Enterprise Optimizer

	Permits profit comparison of several courses of action to deal with changes in the business environment
	Provides comparisons of the profitability of products, plants and customers
	Provides activity-based costing for the entire supply chain

Capabilities

Enterprise Optimizer is a linear programming environment which permits the entry of a virtually unlimited number of process flows linked in innumerable ways. When an analysis becomes too complicated for a spreadsheet, LP analysis can point the way to greater profitability.

A model of the business, or the portion of the business you need to work with, is created from your process data and financials. The resulting model is reconciled so that the process inputs and constraints from an earlier period match the financials actually achieved.

Then you turn the model loose to find more optimum operating points. Constrain the model with any hard limits to you have in your operating environment, and the model will find the best operating point. The reports produced will show profit gains that would be possible by passing those limits -- at which point you can ask "Is that really a hard limit? What if we did things this way....".

When the model contains multiple facilities capable of producing identical products, production will be allocated to the least cost producer. This can take into account freight rates to customers (if the data is available).

Most modeling projects have produced first-year ROI exceeding 200%.

Reference Accounts

The partners in Byte Design performed the great majority of the work on the following models:

Harvest Allocation Models: A harvest region with more than 300 stands of timber, 3 external sales destinations and 12 internal mills was modeled. The mills were modeled by a return-to-log computation for each of the 15 log types modeled, producing a re-allocation of the timber destinations for 6% of the timber, and increasing profits by 2% of gross revenue.
Plywood Mills: More than 10 of the country's plywood mills have been modeled, from the largest in the country to some medium-sized mills. The models produced a re-allocation of veneer to a more profitable product mix, or a change in recipe. One 2-plant model produced an average selling price increase of $ 6.35 per M38 (1.8% of revenue) over the same quarter in the prior (non-modeled) year.
Engineered Wood Products: This multi-plant model determined during the analysis phase that $ 475,000 was being wasted annually by a sub-optimum manufacturing process. Once completed, the model provided additional gains in allocating orders to the various plants and identifying low-margin customer/product combinations, leading to adjustments in that mix.

Enterprise Optimizer is a product of River Logic, Inc.