Articles, News, and Literature

Here you will find a number of Applied Optimization case-studies related to past and current Applied Optimization projects, as well as a number of primers and tutorials concerned with ERP and related topics.

• Decision Support System for Sales and Operations Planning in the Chemical Process Industry
• Tactical Planning in the Beverage Industry
• Resource Management in Pharmaceutical R&D
• Planning Primer
• Planning Applications Overview
• Applied Optimization Featured in Business Standard Article

Case Study 1
Decision Support System for Sales and Operations Planning in the Chemical Process Industry

Summary: An optimization-based application was developed to automate the sales & operations planning (S&OP) process of a polymer manufacturer with multiple sites supplying global markets. The application generates a global plan that takes into account local manufacturing and supply constraints. Decisions on plant closures/expansions, production, warehousing, and distribution of intermediates and products are now based on a rigorous supply chain model. Savings on the order of US $4 Million/yr are being seen as a result of deploying these models. Cycle time for plan creation has gone down from several weeks to a few hours allowing management personnel to focus on analysis instead of plan creation.

Case Study 2
Tactical Planning in the Beverage Industry

Summary: An optimization-based application was developed to automate the tactical planning process in a complex beverage manufacturing plant. The application provides for fast analysis of utilization profiles of various assets involved in the beverage production. This exercise is critical in supporting capital expenditure decisions and in decisions relating to processing additional raw-material over and above the amounts forecasted previously that may be available at a cheap price due to sudden market condition changes. The application demonstrated that asset utilization can be predicted and optimized to maximize ROI to the business.

Case Study 3
Resource Management in Pharmaceutical R&D

Summary: A decision support application was developed for management and allocation of resources at the Safety Assessment division of a global Fortune 100 Pharmaceutical major. The application provides for quick analysis of the resources available, and their allocation to the development programs concerning the pre-clinical candidates in the pipeline. Since limited resources are available (e.g. animals needed for testing, lab personnel, biochemists etc.) there needs to be an optimal utilization of these resources such that the drug candidates with the highest potential for success are prefrentially supported. A complicating factor is that the probability of success (POS) of each program is a dynamically changing factor that depends on a number of internal and external variables.The Planning Tool application developed by Applied Optimization demonstrated that asset utilization can be predicted and optimized to maximize the number of pre-clinical candiates that can go through the development pipeline.The application also enables the company to study impacts of outsourcing.

Planning Primer

This PDF file provides an introduction to the subject of process planning and discusses the benefits of moving from manual and spreadsheet-based solutions to an automated planning system.

Planning Applications Overview

A Power-Point Slide-show detailing the uses and benefits of Automated Process Planning

Applied Optimization Featured in Business Standard Article

Applied Optimization was recently featured in an article about the value of ERP enhancements in The Business Standard, India's premier, business daily.