Category Archives: Decision Optimization

Decision Optimization Technologies

OptaPlanner continues as Timefold

Geoffrey De Smet: OptaPlanner, an Open Source project for planning optimization, has entered a new chapter. “The project I worked on for seventeen years, has matured under Red Hat’s wings for the past ten years. Last year, when Red Hat’s … Continue reading

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Decisions as Code

NextMV (“next move”) is a startup that provides solutions for Decision Optimization in the Routing, Scheduling, Packing, and other domains. “Building and shipping algorithms is tough. (87% of algorithms never make it to production.) Even when an algorithm makes it … Continue reading

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Challenge May-2023 “Next Best Action”

“Next best action” is a popular decision-making strategy. But how to define the “best” next action? This challenge may demonstrate it. Consider an NxN grid of lightbulbs. We are given an initial state where some of the bulbs are off and some are on. Then, … Continue reading

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Christopher Columbus, global warming and mathematical optimization

In this highly popular article IBM’s Alex Fleischer wrote: “One of the levers is the mathematical optimization of business decision making, made possible by data and the deployment of decision models associated with constraint programming. Or, put more simply: an algorithm … Continue reading

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AI is not equal to ML

Alain Chabrier from IBM Decision Optimization team in his Medium.com article argues that not only “AI != ML” pointing to the difference between Data-driven and Knowledge-driven decision models. He even claims that “Decision Optimization has more impact on the real … Continue reading

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Pragmatic Approach to Predictive Decision Automation

In this webinar Red Hat specialists explain how explainable Predictive Decisioning can help us trust AI. Their  approach combines AI/ML, decision optimization, and traditional business rules to better understand the factors that contribute to an automated decision. They use the … Continue reading

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Solving Assembly Line Balancing Problem

Philippe Laborie from IBM CPLEX team shared several models for representation and solving an optimization problem in assembly line balancing research. His solutions are shown in Python CP Optimizer and OPL: they are not only very compact but highly efficient. … Continue reading

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Covid-19 and Decision Optimization

Alex Fleischer from IBM ILOG team wrote: “First, decision optimization can help reduce inbalance and help us live with Covid-19. Second, Optimization can help us look for a vaccine or a medicine. Third, Optimization will once we have some vaccine … Continue reading

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Time to deliver a decision optimization model to the business user

Alain Chabrier and Alex Fleischer from IBM Decision Optimization team published the article “Decision Optimization: Speed is not enough” “Many tend to think that performance is the holy grail, and the choice of an optimization engine is mostly based on … Continue reading

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The AI Evolution and the Challenge of Decision Automation

In his latest post Prof. Warren Powell contrasts “using AI to automate decisions to Tesla’s aggressive use of robotics to automate their assembly lines. It is important to understand the most common use of AI today (machine learning) with the … Continue reading

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