Optimization, in its simplest form, is the process of choosing “the best” alternative. For the
optimization process to execute, the presence of an objective – which serves the purpose of
comparing different alternatives – is a must. Furthermore, some constraints may be present which
dictate whether a given alternative is feasible or not. Hence, whenever there is a decision to be made
and that, there are different courses of action related to the decision, and there is a need to
determine the feasibility and the desirability of different courses of action to choose which one to
follow, an optimization problem exists. Therefore, instead of approaches such as sorting customer
orders with respect to due dates and dispatching related work orders on suitable workstations,
which is only a single course of action, the system must be able to actively pursue different courses
of action with respect to changing objectives and data.
For many companies, optimization techniques are not in widespread effective use due to not
grasping the magnitude of the benefits that can be obtained and/or optimizations systems being far
too complicated. However, ranging from layout design to operations scheduling, optimization
techniques can provide significant improvement over many existing practices.
There are three important factors which plague the application of optimization systems in practice.
Namely, the excessive number of possible alternatives, the accuracy and the amount of data needed
and finally, the complexity and the difficulty of defining and maintaining constraints and objectives.
NovaLab’s planning software, xS Planner, has built-in capabilities to address each of these obstacles.