Hub and spoke architecture

A hub-and-spoke system is characterized by an organizational structure in which a central distribution center (hub) is connected by logistic channels (spokes) to multiple depots. A depot covers a region with specific collection and delivery points for goods, hard and soft. A soft good can be software, or orders. In some systems, links between depots permit transshipment (Grahovac and Chakravarty 2001). 

Setting up and operating a hub-and-spoke network involves many decisions, both at the strategic and operational levels. The company must first decide how many hubs, depots, and vehicles it would need in the long run. It needs to specify which depot should serve which retailers (customers) or suppliers. At the operational level the decisions would be allocation of storage and transportation resources to handle current demands, routing of tmcks and other vehicles for pickup 

Each depot can be linked to a single hub, called single-allocation, or it can be linked to more than one hub, called multiple-allocation. Both situations occur in practice. As seen in Fig. 5.7, LTL trucking networks have each depot assigned to a single break bulk terminal (hub) for load consolidation. Passenger airline networks, on the other hand, have flights scheduled from many non-hub cities to a few hubs. Also note that capacity limitations at hubs may force multiple-allocation, as seen in many facility location problems. 

Telecommunication systems use a hub and spoke network to provide for the movement of electronic data (Campbell and O Kelly 2012). The links are either wired (cables) or wireless. Transmission cost does not increase much with distance traveled. Facilities such as switches, routers, and concentrators are located at the hub to enable communication among a set of nodes, analogous to depots. In relation to a transportation network, the operations, costs, service measures, and constraints are often quite different in a telecom hub network because of the differing natures of objects - freight or passengers versus electronic signals in packets . 

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HP has transformed the supply chain to a hub-and-spoke architecture to coordinate the supply process by sharing information among the participants, shown in Fig. 3.8. 

Webvan (now defunct) used a hub-and-spoke architecture distribution centers to deliver its products to consumers (Hays et al. 2004). In the DC, customer orders were grouped and sorted by destination, loaded onto bucks and shipped to the final... 

In the future sustainable world energy supply architecture, recycle could be conducted at secure regional fuel cycle support centres. Each such centre forms the hub of a hub-and-spoke energy supply system of regional centres and surrounding STARs with shipments of fuel occurring on 20 year refuelling intervals. 

The proposed hub-spoke architecture for STAR deployment could meet the abovementioned three criteria for a new approach to non-proliferation. At the same time, by placing each regional fuel cycle centre s operational control under the governance of the customer countries themselves - as secured by international law - it might remove the current asymmetry of supplier vs. customer state and provide for every country s energy security. 

The STAR hierarchical hub-spoke architecture is a world energy supply architecture optimised for nuclear and intended to displace the current fossil-based energy architecture over a multi decade market substitution transition period characteristic of any major infrastructure transition (e.g. the pace of infrastructure substitutions for the US transportation sector shown in Fig. 8 illustrates the ponderous dynamics of market substitutions of massive infrastructures). 

THE STAR CONCEPT A HIERARCHICAL HUB-SPOKE NUCLEAR ARCHITECTURE BASED ON LONG REFUELING INTERVAL BATTERY REACTORS AND REGIONAL FUEL CYCLE CENTERS... 

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