US 11,853,940 B1
System and method of root cause analysis of objective violations
Tushar Shekhar, Katihar (IN); and Narasimha Kamath, Bangalore (IN)
Assigned to Blue Yonder Group, Inc., Scottsdale, AZ (US)
Filed by JDA Software Group, Inc., Scottsdale, AZ (US)
Filed on Jun. 12, 2015, as Appl. No. 14/738,546.
Claims priority of provisional application 62/174,577, filed on Jun. 12, 2015.
Int. Cl. G06Q 10/0631 (2023.01); G06Q 10/087 (2023.01)
CPC G06Q 10/06315 (2013.01) [G06Q 10/087 (2013.01)] 17 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A system for iteratively optimizing a supply chain network, comprising:
a supply chain network comprising one or more entities and one or more items;
a computer comprising a processer and a memory, the computer configured to optimize a supply chain plan by:
modeling the supply chain network as a directed graph of nodes and edges and one or more multi-objective business objectives as a hierarchy of objective functions, wherein the hierarchy of objective functions is defined as objective levels (oblevels);
traversing the hierarchy of objective functions at each objective level (oblevel) from lowest to highest;
solving the hierarchy of objective functions at each objective level (oblevel) comprising the modeled supply chain network and the one or more multi-objective business objectives, using one or more hierarchical optimizations by iteratively performing the following steps:
storing in the database an unfixed upper bound and an unfixed lower bound according to a model of the supply chain network and a preprocessing of constraints, the unfixed upper bound and the unfixed lower bound stored as plan explanation data in a processing log;
at each objective level (oblevel) optimization, ensuring that optimization at a given objective level (oblevel) does not affect objective levels (oblevels) previously solved to converge to an optimal solution after all objective levels have been optimized and storing in the database the objective coefficient for the corresponding objective level (oblevel); and
at each variable fixing, inspecting a reduced cost and value, and when the reduced cost is greater than 0, fixing and storing in the database the lower bound and when the reduced cost is less than 0, fixing and storing in the database the upper bound;
further optimizing the optimized objective levels (oblevels) by modifying the objective coefficients and bounds while monitoring any changes to determine a feasible solution that is further determined to be a superoptimal solution;
calculating an optimum inventory level based on the superoptimal solution; and
querying the plan explanation data in the processing log to identify one or more objective violation root causes.