We at Transmetrics solve a variety of planning problems for the Logistics Industry. We tackle issues that are typically performed by human experts, and they are responsible for them. After we model these problems and propose a solution, the planners often have some hard-to-quantify knowledge, way of thinking, or biases the models don’t know. Thus a proposed solution could be looked at with skepticism, even if it formally satisfies the requirements and minimizes cost.
We work on some methods of letting the user result from an optimization problem and explore neighboring solutions. This way, the model can consider new information and preferences so that they are more inclined to use it.
In this talk, we discuss integrating UI and optimization techniques to help human planners have more trust in our optimization models.