Group your Network data

Groups provide a powerful mechanism for working with data in a Network model. Items in groups can be constrained together to ensure that they change in a related fashion. Several different types of Network data can be grouped:

• Supplies

• Demands

• Terminal operations

• Terminal inventories

• Transport links

Groups also form a key part of the workflow for working with Exchanges.

Group hierarchy

You can set the relative ratios of group members within a group. For example Regular and Premium gasoline could both belong to the Gasolines group. These can have an associated ratio relative to each other. This ratio is set for all time, so it applies in each period where the group is available.

Group can themselves be members of other groups, so these in turn can have relative ratios. For example, the Regular and Premium gasolines are members of the Gasolines group, and this is a member of the group Fuels, along with the Diesels group. Thus the total gasoline production is controlled relative to diesel production.

Membership of multiple groups

Items can be members of multiple groups. When an item is a member of multiple groups, its ratio is fixed in each of the groups it is present in. Therefore, the ratio of these parent groups are implicitly fixed relative to each other.

Example: The supplies of regular and premium gasoline are constrained to be 10:1 relative to each other. Within each period, the supply of regular gasoline is ten times the supply of premium gasoline.
The regular and premium gasolines are also members of the group Products. This group in turn belongs to another group, where it is constrained relative to another supply Components (2:1 Products:Components). The material RBOB gasoline belongs to the group Components, so the supply of RBOB is half that of total gasoline.