Distribution Management & Network Planning Training Course

The Distribution Management & Network Planning Training Course equips supply chain and logistics professionals with the strategic and analytical tools needed to design, plan, and manage distribution networks that deliver the right service at the lowest total cost. In government entities, ministries, healthcare systems, banks, manufacturing, retail, and distribution companies, and large corporations, the way goods move from central sources to regional sites, branches, facilities, and end users determines delivery reliability, inventory investment, transport cost, and the organization's ability to respond to changing demand and disruption. Many distribution networks are the result of historical decisions rather than deliberate design. Warehouses and distribution centers may be located where space happened to be available, inventory may be duplicated across too many locations, delivery routes may be planned manually and inefficiently, and every customer or site may receive the same service regardless of its needs or cost to serve. As organizations grow, merge, centralize, or change their service models, these networks often become costly and difficult to manage, yet the full cost of distribution is rarely analyzed as a whole. This course provides a structured, practical approach to distribution management and network planning. Participants learn the role of distribution in supply chain strategy, how to define service requirements and segment customers or sites, and how to analyze total distribution cost and cost to serve. The program covers distribution models including direct delivery, hub-and-spoke networks, multi-echelon networks, cross-docking, and last-mile delivery, and the principles of network design including the number, location, size, and role of facilities. Participants learn practical location analysis methods such as center of gravity and scenario-based evaluation, inventory deployment decisions between centralized and decentralized stocking, distribution requirements planning, transport network design including routing and scheduled delivery runs, and capacity planning. The course also addresses network risk and resilience, sustainability in distribution, outsourcing distribution activities, network modeling and planning technologies, and distribution performance measurement. The course is delivered through an interactive, application-focused approach with spreadsheet-based modeling exercises, case studies, and group scenario planning. Participants leave with a distribution network map and assessment, a service segmentation framework, a cost-to-serve analysis, a facility location evaluation, a network scenario comparison, a distribution KPI dashboard design, and an improvement plan for their distribution network.