FlowOpt: Bridging the Gap Between Optimization Technology and Manufacturing Planners

FlowOpt is demonstration software showing how advanced optimization technology can be put at the fingertips of practitioners, who are not experienced in optimization. FlowOpt is a unique combination of optimization technology based on constraint satisfaction techniques with knowledge engineering aspects of extracting formal problem models and with interactive visualization that gives users full control over the produced schedules. The system supports visual design of production workflows with alternative processes, it generates feasible schedules based on the workflows and specified resources, it shows the schedules in the form of a Gantt view with the possibility to manually modify the schedules, and finally, it supports analysis of schedules to find new ways to improve production