The Problem
Building a harvest schedule requires balancing competing priorities. Planners consider annual volume targets, seasonal wood balances, crew capabilities and much more. Small assignment or scheduling decisions in one part of the plan can have significant downstream cost or operational impacts elsewhere. Building a good plan requires significant time and expertise.
How HSO Helps
HSO is designed to support planners by applying heuristic-based optimisation techniques to generate high-quality harvest schedules that minimise operational costs, while closely meeting planning constraints. What traditionally might have taken weeks of manual iteration can instead be explored in minutes.
Specifically, HSO solves the problem of assigning coupes to crews for harvest to minimise costs while attempting to meet planning constraints.
Outcomes and Value
HSO has the potential to deliver operational cost savings through efficient assignments of coupes to crews. Trials of HSO compared to manual methods indicate that these savings can be significant. This is, in part, due to HSO being capable of exploring and making trade-offs that might otherwise seem counter-intuitive to a planner, but which lead to better overall schedules.
HSO also significantly reduces the time required to build schedules, helping planners to be more agile in response to changing constraints and freeing them to spend time on other priorities.
How HSO Fits In
HSO is intended to sit between strategic modelling tools, such as Tigermoth and Woodstock, and operational planning tools such as Remsoft Operations or other in-house systems. HSO doesn't replace these systems, but rather complements them.
HSO is a cloud-based tool. It doesn't have any dependencies on other systems, and it doesn't make assumptions about your planning environment. It can be used independently and fits into your existing planning workflows.
Who HSO Is Designed For
HSO is designed to be simple and straightforward. Unlike other optimisation tools, it doesn't require significant training or expertise to use, nor any specialist knowledge of optimisation or programming. HSO can be used effectively by operationally-focused teams and resource information or technical teams alike.
