The Competitive Advantage of Optimization

Imagine that you are a decision maker in an organization faced with a tough choice. Perhaps you are in the transportation business and manage a large fleet of vehicles. You wonder: Is my fleet the right size? How can we improve efficiencies? Can spot pricing reduce empty back-hauls? What’s the recovery plan for dealing with contingencies, ranging from bad weather to equipment failures? Or maybe you are a manufacturer in a fiercely competitive market: Is my equipment being utilized for maximum yield? How do we drive up throughput? Are there better ways to schedule crew and equipment for greater productivity and capacity? Or you may be a national home health care provider attempting to maximize profits and patient care: How do we schedule and route home care workers, ensure that the unique requirements of patients are attended to, and deliver the right equipment precisely at the moment of need?

Imagine further that you have at your fingertips a super-powerful decision-making capability that takes into account your objectives, all the alternatives, and the risks associated with each. It can gather and analyze all the relevant data and then recommend—at lightning speed—the optimal choice.

Clients of Princeton Consultants don’t have to imagine. Our Optimization services provide this capability to help them make optimal strategic and day-to-day decisions.

Optimization is about harnessing the latest advances in software not only to analyze data, but also to make recommendations that will help you achieve your goals. Optimization applications, which couple fast computers and sophisticated algorithms, often evaluate millions or tens of millions of choices before presenting the optimal, or best, choice.

The key question facing companies today and in the future is: How do we allocate scarce human, capital, and financial assets to gain optimal value? The issue may be a high-value strategic one dealing with creating a new business model, major capital investments, or new product development. It may relate to operating efficiency centering on scheduling, service management, or order acceptance. Or the issue may be more tactical and relate to staffing and inventory levels, capacity allocation, or pricing. Whatever the issue, Optimization applies advanced analytics to make resource-allocation decisions faster, better, and more consistently.

Princeton Consultants provides unique optimization expertise that integrates information technology, software development, and organization development. We view Optimization not just in terms of software and technology, but as a human intervention. It must be aligned with the strategy, systems, culture, and capabilities of the organization.

We provide clients with a suite of optimization offerings, designed to meet your specific business needs, financial constraints, and degree of familiarity with Optimization’s potential.

These include:

The Optimization Workshop

This one-day session is for executives interested in gaining practical understanding of what Optimization is, why it is an essential decision-making tool, and how leading companies are using it to make complex, time-sensitive decisions. Participants come away with an ability to assess the potential for Optimization in their organizations, with a clear understanding of the range of decisions that can be addressed, and with knowledge of the key requirements for success. Case studies of Optimization in action bring the discussion to life.

The Optimization Opportunity Assessment

This is a collaborative undertaking with clients, aimed at discovering, confirming, and quantifying specific areas in which optimization can make a significant positive impact on their organizations. Using a systematic diagnostic process, the Optimization Opportunity Assessment will analyze organizational readiness for Optimization and will present a continuum of opportunities available to the organization: from short-term “quick hits” to longer-term “big-prizes.” The assessment will be based on client interviews and on-site observations. Clients will receive a written report identifying opportunities, along with costs and projected return on investment.

Optimization Situation Appraisal/Improvement

For companies that have deployed Optimization, Princeton Consultants will perform a forensic analysis of the existing optimization system. We will assess what is working well and what requires improvement. This is a 360-degree analysis, covering technology, software, and the human interface. We will provide a detailed report documenting the findings and detailing the corrective action that should be taken. Depending on client need, we are prepared to become actively involved in implementing the recommended changes.

Optimization Deployment

As a full-service information technology and management consulting firm specializing in Optimization, we will use our proven five-step process to help organizations acquire optimization capability. The process begins with selecting the right opportunity in one of three basic areas: operating efficiency, new-product development, or creation of a new business model. We work in partnership with clients to assemble the right team, conduct the research, and arrive at a problem definition and “proof of concept.” We then design and develop a prototype, validate it, and, lastly, install the fully developed optimization solution.