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Optimized conference scheduling in the prime-brokerage industry
The Problem:
A finance company's brokerage unit holds several conferences a year where fund managers and investors meet and discuss investment opportunities. Prior to the event, investors register and submit a list of manager’s they would most like to meet as well as time-slots they are available for meetings. While one-on-one meetings are most desirable, resource constraints require that some fund managers must hold meetings where several investors participate at once (group meetings). It is the objective of the organizer to create a conference schedule that will maximize the number of investor meeting requests fulfilled while minimizing the frequency and size of group meetings (subject to business constraints). Also, the ultimate goal is to satisfy the fund managers' as well as the investors' expectations under the logistics and time constraints. Even for a modest number of attendees, due to the explosion of the number of possibilities, this problem becomes very complex for routine approaches using tools like Excel.
The Solution:
Optimal Solutions utilized the AIMMS development platform to create an end-user application that could repeatably generate an optimal conference schedule based on registration data downloaded from the web. The underlying mathematical model solved a mixed-integer program to optimally assign investor/manager pairings for all available time-slots. The model addressed several business constraints using both pre-solve data configuration as well as live run-time elements.
Results:
- Time to generate a single candidate conference schedule reduced from twenty-plus hours to 20 minutes
- Percent of feasible investor requests successfully scheduled approaches 99%
- Organizer now has the control to generate schedules with an objective in mind.
- Organizer’s focus has shifted from, “Let’s try and get a schedule finished on time,” to, “Let’s create 10 different schedules using slightly different settings and decide which one we like best.”
- Much improved error-catching system that prevents double-bookings and time-conflicts.
- Organizer has access to valuable post-solve printable reports that provide statistics and distributions related to the generated schedule.
- The application effectively reduces the amount of business knowledge required by an employee to build a good schedule.
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Contact Website |
Vijay Hanagandi, AIMMS Partner Page info [ @ ] osiopt.com |
www.osiopt.com
