Advanced operations planning in forestry

由于几个原因，林产品行业的决策问题很难优化。首先，有些问题很难从组合的角度解决，需要先进的优化技术。其他决策问题涉及到难以建模的约束，用定性偏好表达的约束，或者只有专家在面对试探性解决方案时才表达的约束。其他决策问题被分层地分解或结构化为组织筒仓，其中涉及多个难以协调的决策子问题。然而，其他决策问题涉及协作或联合决策过程，涉及几个利益相关者，许多目标和偏好的权衡，以及私人信息和约束的满足。

Decision problems in the Forest Products Industry are complex to optimize for several reasons. First, some problems are difficult to solve from a combinatorial point of view and require advanced optimization techniques. Other decision problems involve constraints that are difficult to model, constraints expressed in terms of qualitative preferences, or constraints only expressed by the expert when faced with a tentative solution. Other decision problems are hierarchically decomposed or structured as organizational silos, which involve several decision sub-problems that are complex to coordinate. Yet other decision problems involve collaborative or joint decision processes which involve several stakeholders, many objectives and preferences to tradeoff, as well as private information and constraints to satisfy. In this context, the use of computer-aided planning tools must be integrated in the organizational processes of decision making, which are specific to the organizational context of the decision problem, and in the individual cognitive processes of decision making, which are used implicitly or explicitly by the people who are individually or collectively responsible for operations management. This research program proposes to develop interactive advanced planning tools based on Meta-Heuristic and Intelligent Interface Agents in order to tackle some of the difficult operations planning problems of the Forest Products Industry.