for routine planning largely because, due to economic conditions, very limited resources were available for implementation. To ensure that a system is used, developers and users must make substantial investments not only in developing it, but in establishing and maintaining a suitable environment for it.