AIMMS - Experience

To give you some insight into the areas where AIMMS has been used successfully by our customers, this section describes a number of AIMMS based decision support applications, namely those in which Paragon Decision Technology itself has been involved (sometimes actively, sometimes at a distance).

Crude oil scheduling

The crude oil scheduling system covers the allocation, timetabling, crude blending and sequencing activities from the waterfront (arrival of crude ships) through the crude pipelines to the crude distillation units. The result is a schedule for the discharge of crude, the pipeline and the crude distillers (sequencing, timing and sizing of crude batches), plus planning indications for new crude arrivals. Enhanced decision support includes improved and timely reaction to change and opportunities (e.g. distressed crude cargoes, ship and pumping delays, operation disturbances) and improved integration between crude acquisition and unit scheduling.

Strategic forest management

The strategic forest management system allows foresters to interactively represent large forested areas at a strategic level. Such a flexible decision-making framework can help the understanding of how a forest develops over time. The system also allows for the exploring of forest management objectives and their tradeoffs, plus the preparation of long-term forest management plans.

Transport scheduling in breweries

The transport scheduling system for breweries allows end-users to interactively steer the flow of products through all phases of the brewery process from hops to bottled beer. The application can be used either in an automatic mode, in which the flow of products is totally determined by the system, or it can be used in a manual mode where the user can set or alter this flow using a Gantt chart. The system can also be used in a simulation mode to evaluate the response of the entire brewery to varying demands over a longer period of time.

Risk management

The risk management system, for market makers and option traders, has a wide functionality including the theoretical evaluation of derivatives, an extensive sensitivity analysis, the display of risk profiles, the generation of scenarios, the generation of price quotes and exercise signals, the minimization of risk exposure, the calculation of exercise premiums and implied data (volatilities and interest rates), plus an overview of all the transactions on each day.

Refinery blending

The refinery blending system is a blend scheduling and mix optimization system. It is able to handle the complete pooling and blending problem, and optimizes both the blend schedules and the mixes under a complete set of real-life operational constraints. The system offers user flexibility in that the user can decide upon the number of components, fuel mixtures, long versus short term scheduling, and stand-alone versus refinery-wide scheduling.

Catalytic cracker support

Catalytic cracking refers to a refining process in which hydrocarbons are converted into products with a lower molecular mass. The catalytic cracking support system has three major components: (a) a graphical user interface consisting of interactive pages, validation routines, plus reporting and data handling facilities, (b) the model equations, including those for heat, yields, product properties, economics, and (c) an on-line process control environment with an off-line mode in which multiple studies with differing parameters and variables can be compared.

Data reconciliation

Data reconciliation is the process of making the smallest possible adjustment to a collection of measurements within a system such that the adjusted data values satisfy all the balance constraints applicable to the system. In the particular application at hand, data reconciliation was applied to a chemical process, requiring that the relevant mass, component and thermodynamic balances be satisfied for all units within the system.

Refinery simulation

The refinery simulation system deals with the simulation of all chemical production plant processes (from production to sales) on a day-to-day basis for a period of 10 years. To keep the performance as high as possible, AIMMS generates fast machine code to solve a single daily model and re-uses the machine code during the simulation to reduce the time required to perform a full simulation.

Liquor production planning and liquidation

The liquidation system covers the production, storage and liquidation of several kinds of whisky. Depending on the age and properties of a barrel in the warehouse its content can be used to produce a certain brand of whisky. Given the current contents of the whisky warehouse as well as a long term demand scenario the system determines a cost optimal production plan. By introducing penalties in the model, the end-user is able to identify demand shortages and production schedules that slightly violate certain quality conditions.

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