solver.com

Quick Problem Review

When evaluating our software, prospective customers often want to know “Will I be able to solve my problem?”  A complete answer to this question involves actually building a full-scale optimization or simulation model, and solving it.  But it’s often possible, with less time and effort up-front, to get a good idea whether a full-scale model-building exercise will be justified.  If you have the time and skills, you can determine this yourself by downloading a free trial version of our software, using it, and contacting us for technical support.  Our tech support is available to you during your free trial, but our support personnel can only answer questions about our software, not about your problem and model formulation.

Our Excel-based or SDK-based Quick Problem Review offers an attractive alternative.  For a very modest fixed price, you’ll gain about two hours of expert consulting time devoted entirely to your problem, requirements, and model formulation.  Using telephone and email, our consultant gains an understanding from you of what you’re trying to achieve, and gives you our assessment of the likely answer to the question “Will I be able to solve my problem?”  Of course, it isn’t possible to actually build and solve a model in such a short time, so the assessment is limited to the knowledge available up-front, and there can be no guarantees of successful models or solutions -- but our Quick Problem Review can help you determine whether further analysis and model-building effort is likely to yield a substantial payoff.

Specifically, you can expect a written report by email, and a brief phone discussion to summarize:

1. Our understanding of your problem and desired outcome.

2. Our assessment of whether your problem likely can be solved with optimization or simulation methods.

3. Our assessment of whether Frontline Systems software can be used to efficiently solve the problem.

4. If we believe the problem can be solved with our software, and if you indicate that you’d like a consulting proposal:

Your initial point of contact for your Quick Problem Review will be Dr. Yong Li, Frontline’s Consulting Practice Leader. Born in Shanghai, China, Yong has a PhD in Management Science from the University of Alberta, Canada, where her dissertation research was in the field of workforce scheduling.  She has more than seven years experience in optimization and simulation modeling research and practice, and has taught several university courses in simulation modeling.  At Frontline Systems, Dr. Li has worked with a wide range of clients, in fields as diverse as financial services, energy, and electronics, using both Premium Solver Platform and Solver Platform SDK.

Our Quick Problem Review usually has a high payoff for our prospective customers -- it sure beats “coming up the learning curve” entirely on your own! -- and it’s something we always do as a first step in our consulting services.  Your success in an optimization or simulation project very often depends on how you start.  Excel skills are very useful, but the experience of having built scores of other successful optimization and simulation models can help enormously.  It’s far too easy to expend a great deal of effort in model-building, ending up with a large, complex model that can’t be solved efficiently, or solved at all.  Start out the smart way -- contact Frontline to arrange for your Quick Problem Review today!

About Consulting Assistance

Frontline Systems offers consulting assistance on a fee basis where our professional staff will apply its expertise to your model.  While this may sometimes involve debugging, modifying or improving a model that you or others have created, much experience has shown that you get the best results when our professional consultants develop a model "from scratch," based on your goals and specifications for the problem to be solved.

It is often more cost-effective for you to use our consulting assistance services than to build or debug a model yourself.  Our professional consultants have deep experience in optimization modeling, simulation modeling, management science and operations research methods.  They can often perform this work in a fraction of the time it would take you.  This means more rapid progress towards the results you are seeking, and very often a net savings compared to the value of the time you would otherwise spend on model development and debugging.  Our consulting efforts are always designed to transfer knowledge to you, so you can proceed further on your own.  We provide you with the model, spreadsheet or source code, with varying degrees of documentation depending on the Scope of Work.