12. The Art of Modeling

As you’ve seen throughout this book, network design is about making a decision about your supply chain. When you are in the midst of analyzing data, are talking to different people in the organization, and are worried about the deadline, the most common trap you can fall into is thinking that the goal of the project is to exactly replicate the current situation. This thinking leads to too much effort in collecting data, too much effort in building a perfect model, and, in the end, failing to create a model that can be used to make a good business decision. In other words, if you try to exactly replicate reality, your model will be just as complicated and just as expensive as reality.

Instead, you need to keep in mind that ...

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