After a follow-up paper vote on Monday, the most popular presentation selected for Irv Lustig’s last Opti session of the day was “Writing Better Mixed Integer Programming Models.”

I suspect Irv organized a second vote because he wanted to avoid having to give the “Introduction to ILOG CP Optimizer” presentation which actually won the original electronic vote. Whether or not there was any vote-rigging involved, I don’t know, but I do know that the vote was quite spread, showing that there was interest in all the proposed topics. I thought of suggesting to Irv that he combine all seven proposed topics into a single talk, but who knows how that would have turned out!

Whether it’s because math was never really my strong point at school, or whether it’s because my brain was fried by 3.30pm on Day 3, I’m afraid Irv’s suggestions for improving MIP models was way over my head. I suppose I should have guessed that when he started with “It’s going to include a lot of math, and if you get lost in the math, so be it.” Oh boy.

If you’re interested in this topic, I think your best bet is to wait until the video is published online some time in the next few weeks! In the mean time, though, if you have any questions for Irv, feel free to post a comment here. Anyone got any Advil?

In this session, Bob Bixby, ILOG Chief Science Officer, discussed how optimization has become a key component in addressing common business and manufacturing problems today. He explained what has and hasn’t changed in approaches to optimization over the many years that he has been in the business.

Bob used IBM’s East Fishkill 300mm semiconductor wafer manufacturing plant as an example to explain the benefits that optimization and automated scheduling can bring to highly complex manufacturing processes.

People have been trying to find ways to improve process optimization for years, of course. The difference today is that processes are now so complex that traditional methods can no longer cope. It’s no longer feasible to try and optimize an entire project. Instead, optimization solutions must break down processes into separate sub-processes and optimize those individually. The old generation of solutions, despite enormous progress in processing capacity, required too much time to generate optimum solutions. even with a turnaround time of less than 24 hours, solutions would often be obsolete before they could even be implemented.

By combining constraint programming optimization, process modeling and decision management systems, ILOG’s optimization suite can be used to build real-time optimization solutions. Bob’s slides contained plenty of statistics from the IBM Fishkill application, showing how this approach has been used to bring dramatic optimization improvements.

He highlighted, for example, the 25.3% reduction in cycle time (production time + waiting time) that the ILOG solution was able to achieve in certain plant sub-processes, which contributed to overall efficiency improvements of around 6%. Considering that the plant handles some 15,000 batches a day, that’s a considerable achievement and represents considerable cost savings for the plant.

These cutting-edge optimization solutions are no longer a nice-to-have. They are essential for survival in today’s white hot competitive environments.

As I already mentioned in a previous post, there’s going to be a whole bunch of really intelligent people at DIALOG 08 (Did you sign up yet?)

Imagine my surprise, then, when I discovered that the conference program includes a whole series of introductory “101″ sessions. What gives? Well, after a quick chat with a couple of members of the conference team, I came to realize that the idea actually makes a lot of sense.

Optimization and rule engines are able to compute the most complex solutions in the shortest time, but visualization tools are essential to enable users to understand, analyze and adjust the output of complex systems with dynamic diagrams, dashboards, maps, charts, and schedule views.

So while you may already be a BRMS boffin, a Visu guru, or an Optim whizz, if you’re anything like me, you probably find that there just aren’t enough hours in the day to become an expert in everything.

Take note then: There are “101″ sessions scheduled for BRMS, Optimization and Visualization. Each session will provide an introduction to each of these domains and explain how ILOG’s products are used to provide solutions to the major challenges currently being faced in each of these areas.

The great thing is that these sessions are all programmed at the same time on Monday afternoon (February 25 from 5:00 pm - 5:45 pm). That makes this a great opportunity for you to jump tracks and find out more about one of ILOG’s other areas of expertise.

You might be surprised at the high degree of complementarity between ILOG’s various product lines - and who knows, you could even learn something new!