2. The benefits of advanced planning

Visit APS is based on advanced planning techniques. This section is devoted to defining its contribution to traditional planning.

A simple way to plan is to work out all the alternatives, compare them against a given criterion and select the best one.

But there are three main reasons why this procedure cannot be used in practice:

• several criteria often imply conflicting objectives and ambivalent preferences between alternatives; for example, customer service must be as high as possible, while inventory must be minimized. In this case, no "optimal" solution, satisfying both objectives at their highest level, is possible;

• the planning alternatives are numerous. It is impossible to find an optimal solution. This is why the mathematical methods...