scheduling

First Look – OpenRules Rule Solver and Rule Learner

May 12, 2011

I recently published a First Look on the open source OpenRules Decision Management System. Along with traditional Business Rules components, OpenRules includes two other important decision management components:

Rules Solver for solving optimization problems
Rule Learner for predictive analytics.

OpenRules Rule Solver is based on Constraint Programming (CP) [...]

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First Look – SAS/OR

March 31, 2011

I have been doing more thinking about optimization recently and thought I should get caught up with the OR (Operations Research) folks at SAS to see what they are doing. They see OR technologies as part of the overall analytics spectrum and feel that anything that improves the rigor of decision making without unduly constraining [...]

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First Look – TOA Technologies

September 9, 2009

I got a quick overview of TOA Technologies recently. TOA Technologies was founded about 5 years ago to solve “the cable guy” problem – customers waiting at home for hours without knowing when the cable guy, or any other appointment, is going to arrive. Their core idea was that they would predict, with a high [...]

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First Look – Dynadec Comet

July 8, 2009

Optimization is one of the core technologies for Decision Management and an increasingly important one as the technology grows to handle more operational problems. Dynadec is one of the new players in this space and has what it regards as a game-changing optimization platform (Comet). Their intent is not simply to provide a new optimization [...]

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Optimization and Business Processes

May 6, 2009

ILOG and XM presented on optimization and business processes. Optimization in this context is about mathematical optimization aimed at decision support or Operations Research. Creating plans and schedules to optimize use of resources. Optimization helps business create best possible schedules or plans, explore their alternatives and understand trade-offs between conflicting goals. For instance, how much [...]

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Driving customer loyalty in a disaggregated industry

March 12, 2009

Steve Zannos of NEW Customer Service Companies presented on customer loyalty in an industry with lots of third parties involved. NEW provides service support to companies who sell products and works with 30,000 independent service agents – everything from single technicians to large depots to national networks. They try to drive customer loyalty through this [...]

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DIALOG closing thoughts – better decisions for a smarter planet

February 12, 2009

One of the best things about being at DIALOG was the opportunity to meet a bunch of ILOG customers and learn how they are making better decisions in their organizations. It seems to me that every one of these customers is, in a very practical way, helping to build a smarter planet. The first group [...]

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The power and challenges of decision management packages

June 8, 2008

David Greer had a cutely named post this week – The Engine That Can. David and I had a nice chat about eOptimize a few days ago and I thought I would respond to his post with some thoughts of my own. eOptimize’s product is unlike those often described as decision management applications – it [...]

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