Objective robust planning

Robust planning is a specific research area within Operations Research (Scholl 2001). Generally, robustness can be defined as the insensitivity of an object or system against (stochastic) external influences (SchneeweiB 1992 reviewed by Scholl 2001, p. 93). A plan is robust, if the realization of the plan - also in a slightly modified form - leads to good and/or accept-... 

In the considered value chain planning problem, the uncertainty of spot sales prices impacts the profitability of the overall value chain plan, since volume decisions can lead to profit-suboptimal plans, if the average sales price cannot be realized as planned. Therefore, price volatility is considered as an external (stochastic) influence in the considered value chain planning problem. The following model extensions account for this uncertainty and try to derive methods to achieve more robust plans with respect to profit results with contributions from Habla (2006). The objective of the proposed modeling approach is to maximize profit for the entire value chain network. It is assumed that the company behaves risk-averse in face of the price uncertainty. 

If the method does not meet run time criteria or robustness requirements, it may require further optimization. Method development optimization is typically continued until the objectives outlined in the development plan are met. Method development experts often have the experience necessary to adequately optimize the methodology others may benefit from the documented and organized development approach of available software packages. Several commercial packages are available that combine classical chromatographic theory with statistical design to predict optimum separation conditions with a minimum number of experiments. 

It is an unquestioned objective of the robustness test using statistical experimental design (DoE = Design of Experiments) to perform a systematic investigation of the connections between target values y and factors x, %2,. .. x with very few experiments. In most cases, these can be adequately described by a linear model (plan of first order) ... 

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