Design and tune the model

Generating the optimal solution from the model is a process that requires data, proper defining of the elements such as sets, indices, constants, decision variables, conditional constraints, objective functions, and a solver.

After you have an understanding of successful model structure and approaches for your problem, you can build the model and improve the performance by slightly modifying the elements within the boundaries of the business goal.

These are strategies to improve the performance of your optimization model:

  • Review the data source. Is this the best data source for your model? Are there any drawbacks in the selected dataset? If not, clean the data or try to get cleaner data.
  • Adjust the elements and the formulation of equations.
  • Try different solvers and compare the results.
  • Try different model setup configurations by changing the elements, equations and solver altogether.

Repeat the process until you reach a satisfactory level of performance.