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Kostos Application Logo
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The initial creators and owners of the Kostos Systems, "Pega Pirates"
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Transport mode selection and cost analysis
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Optimized delivery wave point overview
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Package List creation UI
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Package distribution case
Content Overview
- Inspiration
- What it does
- How we built it
- Challenges the team ran into
- Notable Accomplishments
- What we learned as a team
- Getting Started
- Research
- Reach out
- Plans for Kostos app to be optimized to resilient supply chain management application
- Plans for Kostos app for the public
- Acknowledgements
Inspiration
The inspiration for designing a system as such is to provide a solution for the corporation that has been affected by the current Sri Lankan as well as the global economic crisis which has affected many aspects of people.
Also, food has become costly for a portion of the population as a result of Sri Lanka's major decline in agricultural production, which has been exacerbated by the growing costs of gasoline and staple foods. The government has predicted food shortages over the coming months.
Humanitarian Needs and Priorities Food Security Crisis in Sri Lanka Report
Essential drugs and other medical supplies are reportedly in low supply in hospitals around the nation, and regular power outages have an impact on how well healthcare is provided. The loss of livelihoods is being threatened by bad coping strategies, and the increase in violence that has been seen poses protection issues.
Humanitarian Needs and Priorities Food Security Crisis in Sri Lanka Report
Due to a shortage of imported fuel required for power production in March 2022, the government was forced to proclaim daily electricity cuts. According to survey conducted by OCHA, roughly 11% of households indicated that their income had stopped, and 62% said that it had decreased, which had a substantial negative impact on their ability to afford nourishing foods.
Humanitarian Needs and Priorities Food Security Crisis in Sri Lanka Report
Rising energy costs could force many developing nations away from energy markets, having a significant negative impact on their most vulnerable citizens. Hard-won improvements in energy access and poverty reduction are already being hampered by this predicament, and the COVID-19 epidemic has already slowed down the process.
UN GLOBAL CRISIS RESPONSE GROUP ON FOOD,ENERGY AND FINACIAL AUGUST 2022 REPORT
This dynamic is made worse by the food and financial difficulties that these nations are also dealing with as a result of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, all of which have put enormous social and financial strain on the nations.
UN GLOBAL CRISIS RESPONSE GROUP ON FOOD,ENERGY AND FINACIAL AUGUST 2022 REPORT
For a multilateral system founded on trust and proportionality, a prospective "race for fuel" in which only those nations paying the greatest price may receive access would be disastrous.
UN GLOBAL CRISIS RESPONSE GROUP ON FOOD,ENERGY AND FINACIAL AUGUST 2022 REPORT
And the proposed application focuses on the companies which are heavily reliant on Logistics for their income and the companies which allocate most of their spending for managing internal resources, warehouse management and transportation in affected geographies. And even though we have applications that are used for logistic management but not tailor made to cope with such black swan type events.
What it does
The Kostos system is a tailor-made solution for the above listed problems that was created using Pega tm technology which provides services such as.
- Options to manage resources for corporate, suggesting the best places to buy goods at wholesale prices considering changes in prices due to inflation.
- A dashboard for the nearest available fuel stations with smaller fuel queues and also a section on the dashboard to show the real-time fuel content, location, and total distance traveled by all the vehicles which are controlled by the company.
- An option to integrate all wholesale stores' food prices using an API to get live updates on the prices of the supplies.
- Options to suggest the best places and prices of goods given the monthly or daily budget amount allocated to those resources.
- A Pega mobile app to update details of the company's transportation fleet.
- A Pega mobile app that is provided to all employees in the company notifying best-recommended places to buy their groceries, and special discount prices that are being provided by the company for specific stores (Given the fact that the respective company can agree with the wholesale goods dealers to provide discounts to employees), price changes information, economic markers and places with short fuel ques.
How we built it
The respective application was built by using many supporting technologies which are listed below.
Google map API
The google map API was used in the components such which were designated for finding the location of the closest fuel station with the fastest moving fuel queue and also in when searching for the closest vendor who had the lowest price tag for a particular item to find the relative location of the fuel station and the vendors branch with respective the location of the company or a staff driver.
Mapbox API
The map box API is used as an alternative extra which is not currently present in Pega and was in need of the Kostos applications delivery management components. We used their route optimization API to optimize our distribution network.
Pega Mobile
Pega mobile application is used as an endpoint mobile component which gathers data about the delivery status of a particular driver.
Prediction Studio
The prediction studio has been used to predict the next most plausible commodity option that the resource manager would be selecting when they create a commodity list to be searched at a particular time.
Web scraping APIs
Web scraping is a key part in the kostos application which ensures that the system has up to date information about the fuel, prices of commodities and also the changes in economy. The application relies on an API named Scraper API to search through the information in the websites to get us these updates.
Elasticsearch
This is a 3rd party search engine that ensures that relevant information is found within the application quickly. This is being used in searching for product items and related data which comprises a vast amount of data which needs this capacity.
The below shown is the overviews of Kostos systems
Challenges the team ran into
One of the main challenges that the team faced was to search for a set of websites that updated pricing details very frequently so that the web scraping could be done and the information in the application database was up to date. Given the fact that some of the vendors in Sri Lanka have poorly maintained web interfaces for their businesses. Also, as a collective for the whole team, Pega was something new, and most of us had just completed our Pega CSA certifications and done some training on the technology, so the learning curve was a large one relative to the time that had been given to us.
Notable Accomplishments
- Google API Integrations.
- Mapbox Integration.
- Creation of Sub reports and adding inner joins in between them.
- We learned how to make custom sections.
- We learned how to Configure Repeating Dynamic layouts with Images.
- Table joining in the report definition.
What we learned as a team
Developing the kostos system has been a great experience for our team members, and the whole team is familiar with the features of Pega version 8.6. And the kostos application was developed for this competition using Pega 8.7, which had many exciting features and updates. The team was glad to explore most of them. The collective experience in terms of features is listed below.
- Creating and optimizing UI using cosmos react
- Integrating web scraping into the Pega application
- Using Google map location APIs to their maximum in searching for the location of the closest fuel station and closest vendor.
- Using prediction studio to suggest the next best commodity.
- Exploring Pega launchpad features in order to gain insight into future possibilities.
- Project management and designing project architectures.
- We learned how to manipulate UIs using RDL and skins
- How to do advanced configurations with reports.
- How to integrate APIs such as mapbox.
- RPA concept, overview of prediction studio, and idea decision strategies and management techniques, train a chatbot's text model.
Our team as a collective has a background in Information technology, and by working for this competition, they were able to dive into the mysterious territory of economics, Logistics, and supply chain management in order to fine-tune the application to the requirements of the companies in need. And below listed are the sections that were explored under the priorly mentioned disciplines.
- Microeconomics
- The Business Cycle
- Business Administration and Business Economics.
- Public Economics, Taxation, and Government Spending
- International Economics and International Trade
- Purchasing
- Demand Planning
- Transportation
- Customer Service
Getting Started
Due to the Product Rule's size being slightly bigger than the 100MB GitHub file size limit, the Product Rule is housed on a Google Drive folder that is accessible to the public and where you can download it.
Roles
- Driver
- Sales staff
- Delivery manager
- Sales manager
Research
Global Food Crisis - WFP Update: 15 September 2022 - United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) https://reliefweb.int/report/world/global-food-crisis-wfp-update-15-september-2022
Sri Lanka Food Security Crisis - Humanitarian Needs and Priorities 2022 (June – Sept 2022) [EN/SI/TA] -United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) https://reliefweb.int/report/sri-lanka/sri-lanka-food-security-crisis-humanitarian-needs-and-priorities-2022-june-sept-2022-ensita
UNICEF Sri Lanka Humanitarian Situation Report #1 (Economic Crisis), 1 January to 30 June 2022 https://reliefweb.int/report/sri-lanka/unicef-sri-lanka-humanitarian-situation-report-1-economic-crisis-1-january-30-june-2022
Sri Lanka’s economic crisis pushes health system to brink of collapse - United Nations (UN) https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/08/1124842
Global impact of war in Ukraine: Energy crisis - United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) https://unctad.org/webflyer/global-impact-war-ukraine-energy-crisis
Sources of supply chain disruptions and their impact on euro area manufacturing - European Central Bank https://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/economic-bulletin/focus/2022/html/ecb.ebbox202108_01~e8ceebe51f.en.html
The big challenges for supply chains in 2022 - World Economic Forum (WEF) https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/01/challenges-supply-chains-covid19-2022
Supply Chains Inching Back to Normal Brace for Headwinds of Softer Demand - Bloomberg https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-17/when-will-supply-chains-return-to-normal
The impact of the European energy crisis on supply chains https://www.allthingssupplychain.com/the-impact-of-the-european-energy-crisis-on-supply-chains/
The economics behind the fuel crisis - Advocata Institute https://www.advocata.org/commentary-archives/2022/06/19/the-economics-behind-the-fuel-crisis
Energy crisis raises state bill for public transport https://delano.lu/article/energy-crisis-raises-state-bil
COVID-19: Managing supply chain risk and disruption - Deloitte https://www2.deloitte.com/global/en/pages/risk/cyber-strategic-risk/articles/covid-19-managing-supply-chain-risk-and-disruption.html
Reach out
The kostos application was a solution that was intended to provide efficient management, Logistics, and internal resources with a set of taylor-made features that help the manager in tackling the current economic crisis and future ones. This application was built for cooperation, whose profits heavily rely on logistics and internal management, and the ones who have allocated a considerably large amount of funds for it. As the team was conducting further research into the applications of the kostos system, we found that this could evolve into a product that provides services for the interested companies, and also the impact of this application is a drastic one for the staff of such companies and the economy of an overall region. Our team has planned to redesign kostos systems by using "Pega Launchpad tm" in order to remodule the application as a SAAS platform. And also, we are hoping to propose this product idea to any interested company, including our current employer Virtusa PVT LTD as a project proposal for further development and to be launched as a separate product to the respective market. The team hopes that the organization will foresee the impact that this application could have on Logistics, the supply chain, and the economy.
If you are interested contact the "Pega Pirates" team via the below-listed email addresses.
-https://lk.linkedin.com/in/aqeel-musthaque-206526197 (Team leader - Aqeel Musthaqe)
Plans for Kostos app to be optimized to a resilient supply chain management application
The current build of the Kostos application is built to address a specific set of problems to be more specific internal resource management and in-country logistic problems faced by companies who are stationed in countries who are being impacted by the current economic crisis. When considering future expansion of our product the need for internationalization and interconnected systems will provide a considerably high market advantage and market share to the application.
Deloitte Report on COVID-19: Managing supply chain risk and disruption
There is a set specific area to be focused on by the application when going through the international transformation. Which is listed below considering the paradigm of suppliers and producers.
For companies that produce, distribute, or source from suppliers of geographies impacted by a possible black swan event
- Enhance focus on workforce/labor planning
- Focus on Tier 1 supplier risk
- Illuminate the extended supply network
- Understand and activate alternate sources of supply
- Update inventory policy and planning parameters
- Enhance inbound materials visibility.
- Prepare for plant closures.
- Focus on production scheduling agility.
- Evaluate alternative outbound logistics options and secure capacity.
- Conduct global scenario planning.
For companies that sell industrial products, commodities, or consumer products to producers of geographies impacted by a possible black swan event.
- Understand the demand impact specific to your business.
- Confirm a short-term demand-supply synchronization strategy.
- Prepare for potential channel shifts.
- Evaluate alternative inbound logistics options.
- Enhance allocated available inventory to promise capability.
- Open channels of communication with key customers.
- Prepare for the rebound.
- Conduct global scenario planning.
Supply chains have evolved significantly over time and are now crucial to the competitiveness of many businesses. However, because of how interconnected and global they are, they are also more susceptible to a variety of risks, with more possible points of failure and less room for error to account for delays and interruptions. The Kostos application also addresses a specific case of a range of possible problems such as covid -19 pandemic and other possible black swan events.
Deloitte Report on COVID-19: Managing supply chain risk and disruption
The COVID-19 case study and the current economic crisis demonstrates how many businesses might not completely understand how their supply chain connections make them vulnerable to global shocks. And these events also create a need for supply chain technologies that can significantly increase visibility throughout the entire supply chain and provide considerably more supply chain agility and robustness, without the usual "overhead" associated with risk management strategies. As the Pega Pirates team we are hoping to integrate features that address these areas and optimize the Kostos application. And for this we are hoping to expand the Pega Pirates team and broaden the market impact of the application.
Plans for Kostos app for the public
The proposed system as a solution for the Sri Lankan as well as the Global economic crisis is Taylor made to optimize the transportation management and internal resource management of the corporate sector and for its employees. But the basic philosophy that the Kostos system follows could also be applied to an application that focuses on the general public to find the closest outlets to the necessary products for a low price, and also provide the user with the features to manage their fuel consumption and suggesting them with the closest fuel which has fuel available in it with the fastest moving ques or the shortest ques. This app is planned to be a decentralized application that is made per a social media module including features such as likes as a reward mechanism to keep people sharing more accurate information about the respective scopes.
Acknowledgements
- Sound, Music and Dubbing: Rishnee Jayasuriya
- Presentation Design Template: [Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International]
- The respective logos and Images have been referenced in the place of use. The logo for the team (Pega Pirates Logo) and the logo for the Kostos application have been created by Rishnee Jayasuriya and Aqeel Mushthaqe (Myself) respectively.
Built With
- descision-studio
- google-maps
- mapbox-api
- pega
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