Load balancing in 1250 Series (Autonomous) AP

Is it possible I can load-balance my client ?
In our current setup when one AP down rest of the client move to other AP, we need to move them manually or connect/disconnect. I can apply max-association on SSID but is there way I can do it automatically ?

Not remotely possible.
The "final" decision to join which AP and/or which radio falls on the wireless client. If the wireless client wants to associate to the furthest AP then there's nothing you can do.
One way of minimizing this from happening is to ensure your wireless clients are running the latest drivers. On the AP-side, you could also try to disable the low-speed data rates (from 11 Mbps and below, make 18 Mbps as Mandatory and the rest are Supported).

Similar Messages

Load Balancing Linux servers with CSS 11050 series

We would like to load balance Linux FTP and Web servers with a CSS 11050 series device. Does the content switch use SNMP to load balance the servers? If so, which MIBs need to be loaded on the servers?

I dont believe that the CSS supports any SNMP load balancing mechanism.
There is basically two factors involved in load balancing. One: the state of the servers which can be done via a range of mechanisms including ping, TCP connection, Application request, etc. Two: the way a server is chosen when a request comes in including round-robin, least connections, ACA etc.
Checkout these links:-
http://www.cisco.com/warp/customer/117/basic_css_lb_config.html
http://www.cisco.com/warp/customer/117/methods_load_bal.html

Ask the Expert: Configuration and Troubleshooting the Cisco Application Control Engine (ACE) load balancer

With Ajay Kumar and Telmo Pereira
Welcome to the Cisco Support Community Ask the Expert conversation. This is an opportunity to learn and ask questions about configuration and troubleshooting the Cisco Application Control Engine (ACE) load balancer with Cisco expert Ajay Kumar and Telmo Pereira. The Cisco ACE Application Control Engine Module for Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series Switches and Cisco 7600 Series Routers is a next-generation load-balancing and application-delivery solution. A member of the Cisco family of Data Center 3.0 solutions, the module: Helps ensure business continuity by increasing application availability Improves business productivity by accelerating application and server performance Reduces data center power, space, and cooling needs through a virtualized architecture Helps lower operational costs associated with application provisioning and scaling
Ajay Kumar is a customer support engineer in the Cisco Technical Assistance Center in Brussels, covering content delivery network technologies including Cisco Application Control Engine, Cisco Wide Area Application Services, Cisco Content Switching Module, Cisco Content Services Switches, and others. He has been with Cisco for more than four years, working with major customers to help resolve their issues related to content products. He holds DCASI and VCP certifications.
Telmo Pereira is a customer support engineer in the Cisco Technical Assistance Center in Brussels, where he covers all Cisco content delivery network technologies including Cisco Application Control Engine (ACE), Cisco Wide Area Application Services (WAAS), and Digital Media Suite. He has worked with multiple customers around the globe, helping them solve interesting and often highly complex issues. Pereira has worked in the networking field for more than 7 years. He holds a computer science degree as well as multiple certifications including CCNP, DCASI, DCUCI, and VCP
Remember to use the rating system to let Ajay know if you have received an adequate response.
Ajay and Telmo might not be able to answer each question due to the volume expected during this event. Remember that you can continue the conversation on the Data Center sub-community discussion forum Application Networking shortly after the event.
This event lasts through July 26, 2013. Visit this forum often to view responses to your questions and the questions of other community members.

Hello Krzysztof,
Another set of good/interesting questions posted. Thanks!
I will try to clarify your doubts.
In the output below both resources (proxy-connections and ssl-connections rate) are configured with a min percentage of resources (column Min), while 'Max' is set to equal to the min.
ACE/Context# show resource usage
                                                     Allocation
        Resource         Current       Peak        Min        Max       Denied
-- outputs omitted for brevity --
proxy-connections             0      16358      16358      16358      17872
ssl-connections rate          0        626        626        626      23204
Most columns are self explanatory, 'Current' is current usage, 'Peak' is the maximum value reached, and the most important counter to monitor 'Denied' represents the amount of packets denied/dropped due to exceeding the configured limits.
On the resources themselves, Proxy-connections is simply the amount of proxied connections, in other words all connections handled at layer 7 (SSL connections are proxied, as are any connections with layer 7 load balance policies, or inspection).
So in this particular case for the proxy-connections we see that Peak is equal to the Max allocated, and as we have denies we can conclude that you have surpassed the limits for this resource. We see there were 17872 connections dropped due to that.
ssl-connections rate should be read in the same manner, however all values for this resource are in bytes/s, except for Denied counter, that is simply the amount of packets that were dropped due to exceeding this resource.
For your particular tests you have allocated a min percentage and set max equal to min, this way you make sure that this context will not use any other additional resources.
If you had set the max to unlimited during resource allocation, ACE would be allowed to use additional resources on top of those guaranteed, if those resources were available.
This might sound a great idea, but resource planning on ACE should be done carefully to avoid any sort of oversubscription, specially if you have business critical contexts.
We have a good reference for ACE resource planning that contains also description of all resources (this will help to understand the output better):
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/interfaces_modules/services_modules/ace/v3.00_A2/configuration/virtualization/guide/config.html#wp1008224
1) When a resource is utilized to its maximum limit, the ACE denies additional requests made by any context for that resource. In other words, the action is to Drop. ACE should in theory silently drop (No RST is sent back to the client). So unless we changed something on the code, this is what you should see.
To give more context, seeing resets with SSL connections is not necessarily synonym of drops. As it is usual to see them during normal transactions.
For instance Microsoft servers are usually ungracefully terminating SSL connections with RESET. Also when there is renegotiation during an SSL transaction you may see RESETS, but this will pass unnoticed for end users.
2) ACE will simply drop/ignore new connections when we reach the maximum amount of proxied connections for that context. Exisiting connections will continue there.
As ACE doesn't respond back, client would simply retransmit, and if he is lucky maybe in the next attempt he will be able to establish the connection.
To overcome the denies, you will definitely have to increase the resource allocation. This of course, assuming you are not reaching any physical limit of the box.
As mentioned setting max as unlimited might work for you, assuming there are a lot of unused resources on the box.
3) If a new connection comes in with a sticky value, that matches the sticky entry of a real server, which is already in MAXCONNS state, then both the ACE module/appliance should reject the connection and that sticky entry would be removed.
The client would at that point reestablish a new connection and ACE would associate a new sticky entry with the flow for a new RSERVER after the loadbalancing decision.
I hope this makes things clearer! Uff...
Regards,
Telmo

2 ISP load balancing and redundancy

Hello!!
Our small company has about 40 branches spreaded within city. Branches are connected by optic wire supplied by our ISP. So in ISP our branches are located in one VLAN. From every branch we created VPN tunnel to our server room in central office. Central office is like a cetner point. If optic wire fails to central office, there would no VPN tunnels and no network to all branches. Moreover, all the traffice goes through central office.
Now we decided to pave one more optic line to our central office. And that will increase bandwidth and redundancy.
Private network topology: There are no default gateways and ip-addresses. For examle, at first branch I will plug computer directly into media converter and at the second branch plug another computer to the media converter. After that this two computers became in one network. And can assign any ip addresses to them.
What I have: our firewall do enough work, don't want to overload it. But we have some free ports in our new cisco 3750. The question is how to do load balancing and redundanccy? Can it do load balancing according to traffic? And how load balance incoming traffic? For example, connection was established from branche's router, how this router will choose through which line make connection? By the way, at all branches we use noisy cisco
3700 series routers.

Sorry for upping 1 year old threat.
We talked to our Network Provider. They said "these two cables are coming from two different places, so there is no way to use etherchannel. You must use active-standby solution."
Relying on STP we just put two cables into 3750 stack. But with default STP settings, connection was very unstable, many packet losses and disconnections. So we found easy solution with "flex links", making one interface backup of the other. And only now I recognized that this is not a failover solution. Because, if network beyond media converter will down, link from media converter to switch would still up.
What could I do to make our L2 WAN redundant? Are there any additional STP settings.

Load balancing MQ 7.0 Foreign JMS Server and Weblogic 10 MDBs?

We have the following configuration and we are trying to troubleshoot what appears to be a load balancing issue.
We have 3 Solaris servers. Each Solaris server has two Weblogic managed servers running on it. There are a total of 6 managed servers in the Weblogic cluster.
MQ Series 7.0 is also installed on each Solaris server. The MQ queue managers are in a MQ cluster. Each queue manager has the same queues defined.
We have a foreign JMS Server configured on Weblogic that has destinations and a connection factory defined. There aren't many configuration options available for the connection factory. The destinations are bound to the queues defined on MQ using the MQ bindings file.
The MQ bindings file was generated using the TRANSPORT(BIND) mechanism. Each bindings file points to the queue manager running on that machine. So the 2 managed servers running on one machine are accepting messages from the queue manager on that machine.
The MDB's listenning for messages on the MQ queues are configured as follows in the weblogic-ejb-jar.xml:
<max-beans-in-free-pool>16</max-beans-in-free-pool>
We also created a custom work manager with min threads constraint=5 and max threads constraint=16. The dispatch-policy of all the MDBs is set to the custom work manager.
The open input count on each MQ queue managers shows up as 32 which is expected.
The default load algorithm on the cluster is round-robin.
When we run a load test (injecting 40 messages per second on one MQ queue), we notice that one managed server ends up being significantly loaded than the other. Each MQ queue manager in the MQ cluster receives approximately the same number of messages in the load test. But it seems like one managed server is preferred over the other in Weblogic.
What can be done to equally balance the load among the two managed servers on each Solaris server?
Thanks for the help.

Load balancing generally applies at determing how many consumer threads has to be created on each of the clustered queue instance. In that sense you have achieved perfect load balancing as your queue instances has the same no of consumer threads.
Once you have set 'x' consumer threads on a queue, it is upto messaging provider to decide which thread to deliver a particular message and you will hardly have any control over this. Since your 32 threads are listening on the same queue, MQ can select any thread for delivering the message and the behaviour could be non deterministic.
One option to change your design is to have a dispacther mdb which picks the messages off the MQ and then routes to a weblogic distributed destination and you can have your core mdb which does all processing listen to this distributed destination. You can enable load balancing when the disaptcher mdb routes the message to the distributed destination. Since dispatcher MDB is nothing more than a router, the unbalanced consumption off the MQ shouldn't seriously affect the server.

Load Balancing layer 4

Im not udnerstanding why i would want to use a Layer 4 HLB device for Exchange 2013? From my understanding Layer 4 doesnt have the ability to look at what the client is requesting from the serer and make decisions accordinly. We have multiple services running
on Exchange 2013, (OWA,EAS,EWS) if one of the services went down, for example EWS, would a layer 4 load balancer be able to route EWS request from clients to a working EWS service while still distributing traffic evenly for the reamining working services across
the CAS arrays? If not i think i would stick with using a layer 7 HLB
Thanks
Bulls on Parade

Hello,
It is recommended that you visit the vendor's web site for the latest information regarding product specifications, capacity, country support and documentation including release
notes and known issues.
We can start from the following link:
Exchange Server 2010 load balancer deployment
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/gg176682.aspx
Thanks,
If you have feedback for TechNet Subscriber Support, contact
[email protected]
Simon Wu
TechNet Community Support

Load balancing multiple AP1242

Hi,
I just deployed a few AP1242 in my office environment.
I've set them to use the same SSID and encryption (WPA2).
I would like to know can I set load balancing on the APs? E.g. there are 30 users at the office and I installed 2 APs in the area, is there anyway the AP will auto loan balance between themselves, taking 15 users each?
Thanks.

Hi Patrick
There really is no load balancing feature with Autonomous AP's. But you can use this;
To allow only so many users to associate to an AP at one time you can use the max-Associations command.
This example shows how to:
Name an SSID
Configure the SSID for RADIUS accounting
Set the maximum number of client devices that can associate using this SSID to 15
Assign the SSID to a VLAN
AP# configure terminal
AP(config)# interface dot11radio 0
AP(config-if)# ssid batman
AP(config-ssid)# accounting accounting-method-list
AP(config-ssid)# max-associations 15
AP(config-ssid)# vlan 3762
AP(config-ssid)# end
From this doc;
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/wireless/ps4570/products_configuration_guide_chapter09186a00802085c4.html
To find out how many users are associated to an AP, this example shows how to display all client devices associated with the access point:
AP# show dot11 associations client
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/wireless/access_point/12.3_4_JA/command/reference/cr34main.html#wpxref81339
Hope this helps!
Rob

Load balance servers with 3560?

Here is my scenario...
I have two servers that are both connected to a single 3560 (SMI).
These two servers are in a primary/secondary relationship. Right now, if the primary server goes down - we need to manually configure the secondary server to take over.
I have two questions...
What is the best way to set up fault tolerance with these devices, so the secondary server will automatically kick in if the primary goes down?
In addition to that, is there any type of load balancing feature we can use on this 3560...so both the primary/secondary servers can run at the same time?
Ideally, we would like communication to the second server kick in when the link to the primary server gets too congested.

your best bet is to use IOS SLB or a content switch such as the cisco CSS series.
please see the following links for more info on ciscos CSS and SLB capabilities:
content switching (CSS) -
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/netsol/ns340/ns394/ns50/ns254/networking_solutions_package.html
SLB - (example of use)
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/modules/ps2706/products_configuration_example09186a0080093de3.shtml

AP load balancing question

Hi there, is it possible to enable load balancing for a particular group of APs and disabled for the rest. Perhaps AP groups. Running 8500 WLC with 3600 series APs. It will enhance the service concurrent user capacities for areas with a high device count.
Sent from Cisco Technical Support iPhone App

Nope and I wouldn't recommend that feature. It cause soooooo many client issues when you around 12 clients associating to a given AP. If you have high density then as long as you are running v7.2, you have RF Profiles. These profiles are defined per AP Group if you want. On the RF Policies I would tweak the data rates depending on how the coverage is when looking at a post site survey. Knowing the power and the coverage pattern allows one to disable rates, set various rates as support and or mandatory. This is how you can reduce the cell size and have better client balancing that to enable client load balancing. Also tweaking the RRM is required too.
Sent from Cisco Technical Support iPhone App

Load balancing with Netscaler

Hi,
Does anyone have setup LB Oracle E-business Suite R12 with Netscaler 7000 series?
Please advice which configuration did you used.
Thanks

Hi,
Did you review (Note: 727171.1 - Implementing Load Balancing On Oracle E-Business Suite - Documentation For Specific Load Balancer Hardware)?
Regards,
Hussein

CSS load balancing issue: url isn't accessible even though services are up

service Server1:80
ip address 10.10.10.34
protocol tcp
port 80
keepalive type http
keepalive uri "/test.asp"
active
service Server2:80
protocol tcp
port 80
keepalive type http
keepalive uri "/test.asp"
ip address 10.10.10.35
active
owner Ow1
content LBR1:80
    vip address 192.168.1.159
    port 80
    protocol tcp
    url "/*"
    balance weightedrr
    add service Server1:80
    add service Server2:80
    advanced-balance sticky-srcip
    sticky-inact-timeout 21
    flow-timeout-multiplier 8
    active
service Server1:80
ip address 10.10.10.34
protocol tcp
port 80
keepalive type http
keepalive uri "/test.asp"
active
service Server2:80
protocol tcp
port 80
keepalive type http
keepalive uri "/test.asp"
ip address 10.10.10.35
active
owner OW1
content LBR2:80
    vip address 192.168.1.98
    protocol tcp
    port 80
    url "/*"
    balance weightedrr
    add service Server1:80
    add service Server2:80
    advanced-balance sticky-srcip
    sticky-inact-timeout 21
    flow-timeout-multiplier 8
    active
All services are alive all the time and both contexts are alive all the time.
when user tries to access LBR2:80's URL it works all the time. but when user tries to access LBR1:80's url then it works sometimes and some times it doesn't work.
could you advise what the issue could be?

When the SYN comes in the CSS will first check for the srcip in the sticky database and if it finds a match will forward to the stuck server. If the source ip is not in the sticky database the request will be load balanced using weightedrr and a server selected. That sticky server will then be added to the sticky database.
If the sticky-srcip is used between 2 content rule, it will use separate sticky table.
You may need to take packet capture to understand what is really failing along with
a following outputs :
sh flow
sh rule Ow1 LBR1:80 ser
regards
Andrew

Data Centre Interconnection - firewall and load balancer deployment

Hi all,
I've read lots of Cisco docs/white papers on DCI - Layer 2 extension between DCs, but as yet I cannot find any decent information on how best to deploy firewalls and load balancers in such a design. I've seen refs to FHRP isolation on Nexus 7k (and possible 6k if you use DCI block) but nothing on the services elements.
The services element seems to be a complete minefield here:
- active/standby across sites, or deploy resilient pairs in each site?
- how to align optimal traffic flows inbound and ooutbound (RHI, SNAT, etc.)
- best practice suggestions ideally.
Cisco DCI docs seem to always gloss over the fact that most customers would have to deal with firewalls and load balancers here, and simply refer to 'coming soon' for that info.
If anyone has any good suggestions/links to docs explaining detailed implementation info would be much appreciate
Thanks
Phil

You might want to check out this new product called ITD.
Simple and faster solution:
ITD provides :
ASIC based multi-terabit/s L3/L4 load-balancing at line-rate
No service module or external L3/L4 load-balancer needed. Every N7k port can be used as load-balancer.
Redirect line-rate traffic to any devices, for example web cache engines, Web Accelerator Engines (WAE), video-caches, etc.
Capability to create clusters of devices, for example, Firewalls, Intrusion Prevention System (IPS), or Web Application Firewall (WAF), Hadoop cluster
IP-stickiness
Resilient (like resilient ECMP)
VIP based L4 load-balancing
NAT (available for EFT/PoC). Allows non-DSR deployments.
Weighted load-balancing
Load-balances to large number of devices/servers
ACL along with redirection and load balancing simultaneously.
Bi-directional flow-coherency. Traffic from A-->B and B-->A goes to same node.
Order of magnitude OPEX savings : reduction in configuration, and ease of deployment
Order of magnitude CAPEX savings : Wiring, Power, Rackspace and Cost savings
The servers/appliances don’t have to be directly connected to N7k
Monitoring the health of servers/appliances.
N + M redundancy.
Automatic failure handling of servers/appliances.
VRF support, vPC support, VDC support
Supported on both Nexus 7000 and Nexus 7700 series.
Supports both IPv4 and IPv6
N5k / N6k support : coming soon
Blog
At a glance
ITD config guide
Email Query or feedback:[email protected]

HTTP Tunneling and Load Balancing with Weblogic Server 6.1

We use T3 for Java client to application server communication (Weblogic Server
6.1) and keep the session open for the life of the client. We many customers
using this with load balancers and all works fine. We have just started to use
BEA's HTTP tunneling and I have a question concerning how this will work with
load balancers. Since the single T3 connection has been replaced with a series
of stateless HTTP connections, does the BEA tunneling code put session information
in the HTTP header? If so, what information does it place in the header. If
it does we should be able to use that to make sure that the load balancer always
sends HTTP requests with that session to the same application server.
Thanks!
Rick

Rick,
You may want to look at the Alteon and F5 configuration we have on edocs.
Take a look at the following URLs for a possible solution
http://edocs.bea.com/wls/docs61/cluster/alteon.html#591902
http://edocs.bea.com/wls/docs61/cluster/bigip.html#591902
Chuck Nelson
DRE
BEA Technical Support

Dual ADSL Load Balancing and Fault tolerance

Just wonder if this is doable with for example 2 WIC-1ADSL cards on say a 2800 series platform. The application would be simple internet access. If so could someone provide a sample config? Just a note...this application would include two static ip ADSL services. Thanks, Shawn

That is definitely doable. Here's a sample config:
ip cef
interface atm1/0.32
ip address 255.255.255.252
ip nat outside
pvc 1/32
oam-pvc manage
interface atm2/0.32
ip address 255.255.255.252
ip nat outside
pvc 1/32
oam-pvc manage
interface GigabitEthernet0/0
ip address 10.1.1.1 255.255.255.0
ip nat inside
ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 atm1/0.32
ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 atm2/0.32
ip nat inside source route-map ISP1-map interface atm1/0.32
ip nat inside source route-map ISP2-map interface atm2/0.32
route-map ISP11-map permit 10
match interface atm1/0.32
route-map ISP12-map permit 10
match interface atm2/0.32
Explanation:
- the use of two static routes will allow you to load-balance over the two links and provide redundancy at the same time
- the NAT config will dynamically choose the NAT'ed address depending on which interface CEF has chosen to send the packet out of...
Hope that helps - pls rate the post if it does.
Regards,
Paresh

Monitoring Load balancing in Tuxedo 9.1 and RAC ?

Hi all,
I wrote this question in the old forum bea [http://forums.bea.com/thread.jspa?threadID=300006084], and now I have more question about monitoring of load balancing in tuxedo with RAC:
How can I monitor the load balancing in Tuxedo with RAC?
How can I check that the load balancing of tuxedo is running correctly?
How can I know that group are using my requests?
We need know if the request use the instance ORARAC1 (groups GRP_A1 and GRP_A2) or
use the instace ORARAC2 (groups GRP_B1 and GRP_B2).
There is some tool (similar txrpt) that displays this information in tuxedo 9.1?
Thanks in advance
P.D.: Excuse my english

Logistics Management vs Supply Chain Management
Chapter 1 Logistics
1.1 Logistics Management vs Supply Chain Management
First of all, we must clarify this big semantic matter: what is logistics? what is Supply Chain ? are these two names equivalent?
We can represent this question by this figure
Is SC part of the logistics? or is it the reverse? or is logistics replaced by SC? or are both the same? or are logistics and SC covering partly the same matter but both continue to exist ?
To answer to that question, we have to consider the definition of each concept. We use the definitions commonly accepted by the CSCMP (Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals). These definitions also are used by the APICS (The Association for Operations Management: the global leader and premier source of the body of knowledge in operations management, including production, inventory, supply chain, materials management, purchasing, and logistics.)
The logistics management is that part of the Supply Chain process, which plans, implements and controls the efficient, effective flow and storage of goods, services and related information from the point of origin to the point of consumption in order to meet customers’ requirements.
The supply chain management is the integration of key business processes, from the end user through original suppliers that provides products, services and information that add value for customers and other stakeholders.
Thus the answer to our first question is clearly
In a Supply Chain, each enterprise is a partner; each partner is fully responsible for a process that transforms inputs into outputs using some resources and following the rules or norms.
The concept of supply chain suggests a series of processes linked together (they form a chain !).
Figure 3
Somebody is the producer of the raw material, somebody transforms it into a product, somebody incorporates the product into an assembly, somebody stores the finish good, somebody sells it, somebody transports it and finally a retailer sells it to a final customer who is the consumer.
Some of these processes are sourcing, others are manufacturing and others are distribution.
If we illustrate the system for a more complex product, we obtain the hereunder schematic.
The pilot of the Supply Chain must instruct each supplier about when and to whom they have to deliver their products. He must instruct supplier "A" to first supply "B" and later the main manufacturer; for another part, he must instruct "B" to first supply the main manufacturer and later the supplier "C", if it is the right way to get the product on time as promised to the customer.
Figure 4
1.2 Flows
As indicated here above, all the partners are linked (they form a chain). These links cover 3 flows:
1. physical product flow (material flow)
The materials flow from suppliers to customers and from customers to suppliers (reverse flow).
The products are packaged (primary package, secondary package, warehousing package, transport package). Each package fills a specific function. (to see chapter 6). Containers, pallets and some packaging are circulating round trip.
The management of the materials flow must deliver products on time, in the proper sequence, exactly where they are needed.
2. information flow
Information is flowing in both directions, is passing each other, is colliding with others …
The information include order, delivery, inventory level, production status, forecasts, quotation …
The information could be considered as the piloting system of the other flows.
The information is flowing between multiple organizations and enterprises, each one having its own managing system, its own value system ….
3. financial flow
They include credit terms, payment schedules, title ownership arrangements …
A major problem concerns the coordination, the synchronization between all these flows. The final objective of the logistics / supply chain is to reduce costs and to improve service levels at the profit of all the partners of the chain, suppliers, manufacturer and customer. Each activity playing a role in making the product and the services conform to customer requirements (cost, delivery terms, quality …) is concerned.
In the past, each enterprise was trying to strangle other enterprises to obtain the major advantage (and to avoid realizing some effort). The bigger was crashing the smaller.
Today, no single enterprise is solely responsible for the competitiveness of its products and services. The benefit obtained by working in network must be shared between all the members of the chain. The sole strategy that performs is the win-win strategy.
The competitiveness suppose to give a better service, a superior service to the final user of the product / service (decreased delivery times, repairing/exchanging defective parts, maintenance, warranties, price, reliability, performance).
Today, we have to consider the total system wide cost; it includes manufacturing, transportation, packaging, warehousing, distribution, rework, repair, administrative costs. Managing the supply chain is not minimizing a single cost between two entities but, rather, on taking a global system approach to get, at the end, the better result that profits to every chain partner.
If one looks at actions in isolation, it is not possible to have a global view and to identify how an isolated action could have a reverse effect. Each decision taken by a partner of the chain has an effect on the upstream and downstream partners. And this effect could be positive or negative. For example, a supplier will reduce its inventory that leads to increase the delivery terms of the downstream partners; for example, a transportation manager will delay a delivery to increase the volume to transport and to reduce the transportation cost.
1.3 Management
It is obvious that designing and operating a supply chain so that total system wide costs are minimized and system wide service levels are improved is very challenging. It is not easy to do that inside a single enterprise, how more if one must consider several enterprises. We could write that the complexity increase exponentially with the number of partners.
with C = complexity of management, k a function depending of the product and n = number of partners.
The criteria to be considered are:
q the complexity of the network mainly if the partners are located over a large geographical area
q the cultural clash between partners
q the difference of capacities of partners: some are SME, others large enterprises, some are assembler, others are machining and some are giving service … Each partner has its own limits, its own capacities and its own resources. It is not thinkable to build a supply chain only with partners having the same constraints.
q the planning process could be different depending of many factors external to the supply chain. It is normal that an enterprise could be partner of several supply chains (example: the ball bearings supplier belongs to several automotive manufacturers supply chains).
q the supply chain is a dynamic system that evolves over time. Everything can change quickly or frequently either on the customers’ side, either on the suppliers’ side, either the market conditions, either the environmental conditions.
1.4 Three levels of management
As every activity, we have to consider the three levels: strategic, tactical and operational.
a) Strategic level.
The strategic level deals with decisions that have a long-lasting effect on the enterprise.
Every department or service has to fit with the strategy of the enterprise.
q The Supply Chain strategy must deal with the procurement of raw materials and all the components used by the enterprise.
Procurement includes packaging, transportation, documentation, warehousing.
q The Supply Chain strategy must deal with the logistics operations inside the manufacturing plant
This includes the flows through the plant, the interoperations packaging, the information, the traceability …
q The Supply Chain strategy must deal with the distribution and usage of the product by the customer.
This includes the selection of the distribution channels and the operations to supply the retailers, the instructions of use and all the operations covered by the warranty and the after sales service.
The long-lasting effect must be considered by product. If the life cycle of the product lasts several years, the strategic level covers more than 2 years; if the life cycle of the product lasts less than one year (i.e. tamagushi ….), the strategic level is not a fundamental step. But reasonably, the strategic level for the majority of the products covers 2 or 3 years.
Some of the basic questions are: 1) make or buy question;
2) location and capacities of production facilities, warehousing, transportation;
3) technologies to be mastered;
4) machines and equipments to be used, rented or …;
5) layout of the production facilities and warehouses;
6) quantities of products to be purchased, launched in production, stored, packed together, transported;
7) the relevant information for the manufacturing;
8) the training of the operators;
It is obvious that all this has a cost and therefore has to be amortized on several years.
b) Tactical level.
The tactical level concerns generally a period of time of one year. It is prepared during the last quarter of the previous year.
The tactical level has to focus on the expected situation at the end of the previous year to establish a series of significant data as 1) quantities to be distributed on each market;
2) exact quantities of raw materials and components to be purchased and when to place orders 3) the planning of manufacturing by quantities, by specifications, …
4) the distribution activities by month, mainly if the products demand is seasonal;
5) to prepare the impact of the promotions on the distribution;
6) to optimize all the logistics functions;
7) to fix the key indicators to allow a performing management;
8) to establish the calendar of each specific step to reach the annual objective;
9) to match demand and supply
The tactical level is the annual budget.
c) Operational level.
The operational level is the real time management. Some activities are planed on one week, others on a day and the updates are permanent. The operational level has to face the failure of a truck, the illness of a warehouseman or a driver, a urgent non planed order, and so on.
The quality of an organization can be measured by the respect of a well constructed plan and by the reactivity face at unforeseen situations. No waste of time, no waste of resource must be the rule for the operational manager.
He must be able: 1) to meet the better lead-times,
2) to respond to any fluctuation of the demand,
3) to deal with all the products (from fast moving goods to industrial component),
4) to face any unexpected situation.
To do that, he must pilot several logistical drivers as forecasting, transportation means, warehousing facilities, inventory, orders management, sourcing possibilities … and these drivers are fed by information. All these drivers can add value or cost at the customer’s eyes.
q Forecasting allows to feed all the other drivers
q Adapted transportation means allow fast loading and unloading and reduced operational costs by comparison with the value of the transported goods
q Warehousing facilities are located at the best operational place to supply their customers (outbound) and to receive goods from suppliers (inbound); they have well adapted infrastructures to store goods. The objective is to get the better responsiveness, to get the better control on each local market, to get the cheapest cost.
q Inventory must be adapted to the demand: enough to face unexpected demand and not too many what carries overstock and therefore additional costs and ageing products.
q Orders management reduces lead time and allows a full control on all the documents issued from these orders as picking ticket, packing list, invoice, …
q Sourcing possibilities allows a better control on the products arrival, access to the docks without waiting times, better management of the purchase orders …
We can summarize all these concepts by 3 curves as follow and the total logistics cost is the sum of these three costs:
Figure 5
We can represent these situations by the following outline representing three concrete situations:
Figure 6 a Figure 6b Figure 6c
Figure 6a represents 4 suppliers delivering to 1 central warehouse and from this warehouse to the customers;
Figure 6b represents 4 suppliers delivering to 2 central warehouses and each warehouse delivers to its customers;
Figure 6c represents 4 suppliers delivering to several warehouses and each one delivers to its own customers.
It is necessary to determine the number of warehouses, their locations, their sizes, the quantity of products to be stored and the location and number of customers to be supplied to get the best service at the lowest cost. The enterprise must compare the costs of opening more warehouses and the benefits to be closer to the customers.
For another part, it is important to take into account the specificity of the warehouses: only to supply a manufacturing facility, only to supply end customers or supplying both manufacturing facility and end customers. The basic functions are the same but they are several important differences:
q to supply a manufacturing facility means many suppliers (for raw materials and purchased components) and a few customers (manufacturing sections).
q to supply end customers means very few suppliers ( final assembly line) and a large number of customers (all the customers for finished products and spare parts)
q other differences concern the quantities, the size, the physical configurations, the variability and predictability of the demand, the unforeseen breakdowns (machines, trucks and trailers …), the capacity of each buffer between each manufacturing or supply process, lead-times acceptable by each downstream customer, size of batches, safety inventory size, risk parameters …
1.5 Supply Chain Information
As here above mentioned, information feeds all the logistics drivers. Therefore, it is important to detail the content of these information. The supply Chain Management manipulates a lot of information that each one affects strongly or weakly the results. Firstly, we have to consider the information that affect directly all the logistics drivers.
Forecast is affected by the economic situation of the market, by the financial situation, by the wealth of the population, by the obstacles to the trade, by the adequacy between the specifications of the product and the needs of the customers … All the data concerning these parameters must be considered as useful information.
Inventory is needed to face the responsiveness to the demand of the market. The Supply Chain Manager must know this requirement to establish correctly the level of inventory for each item as well as the inventory cost.
Transportation information include frequency of each transport vector, capacity of each one, availability, possibility to circulate, cost, particular requirements as national flag or piracy risk ….
Warehousing size and location have important consequences on several managerial decisions
Computerized treatment of all these data allows to simulate the actions and their result, allows a fast and very reactive circulation of the information between all the members of the network, reduces the redundancy of some encoding operations just as the error risk, allows a good traceability of all the decisions and operations, authorizes a real time follow-up, improves the visibility on the various sequences … Information and Communication technologies play a critical role concerning the exchange of information between suppliers, manufacturer, customers, carriers and other services providers. To be performing, every enterprise must master an information system adapted to his needs but also allowing to be networked with all the other members of the Supply chain: it is a very critical competitive advantage to be better than the competition on that aspect. But, everybody understands the major difficulty to interconnect different systems. Information must be cheap, available as soon as needed, without time lag,
1.6 Main actors
As illustrated on the figure 3, each process is requiring resources.
1.6.1 Human resources
The human resources who have an impact on the supply chain are:
q The buyers: they have to reference the suppliers who can work inside a supply chain. They must accept to work as the pilot of the supply chain decides it for the best of all the actors. The buyers must place the purchase orders when it is fixed by the Supply chain organization.
q The designers: they have to design products that it is possible to pack and transport on the best economical way. But they also must design products with the specifications that the suppliers can realize and all the actors of the supply chain can store and transport. Finally, the products must be designed with the objective to be customized at the latest stages of manufacturing.
q The packaging designers: they have to design packaging that can be economically manipulated by each member of the supply chain (size of the racks, trucks…), that correspond to the various quantities (to see §2.2) needed by the actors. It is also important that each packaging can be easily open and closed as frequently as required.
q The manufacturers: they must be flexible to accept small or large batches and evidently the must produce quality on time.
q The sellers: they must work with the precise specifications allowed by the design and with the quantities allowed by the agreement between all the parties.
q The transporters: they must deliver on time and in perfect condition.
q The warehousemen: they must act with the right diligence
q The computer operators: they must deliver the right information at the right time to the right people. Each supply chain member can recuperate the data without risk of mistake or confusion to build the appropriated management system.
1.6.2 Material resources
The material resources must be sufficient, in good conditions, available when needed and well adapted to the products and operations. These conditions are required to be able to link together many process operators. Indeed, if an operator doesn’t master well his process, it is thinkable that he will not be able to respect quality, quantity or delivery date.
This also supposes that the maintenance of all the equipments is well executed.

Load balancing in 1250 Series (Autonomous) AP

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