Fwurg

[Veolian Commonwealth]

((OOC: Continued from the opening of the summit))

The intergalactic logistics track features speakers talking interstellar transportation, both scaling and efficient. The programme for the track is:

Intergalactic Logistics Track

Optimizing fleet trade using a bozzy spine trade hub
Speaker: Prof. Dr. Orlandazi Fundamixo (Praetorian trade department, Praetorian Empire)

"Orlandazi Fundamixo will explain the power and benefits of building a trade hub on the bozzy spine that connects 10 Union factions."


Union-wide holonet relay coverage, or "The rise of the net"
Speaker: Dr. Sanjāla (Kilan University, Veolian Commonwealth)

"The current shift from generalized transportation to specialized transportation of information-based products has dramatically increased the holonet coverage within the Union. We will present an up-to-date map of the holonet backbone infrastructure, and analyse the possibilities for improvement on a Union-wide scale."


Better supply chain management ensures economic growth
Speaker: Lady Neomi de Savony

"Supply chain management (SCM) is the management of the flow of goods. It includes the movement and storage of raw materials, work-in-process inventory, and finished goods from point of origin to point of consumption. Interconnected or interlinked networks, channels and node businesses are involved in the provision of products and services required by end customers in a supply chain."

After the talks, a discussion panel consisting of the speakers and several invited guests will be available for answering questions.

[Prof. Dr. Orlandazi Fundamixo (mask of Praetorian Empire)]

Optimizing fleet trade using a bozzy spine trade hub

Prof. Dr. Orlandazi Fundamixo will explain the power and benefits of building a trade hub on the bozzy spine that connects 10 Union factions.

"The Union can greatly increase their trade efficiency by combining the power of a outpost with the efficiency of the bozzy spine in the form of a trade hub. Factions will no longer need to assign a trade fleet to every Union member that they want to trade with but can efficiently trade with each Union member by assigning a single trade fleet.

In the current trade system every faction assigns their own trade fleet to each trading partner. Due to this inefficiency every faction that actively trades has at least 6 trade fleets with varying capacity. Still there is always some capacity left unused on these trade fleets and nobody has enough trade fleets to trade with every other Union member. Luckily the Praetorian Empire has found the solution for this problem!

For example if the Praetorian Empire would create an outpost on the center of the bozzy spine in sector 12 -7 and fill this outpost with open market zones to support 20 trade fleets, theoretically every Union member would require only 1 trade fleet to trade with all other Union members. They could ship all the goods that they want to trade to the trade hub in sector 12 -7 and the 20 trade fleets that are supported by the trade hub will make sure that the goods are delivered to their actual destination for a small fee. This would already mean that we could deliver goods to the Teprogrenaian Consensus using a trade factor of 1.2 and we could deliver to the Astai Republic with a trade factor that is only 0.6! Just drop of the goods and we will deliver them efficiently.

In a much more optimized case the Union itself would build and own the trade hub. The Union could give each member one zone as their territory to build their own open market zone that has the added benefit of allowing shipping from and to your system. This would mean that each faction ship all its traded goods to a trade hub and retrieve all the received goods from the trade hub with only 1 assigned trade fleet. The only thing the Union has to do is connect multiple trade hubs with their massive fleets to make sure that more than 9 factions can be connected to each other, however this should not be an issue due to the fact that these connections would only use bozzy spine sectors to connect giving them very high efficiency.

With the cost of surveying a outpost at 3000 and building it with two upgrades for another 12 000 the Union could provide a zone to 10 members. This would be a construction cost of 1500 per member. These members would only need to build their own open market zone for 2000 . Finally there is the upkeep the an outpost requires of 120 products / that with a price of 0.75 / product would give each member a upkeep of 9 / .

Concluding: For only 3500 investment and 9 upkeep / for each member, 10 Union members could be connected to each other with only 1 large trade fleet assigned per faction. This means that all trade capacity can be used optimally without having to reassign any fleets. Nobody would ever have to say "I am sorry but we cannot trade with you, we have no trade fleet left to trade with your faction." ever again. Is the Union willing to optimize their trade?"
Prof. Dr. Orlandazi Fundamixo

[Dr. Sanjāla (mask of Veolian Commonwealth)]

Union-wide holonet relay coverage, or "The rise of the net"

Dr. Sanjāla, a hemet veolian woman, walked onto the stage. Despite being 604 years old, she easily fools the audience into thinking she is but a little over 30.

"Hello all, and welcome to this short talk on the rise of the net.

During the past year we have seen an explosive growth of the Holonet backbone of the Union. In this talk I hope to offer you some insight into the current situation of the holonet, and propose an idea that could improve the holonet facilities of the Union."

"This map shows the current layout of the main holonet backbones. The four backbones shown are those of the Astrian Colonial Authority in cyan, the Veolian Commonwealth in purple, the IO in white, and the Sundarian Federation in yellow. Shown are the base stations as hexagons, and upgrade-only clusters as circles. The dotted connections represent direct connectivity.

Note that we have no insight into the private agreements between worlds, and as such can only map the holonet backbone from public data and route analysis of tracer packets."

"At first glance, a few interesting things can be observed immediately. With 10 base stations, the ACA sports the longest uninterrupted holonet route, allowing dedicated transmission of large amounts of data without carrier switches. Next is the Sundarian Federation, with 7 base stations. The Veolian Commonwealth has the shortest route, with only 4 base stations.

Another noticable fact is 12 -5, where base station 0-01100-1-00101 of the IO is situated. This stations falls outside of the boundaries of patrolled space, and opens up the Union to cyberattacks by malicious parties."


"If we look at overall available capacity, the IO and the Sundarian Federation are both clearly a league above the rest of the Union. Both factions have around 25000 available. The runner-up is the ACA, with 10000 , followed by the Veolian Commonwealth at only 5500 .

The IO are taking advantage of the fact that only a single base station is necessary per . Especially in the vincinity of 14 -4, it becomes clear how efficient these cooperations can be. With 14 -4 and 15 -4 both having a capacity of 8000 .

The same can not be said of 10 -6, where three base stations are deployed. Notable is the fact that the oldest stations there also belong to the world with the shortest route: the Veolian Commonwealth. Unfortunately, they also employ outdated routing and compression software making their backbone slow and connections unstable. An effort to remedy this situation has only recently been started.

Another point of note is that the only two with only 500 belong to the Hiocan Society and the Tepgrogrenaian Consensus. This makes it exceedingly difficult for both worlds to join the information market in any meaningful sense."

"Armed with all this knowledge, it is suprising that so little effort is put into cooperation and the attaching of upgrade clusters to already existing base stations. Based on our predictions, at least 135 per can be saved on upkeep and maintenance.

In light of this, I propose that the Union institute a small subsidy for worlds attaching their upgrade clusters to the base stations of another faction. Even an subsidy of 1 per used foreign base station would be a significant impulse to start cooperation."
Dr. Sanjāla

[Lady Neomi de Savony (mask of Sundarian Federation)]

Better supply chain management ensures economic growth

The next announced speaker is Lady Neomi de Savony, of the Sundarian Federation.

"Supply chain management is the management of the flow of goods. It includes the movement and storage of raw materials, work-in-process inventory, and finished goods from point of origin to point of consumption. Interconnected or interlinked networks, channels and node businesses are involved in the provision of products and services required by end customers in a supply chain. Supply chain management has been defined as the 'design, planning, execution, control, and monitoring of supply chain activities with the objective of creating net value', building a competitive infrastructure, leveraging interstellar logistics, synchronizing supply with demand and measuring performance Union-wide.

Specialization within the supply chain began with the inception of transportation brokerages, warehouse management, and non-asset-based carriers, and has matured beyond transportation and logistics into aspects of supply planning, collaboration, execution, and performance management.

Market forces sometimes demand rapid changes from suppliers, logistics providers, locations, or customers in their role as components of supply chain networks. This variability has significant effects on supply chain infrastructure, from the foundation layers of establishing and managing electronic communication between trading partners, to more complex requirements such as the configuration of processes and work flows that are essential to the management of the network itself.

Looking at trades on a Union-wide scale and the specific limitations of several individual member worlds, our studies have revealed that, just like companies, our factions need to focus more on and commit to investments in to deal with bottlenecks, but more over should work together. Key factors in the logistical flow of goods that would need to resolved are:

a) Product development and commercialization
Here, customers and suppliers must be integrated into the product development process in order to reduce the time to market. As demands shift and markets diversify, the appropriate products must be produced and successfully delivered with ever-shorter time schedules in order for our individual economies to remain competitive. This forces us to:
1. select materials and suppliers in conjunction with strategic plans that are drawn up with suppliers to support the manufacturing process and the development of new market potential; and
2. develop production technology in manufacturing flow to manufacture and integrate into the best supply chain flow for the given combination of product and markets,

b) Physical distribution
This concerns the movement of a finished product or service to customers. In physical distribution, the customer is the final destination of a marketing channel, and the availability of the product or service is a vital part of each channel participant's marketing effort. It is also through the physical distribution process that the time and space of customer service become an integral part of marketing. Thus it links a marketing channel with its customers (i.e., it links manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers).

This has proven to be the main bottleneck that needs to be dealt with, especially within our younger, growing economies. They often lack sufficient capacity to compete with the more established worlds, despite their level of commitment. In order to resolve this issue, we propose the following solution, which is twofold.

Firstly, our younger economies should not feel that they are limited by their budget, and instead seek out investments at favorable rates from our larger members. Secondly, our larger economies should not seek the abuse their larger economic power in order to force the smaller economies into choices that only benefits the larger party. Instead we should encourage our smaller economies to making their own choices and support them to become viable players in their preferred product-markets.

c) Outsourcing/partnerships
This includes not just the outsourcing of the procurement of materials and components, but also the outsourcing of services that traditionally have been provided in house. The logic of this trend is that the company will increasingly focus on those activities in the value chain in which it has a distinctive advantage and outsource everything else. This movement has been particularly evident in logistics, where the provision of transport, warehousing, and inventory control is increasingly subcontracted to specialists or logistics partners. Also, managing and controlling this network of partners and suppliers requires a blend of central and local involvement: strategic decisions are taken centrally, while the monitoring and control of supplier performance and day-to-day liaison with logistics partners are best managed locally.

This means that, as part of this process the corporate managers must be willing to make choices and commit to a specific path and plans, the same holds true for our individual economies; only if enough member worlds are willing to redirect their economic prowess into specific products and specific markets, and truly commit to producing less different products in larger quantities, are we able to reach the second stage of optimization.

Supply chain specialization enables us to improve our overall competencies in the same way that outsourced manufacturing and distribution, on a local scale, has done; it allows us to focus on core competencies and assemble networks of specific, best-in-class partners to contribute to the overall value chain itself, thereby increasing overall performance and efficiency Union-wide."
Lady Neomi de Savony

[Veolian Commonwealth]

After the talks came a short break for coffee, tea, and other beverages while the stage was completely replaced, and a new stage was carried in and bolted to the floor.

When the guests came back in the announcer introduced the members of the discussion panel for the intergalactic economy track. The panel consists of

• Prof. Dr. Orlandazi Fundamixo of the Praetorian trade department
• Dr. Sanjāla of the Kilan University
• Lady Neomi de Savony of the Sundarian Federation

The announcer then introduced his two aides, two female veolians carrying microphones, and started with the first question from the audience.

((OOC: Feel free to ask questions. You don't have to wait for the previous question to be answered, the answerers can make clear which question they are answering!

If you have OOC questions on the math or the logic behind a talk, or didn't fully understand it, you can also ask the question IC -- more roleplay is more good.))

[Senator Ardios Eldrilith]

"As Senator of the Praetorian Empire I am interested in what you all think about using the Bozzy Spine for taking trade efficiency to the next level. Isn't it time to start handling holonet management at a Union level to ensure that we have a single efficient backbone.

Lady Neomi how would you stimulate the smaller economies to ask for investments, currently there are only a few economies considering investments. Would you consider Bozzy Spine trade hubs as a good method to improve distribution and to assure partnerships between all members instead of limiting them by the amount of trade fleets they can support?

Do you think that trade hubs could be implemented as a Union wide project?"

[Sundarian Federation]

"Well Senator," Lady Neomi responded, "I believe that tradehubs, as you propose, might prove beneficial to trading in the long run and they would certainly solve a part of the transportation problem. At the moment however, I believe that there are more direct and less expensive measures that can be taken to improve trade and overall capacity without resorting to major projects.

One of which is stimulate investments, as I propose. The way I see it this can be done in a manner ways, for example by providing a small subsidy from the Union for smaller economies that invest in durable growth. Or a tax incentive for the larger economies, which will make the offering of loans to smaller economies more attractive then investing in their own economy and larger project, such as outposts and tradehubs."

[Veolian Commonwealth]

The suggestion by Lady Neomi de Savony that a small subsidy could be implemented was spoken with such gravity that the rest of the would-be questioners remained silent in thought.

After a very serious silence, the moderator closed the discussion, noting that there was little more to be said.

((OOC: The summit is closed in the closing ball))