Indeed!
It is never simple. Sexy simplistic CP-SAT constraint programming solver versus containers with deep frozen goods or tons of fireworks. Both need to go into a very special place on the ship.
Then soft business requirements, keep a weekly schedule.
Plus the real business issue: 5-10% of invoices in logistics are incorrect! Mistakes like wrong rate.
(disclaimer: the stories I heard while trying to digitise end-to-end value chains. We failed.)
Yes, and that's leaving aside the explainability problem. Let say for arguments sake that you have an optimal planning algorithm, if you cannot explain to the people using it why it generates a certain solution, it will not get adopted.
As an employee at a terminal, you have a) no reason to trust some software people who may have never seen one of them steel boxes up close, b) if this works, you or your colleague gets laid off, and c) if it doesn't work, you're now stuck cleaning up the mess the computer will inevitably make for you, which is way less fun than planning things yourself.
The 5%-10% invoices being incorrect is probably on the low end, I'd probably say it's 5-10% in total invoice VALUE. Because of the sheer amount of containers, you need automated invoice calculation. But if you miss an edge case ("We are allowed to invoice a 5 buck surcharge if the container is filled with at least 100kg of explosive goods, AND was loaded during the night shift because dangerous goods handling requirements now require us to have a safety officer on call, which we normally don't have during the night shift") you are leaving serious amounts of money uninvoiced, and you will never know. One of the reasons not that much effort goes into optimization algorithms is that there is so much low hanging fruit left on getting your invoices out correctly...
>As an employee at a terminal, you have a) no reason to trust some software people who may have never seen one of them steel boxes up close, b) if this works, you or your colleague gets laid off, and c) if it doesn't work, you're now stuck cleaning up the mess the computer will inevitably make for you, which is way less fun than planning things yourself.
Also d.) It works sometimes so you get forced to use it and then it gets ransomwared and you're completely unable to work because they laid off so many people you can't fall back to manual operations.
