Logistics Wizard Overview

Logistics Wizard reimagines supply chain operations through a cloud-native architecture and services.

Today many companies use on-premises applications such as Enterprise Resource Planning systems to manage the supply chain. Logistics Wizard simulates an existing ERP system and enhances it with applications to improve visibility and agility. The provided ERP system implements a very small subset of features found in real-world ERP systems. The goal here is not to focus on ERP but rather showcase several common cloud implementation patterns such as: hybrid cloud, microservices, and data analytics that can be reused when building or enhancing enterprise applications.

One key scenario demonstrates how a supply chain can be made more agile during significant weather events. For any company with multiple distribution centers, retail stores and in-transit shipments, quickly adapting the supply chain to changing weather conditions can reduce shipment delays and operational cost.

Try Logistics Wizard

Use the walkthrough to view and understand the features of Logistics Wizard.

Deploy Logistics Wizard

You can deploy your own Logistics Wizard in the following ways:

Use the Logistics Wizard Toolchain to automatically deploy the application as Cloud Foundry microservices. (Recommended)
Follow instructions to manually deploy the ERP & Controller as Cloud Foundry Docker Apps.
Enable container-to-container networking to keep communication private.

Architecture

Logistics Wizard consists of several microservices.

Architecture Diagram

logistics-wizard-erp defines the API used by Logistics Wizard to simulate data accessed from an ERP system. The simulator is a Node.js application connected to a database. The API manages users (supply chain managers and retail store managers), distribution centers, retail stores and shipments.
logistics-wizard-webui provides a dashboard to view ongoing shipments and alerts. There is no log-in or user credentials to use the deployed applications. Instead a unique demo ID is assigned to any new user trying the application. Behind each demo ID, Logistics Wizard creates an isolated environment with a default set of business users, distribution centers, retail stores and shipments.
logistics-wizard-recommendation makes shipment recommendations based on weather conditions. It is a set of IBM Cloud Functions to retrieve current weather conditions and generate new shipment recommendations. These recommendations can then be converted into orders.
logistics-wizard-controller acts as the main controller for interaction between the services. It receives requests from the user interface and routes them to the ERP or the weather recommendation service.

Project Milestones

GitHub milestones for this project and its children are managed by editing the repository config file. The syntax is described in this project. Modify the file and commit. Travis will take care of creating/updating the milestones.