Advanced Planning with Open Source

Most of you will know renowed Open Source applications, like Joomla and WordPress for Content Management. Some applications however, are less familiar, but nothing less useful or powerful. As consultant specialized in planning and forecasting, I use a lot of Open Source software with Operations Research functionality, that can be used for advanced decision making processes. With it, I help organizations make better decisions that lead to higher revenues.

Many projects in my line of business start off with data gathering. Whilst documents and spreadsheets load easily into OpenOffice for basic review, anything more sophisticated would require date to be loaded in a structured database. Data extraction, transformation and loading is therefore required, and one of the applications you can use for that is Pentaho’s Kettle (http://kettle.pentaho.org/). Kettle was once a seperate project, but it became a part of the Business Intelligence project Pentaho.

Once loaded in a structured database, you can use Pentaho’s analysis modules to work your way through the data, but for more powerful statistical analysis you can turn to the R-project (http://www.r-project.org/). R is a powerful platform for statistical computing.

Most of you will know renowed Open Source applications, like Joomla and WordPress for Content Management. Some applications however, are less familiar, but nothing less useful or powerful. As consultant specialized in planning and forecasting, I use a lot of Open Source software with Operations Research functionality, that can be used for advanced decision making processes. With it, I help organizations make better decisions that lead to higher revenues.

Many projects in my line of business start off with data gathering. Whilst documents and spreadsheets load easily into OpenOffice for basic review, anything more sophisticated would require date to be loaded in a structured database. Data extraction, transformation and loading is therefore required, and one of the applications you can use for that is Pentaho’s Kettle (http://kettle.pentaho.org/). Kettle was once a seperate project, but it became a part of the Business Intelligence project Pentaho.

Once loaded in a structured database, you can use Pentaho’s analysis modules to work your way through the data, but for more powerful statistical analysis you can turn to the R-project (http://www.r-project.org/). R is a powerful platform for statistical computing.

Most of you will know renowed Open Source applications, like Joomla and WordPress for Content Management. Some applications however, are less familiar, but nothing less useful or powerful. As consultant specialized in planning and forecasting, I use a lot of Open Source software with Operations Research functionality, that can be used for advanced decision making processes. With it, I help organizations make better decisions that lead to higher revenues.

Many projects in my line of business start off with data gathering. Whilst documents and spreadsheets load easily into OpenOffice for basic review, anything more sophisticated would require date to be loaded in a structured database. Data extraction, transformation and loading is therefore required, and one of the applications you can use for that is Pentaho’s Kettle (http://kettle.pentaho.org/). Kettle was once a seperate project, but it became a part of the Business Intelligence project Pentaho.

Once loaded in a structured database, you can use Pentaho’s analysis modules to work your way through the data, but for more powerful statistical analysis you can turn to the R-project (http://www.r-project.org/). R is a powerful platform for statistical computing.

Most of you will know renowed Open Source applications, like Joomla and WordPress for Content Management. Some applications however, are less familiar, but nothing less useful or powerful. As consultant specialized in planning and forecasting, I use a lot of Open Source software with Operations Research functionality, that can be used for advanced decision making processes. With it, I help organizations make better decisions that lead to higher revenues.

Many projects in my line of business start off with data gathering. Whilst documents and spreadsheets load easily into OpenOffice for basic review, anything more sophisticated would require date to be loaded in a structured database. Data extraction, transformation and loading is therefore required, and one of the applications you can use for that is Pentaho’s Kettle (http://kettle.pentaho.org/). Kettle was once a seperate project, but it became a part of the Business Intelligence project Pentaho.

Once loaded in a structured database, you can use Pentaho’s analysis modules to work your way through the data, but for more powerful statistical analysis you can turn to the R-project (http://www.r-project.org/). R is a powerful platform for statistical computing. It is similar to the commercial S-Plus language which was originally developed at Bell. R can be considered as a different implementation of S. There are many specialized additional packages available to suit most needs. Another useful software package for econometric analysis is Gretl, the GNU Regression, Econometrics and Time-series Library (http://gretl.sourceforge.net/).

After the creative process of data analysis and problem modeling, the optimization of decisions can be done using lineair programming techniques (LP). By solving LP’s one can find optimal solutions for planning situations. There are a number of open sourced LP solvers around. One that I use is GLPK, the GNU Linear Programming Kit (http://www.gnu.org/software/glpk/). It is used for solving large-scale linear programming, mixed integer programming (MIP), and other related problems. It is a set of routines written in ANSI C and organized in the form of a callable library. Another good choice for solving linear programming problems is Lpsolve (http://lpsolve.sourceforge.net/).

This brief listing of open source software packackes is not ment to complete, nor does it represent the best choice for every situation. It’s just a small list of very useful tools that I use for my work. You’ll find some more suggestions at http://bit.ly/orlist, partly in Dutch. I hope it will trigger you to get new insights. If you have remarks or suggestions, please send me an e-mail.

 Paul Mars

Management Science consultant

Alkmaar, The Netherlands

e-mail paul.mars@managementscience.nl

website www.managementscience.nl

It is similar to the commercial S-Plus language which was originally developed at Bell. R can be considered as a different implementation of S. There are many specialized additional packages available to suit most needs. Another useful software package for econometric analysis is Gretl, the GNU Regression, Econometrics and Time-series Library (http://gretl.sourceforge.net/).

After the creative process of data analysis and problem modeling, the optimization of decisions can be done using lineair programming techniques (LP). By solving LP’s one can find optimal solutions for planning situations. There are a number of open sourced LP solvers around. One that I use is GLPK, the GNU Linear Programming Kit (http://www.gnu.org/software/glpk/). It is used for solving large-scale linear programming, mixed integer programming (MIP), and other related problems. It is a set of routines written in ANSI C and organized in the form of a callable library. Another good choice for solving linear programming problems is Lpsolve (http://lpsolve.sourceforge.net/).

This brief listing of open source software packackes is not ment to complete, nor does it represent the best choice for every situation. It’s just a small list of very useful tools that I use for my work. You’ll find some more suggestions at http://bit.ly/orlist, partly in Dutch. I hope it will trigger you to get new insights. If you have remarks or suggestions, please send me an e-mail.

Paul Mars

Management Science consultant

Alkmaar, The Netherlands

e-mail paul.mars@managementscience.nl

website www.managementscience.nl

It is similar to the commercial S-Plus language which was originally developed at Bell. R can be considered as a different implementation of S. There are many specialized additional packages available to suit most needs. Another useful software package for econometric analysis is Gretl, the GNU Regression, Econometrics and Time-series Library (http://gretl.sourceforge.net/).

After the creative process of data analysis and problem modeling, the optimization of decisions can be done using lineair programming techniques (LP). By solving LP’s one can find optimal solutions for planning situations. There are a number of open sourced LP solvers around. One that I use is GLPK, the GNU Linear Programming Kit (http://www.gnu.org/software/glpk/). It is used for solving large-scale linear programming, mixed integer programming (MIP), and other related problems. It is a set of routines written in ANSI C and organized in the form of a callable library. Another good choice for solving linear programming problems is Lpsolve (http://lpsolve.sourceforge.net/).

This brief listing of open source software packackes is not ment to complete, nor does it represent the best choice for every situation. It’s just a small list of very useful tools that I use for my work. You’ll find some more suggestions at http://bit.ly/orlist, partly in Dutch. I hope it will trigger you to get new insights. If you have remarks or suggestions, please send me an e-mail.

Paul Mars

Management Science consultant

Alkmaar, The Netherlands

e-mail paul.mars@managementscience.nl

website www.managementscience.nl

It is similar to the commercial S-Plus language which was originally developed at Bell. R can be considered as a different implementation of S. There are many specialized additional packages available to suit most needs. Another useful software package for econometric analysis is Gretl, the GNU Regression, Econometrics and Time-series Library (http://gretl.sourceforge.net/).

After the creative process of data analysis and problem modeling, the optimization of decisions can be done using lineair programming techniques (LP). By solving LP’s one can find optimal solutions for planning situations. There are a number of open sourced LP solvers around. One that I use is GLPK, the GNU Linear Programming Kit (http://www.gnu.org/software/glpk/). It is used for solving large-scale linear programming, mixed integer programming (MIP), and other related problems. It is a set of routines written in ANSI C and organized in the form of a callable library. Another good choice for solving linear programming problems is Lpsolve (http://lpsolve.sourceforge.net/).

This brief listing of open source software packackes is not ment to complete, nor does it represent the best choice for every situation. It’s just a small list of very useful tools that I use for my work. You’ll find some more suggestions at http://bit.ly/orlist, partly in Dutch. I hope it will trigger you to get new insights. If you have remarks or suggestions, please send me an e-mail.

Paul Mars

Management Science consultant

Alkmaar, The Netherlands

e-mail paul.mars@managementscience.nl

website www.managementscience.nl