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Production Planning

Optimization
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Introduction

Here, the problem consists of planning the production for two finished products: FPA (table) & FPB (stool). 

Each Finished Product is manufactured from two raw products: RPA (oak wood) and RPB (pine planks).

In this demo, the optimization algorithm (based on the PuLP open-source math solver) decides the optimal levels of production for FPA & FPB in order to minimize costs while satisfying a set of constraints (described below).

Input Data visualization

After registering with a new account (name & password), the first page gets displayed.

The main chart plots the future demand for finished product A (FPA) and finished product B (FPB) over the next 11 months. The current month is month 0.

Just above, when clicking on “Expand here”, you can find a Taipy GUI “expandable” containing the initial production data at time 0 (current month): the stock & production levels, the incoming orders for the raw materials, and the demand (in a table).

Optimizing and Playing with Scenarios

By clicking on the Scenario Manager icon (on the left panel), you access the main page of the application. From this page, you can create a new scenario, change the scenario parameters (on the ‘Scenario Configuration’ side of the page), and re-submit the scenario i.e., re-optimize the scenario by taking into account the modified parameters).

Initially, no scenario is available yet, and you can see that the Year/Month corresponds to the current month.

Below, the two indicators, “Cost of Back Orders’ and ‘Cost of Stocks’ are displayed. These correspond to the two costs that the ‘optimization’ Algorithm will optimize.

 

Creating your first scenario

When clicking on the “NEW SCENARIO” button,

  1. A new scenario gets created containing all the input data related to the scenario.
  2. An Optimization algorithm is then launched which very quickly finds the optimal levels of production respecting the capacity constraints and optimizing the two costs.

The results are displayed either as time series or as pie charts. 

You can select the different visuals by selecting the data to be displayed (costs, productions, etc.).

Modifying the Parameters

This panel allows you to modify some of the parameters; these are divided in three categories:
  1. When clicking on ‘Capacity Constraints’, you can modify the various capacity values for the different products (finished product and raw products). The capacity constraints relate to the product icon selected (by default, the table icon is selected). By selecting a different product icon, the corresponding capacity constraints will appear.
  2. When clicking on “Objectives Weights’,  you can emphasize minimizing one specific cost (either cost of stock or cost of back ordering).
  3. When clicking on ‘Initial Parameters’, other parameters can be modified.

Playing with Scenarios

Once some of the parameters have been modified, two options are available to the user:
  • Clicking on “New Scenario”  will create a second scenario that will optimize the costs based on the new set of parameters.
  • Clicking on “Re-optimize” will re-optimize the current scenario, and the previous solution gets overwritten.

Should you create a second scenario, you can select one of the two scenarios to be ‘Primary’. By clicking on “Make Primary’. In such a case, a little flag will appear on the side of the scenario name.

‘Primary’ is a Taipy Core concept that comes in handy when one of the many scenarios that users create needs to be identified as the ‘official’ scenario for the current cycle. In this demo, the cycle (another Taipy Core concept) is the month. 

See Taipy Core Concepts in the User Manual for more information:  https://docs.taipy.io/en/latest/manuals/core/concepts/cycle/

 

Comparing scenarios

By clicking on the balance icon on the left panel, you will be able to compare 2 scenarios within the same month (same cycle). 

Visualize the Performance over time

By clicking on the circle arrow icon on the left panel, you will be able to display the algorithm’s performance over time. The program simply extracts the optimized costs from the ‘Primary’ scenario for each cycle (i.e., month) and displays them in a bar chart. Note that this demo already contains scenarios generated for the previous months.

Databases

By clicking on the database icon, you can display the different tables (dataframes) for a given scenario. You can download as CSV file the result table by clicking on the ‘Download Table’ button.