CLEVOR Schedule Optimizers improve business competitiveness by improving productivity and customer service

Schedule Optimizers

CLEVOR Schedule Optimizer

CLEVOR Schedule Optimizer represents a major breakthrough in scheduling. It delivers a patent-pending advanced technical solution with compelling return on investment and unparalleled ease of use. Fully automatic, it has shown that it produces results that are significantly better than either the critical path method or rule based scheduling systems.

Scheduling is a critical business process

Scheduling is normally viewed as an ubiquitous business process which tells what task should be carried out by which resource and when. But due to its impact on both the customer service and the total costs, scheduling is also a critical business process.

What is schedule optimization

Although scheduling is considered a straight forward process, it is very difficult to come up with a schedule that will result in the minimum total cost. To understand this better, let us consider a simple example.

A simple example

In the case of a restaurant, its objectives for scheduling are to maximize customer services (as measured by the total wait time of its customers), and to maximize its sales by minimizing the total time customers occupy their tables.

Let us assume that two customers order their meals at the same time in a restaurant, which has only one cook. Steak lover orders a steak, which will take 30 minutes to cook and Burger lover orders a hamburger, which will take 15 minutes to cook. Let us further assume that the cook can cook only one dish at a time and that both the customers take 20 minutes to eat their respective meals.

The cook has only two choices. In schedule A, he cooks the steak first and the hamburger second. Or in schedule B, he cooks the hamburger first and the steak second.

Schedule A

Schedule B

From this example with only two tasks and one resource, it is clear that the cook should follow Schedule B, which gives the restaurant much better results. It is also clear that whereas in this particular case, Schedule B is better than Schedule A in each of these two metrics, it is possible that in other examples, the same schedule may not be better than the other on each metric and therefore, we would have to come up with a schedule that "optimizes" the given objective.

In the real world of our customers, they would have dozens of jobs or assignments, hundreds or even thousands of tasks, dozens or hundreds of resources. In addition, the same task could be done by different resources, with different number of resources, or other alternatives. All of these factors could result in literally millions of different schedules with different total costs and other characteristics. Therefore, it is necessary to find the best schedule from these different schedules. This is what we call schedule optimization.

Schedule optimization is difficult but has a huge payoff

Researchers in the field have known for quite some time that schedule optimization is very difficult. However, they have also known that it has a huge payoff. With CLEVOR Schedule Optimizers, it is possible for our customers to obtain this payoff quite easily. Our experience with our various customers shows that schedule optimization can give up to 30% improvement in productivity with corresponding impact on profits!

Potential benefits of CLEVOR Schedule Optimizers

Who can benefit from schedule optimization

  1. Contractors:
    Mechanical, including machinery installers and piping contractors, electrical, concrete, instrumentation, steel erectors, IT contractors, etc.
  2. Professional Service firms:
    Accounting firms, management consultants, software firms, engineering firms, advertising companies, law firms, etc.
  3. Manufacturers:
    Discrete manufacturers, batch process manufacturers, high tech manufacturers, etc.
  4. Maintenance departments of:
    Mining companies, processs plants, power plants and other industrial plants. Both for managing major shutdowns as well as for managing ongoing maintenance and other projects related to additions and alterations

© 2004-2009 CLEVOR Technologies. All rights reserved.