OptForceT: New Human Resource Optimization Methods

OptTek Systems, Inc. is developing new software to significantly enhance optimization applications. The software, called OptForce, incorporates a sophisticated Meta-Structured Optimization (MSO) approach directly into the representation of the decision-making process. It has been demonstrated to be more effective than traditional mixed integer programming and heuristic solvers. Coupled with simulation, it enables a virtually unlimited number of what-if questions to be asked and their answers to be sorted and prioritized efficiently and accurately. MSO is based on a unique algorithm that integrates the two extreme ends of the optimization spectrum, involving the very general and the highly special. The procedure is designed to carry out a special "non-monotonic search," where the successively generated inputs produce varying evaluations, which over time provide a highly efficient trajectory to the best solutions. MSO represents a departure that does not depend on classical rules for generating a mixed zero-one formulation. Its use of layered envelopes (LEVER) is better suited to handling real world complexity. By avoiding identifying in advance the domains of the variables over which the approximation operates -- and more specifically, avoiding identifying the subdomains that characterize regions where the function takes different forms, MSO gives rise to a previously unequalled optimization capability.