Premium Solver Pro

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Premium Solver Pro

Premium Solver Pro is a powerful, 100% compatible Excel Solver upgrade for conventional optimization that can solve problems up to 10 times the size,  2 times to 50 times faster.

Make better decisions with optimization, upward compatible from the Excel Solver
Premium Solver Pro is a powerful, 100% compatible Excel Solver upgrade for conventional optimization that can solve problems up to 10 times the size,  2 times to 50 times faster.
  • Easily model your problem in Excel and find the best solution
  • Identify and understand the trade-offs in alternative solutions
  • Your existing Excel Solver models will work as is
  • A great starting point for people new to optimization
Powerful Optimization Capabilities at a Great Price
Excel Solver compatible
Use existing Solver models and VBA macros as-is, but solve faster — just open your workbook and solve.
Solve larger models
Handle linear problems with up to 2,000 decision variables, 10X the limits of the basic Excel Solver, and other problems up to 500 variables, 2.5X the limits of the basic Solver.
Build better models
Guided Mode helps you better understand your model, refine it for better answers in less time, and find and correct any errors.
Get answers in less time
Find solutions between 2X and 50X faster (depending on your model type) with more advanced Solver engines and optimization algorithms.
Easy to use interface
Use either a dialog-based interface that matches the basic Excel Solver, or ourRibbon and Task Pane interface with quick access to advanced features and help.
Helpful example models
Over 60 example models show you step by step how to create a basic Solver model, build more complex models, and use advanced features.
Remove guesswork
Define your model and Premium Solver Pro will determine its type and automatically choose the best available Solver engine to solve it.
Easy upgrades
We developed the solver in Excel – you get a 100% compatible upgrade now, andthe ability to upgrade further to Solver products handling up to millions of decision variables.
Capture Uncertainty in Your Models to Make Even Better Decisions
Conventional optimization is a great decision making tool. But you can go further to take into account uncertainty, by seamlessly combining Risk Solver Pro with Premium Solver Pro. Together, they’ll search through thousands of possible decisions and, for each one, through thousands of possible outcomes to identify the best decision.  And this combo can be upgraded further, whenever you want, to Risk Solver Platform.
Risk Solver Pro Plus Premium Solver Pro
Easily add simulation
Adding simulation to an optimization model is easy and you’ll be amazed by the additional insights and decision making confidence you’ll get as a result.
Better answers
Our Evolutionary Solver for simulation optimization models gets you the best answers by intelligently analyzing your model, and automatically choosing from a range of built-in, advanced solving methods — more than any other product.
The speed you need
Risk Solver Pro’s simulation speed advantage is even greater when solving inherently more complex simulation optimization models.
Single interface
Both products share a single integrated interface so you can easily and quickly build simulation optimization models, with variables and constraints just like the Excel Solver.
More for less
For less than competitors charge just for simulation optimization, you’ll also get all the advanced Monte Carlo simulation features standard with Risk Solver Pro.
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Better Performance, Cost Savings, Risk Control with our Solvers
Cut Costs and Reduce Risks with Excel and our Solvers
I want to cut costs and reduce risks - but can your Solvers help with my problem?
Allocate Resources, Reduce Costs with Optimization
Optimization helps you make decisions to allocate scarce resources more efficiently.  The resources may be raw materials, machine time or people time, money, or anything else in limited supply. The "best" or optimal solution may mean maximizing profits, minimizing costs, or achieving the best possible quality.  
If you're thinking "There's got to be a better way for us to do X [where X involves allocating resources].  But we have so many individual choices to make, and the possible combinations are almost infinite.  If we could do X more efficiently, the payoff would be terrific," then your problem is a good candidate for optimization.
How to do it?  You -- or a good analyst working for you -- will need to build a model that describes your resource allocation problem in quantitative terms, using decision variablesconstraints, and an objective.  The fastest way to get results is to build the model in Microsoft Excel.  Our optimization Solvers can find the best of the many combinations -- and you can examine the solution in an Excel spreadsheet.
Understand and Control Risks with Simulation
Simulation helps you make decisions in situations with uncertainty.  The uncertainties may be interest rates or exchange rates, materials costs, competitors' prices, weather, or anything else that you can describe quantitatively, but you cannot control.  The results of a simulation give you insight into the range of possible outcomes, and what you can do to manage them.
If you're thinking "Why did that project turn out so badly?  We knew costs could be a little higher, sales could be a little lower, and some suppliers could be a little late --- but we didn't foresee what could happen if all those things happened at once," then your new project is a good candidate for Monte Carlo simulation.
How to do it?  You -- or a good analyst working for you -- will need to build a model that describes your situation, with each uncertain variable, and some quantification of the "size and shape" of each uncertainty.  Our simulation Solvers can automatically explore the full range of possible outcomes in seconds -- and you can examine the results in an Excel spreadsheet, with accompanying charts and graphs.
Decisions under Uncertainty: Using Both Methods
What if you need to allocate scarce resources in a situation with uncertainty?  You've definitely come to the right place -- we have the best software available anywhere for such problems.  Now the challenge is to find a robust optimal solution:  A way of allocating resources that maximizes profits or minimizes costs over the range of possible outcomes.
In many ways this is the sine qua non of business decision-makingmost situations involve allocating resources, and most involve uncertainty.  But you'll be light-years ahead of most other decision-makers if you can do this with the aid of a good quantitative model:  Very few businesses are doing this now.
Building a good model is more work, since you have to specify decision variables, constraints, and an objective as well as quantified sources of uncertainty.  But our software, Risk Solver Platform, makes this process lot easier than just about any other alternative.  Such models can be very difficult to solve -- but our software can apply the most powerful methods available to them.
What Makes our Solvers the Best Choice?
If your problem fits the descriptions above, and you're prepared to build an appropriate model, we believe our Solvers are the best choice you can find, anywhere in the world, even at prices many times higher than ours.  Why?
  • We are the technology source in this area for some of the world's largest software companies.  We developed both the Solver for optimization in Microsoft Excel, and the Extreme Speed feature - for high-speed simulation - in Oracle's Crystal Ball.  We have an 18-year history of technology "firsts" in this field.
  • Our advanced Solvers are proven in use by nearly 200,000 people.  We count over five thousand companies as customers, many of them Fortune 1000 and Global 2000 firms.  Our software is also the overwhelming favorite tool for teaching these methods to MBA students in a thousand universities worldwide.
  • More than any other vendor, we've made this technology easy to use by smart people who aren't specialists in "operations research" or "management science."  Beyond software, we have the experience to help you build a model and get results quickly - in a full consulting capacity if needed, but more often in a "coaching" role for model-builders in your company.
Can You Show Me Examples Similar to My Problem?
Optimization is a tool with applications across many industries and functional areas. More than ninety small, but fully functional, example models are included with a free trial.
Examples by Functional Area
Corporate Finance
  • Working Capital Management: Invest in 1-month, 3-month, and 6-month CDs to maximize interest while meeting cash requirements
  • Capital Budgeting:  Choose a combination of capital projects to maximize overall  NPV (Net Present Value)
  • Inventory Management:  Compare investory stocking and reordering policies with the EOQ (Economic Order Quantity) model
  • Cash Management:  Determine where to locate lockboxes to minimize the "float" or interest lost to due mailing delays
  • Capacity Planning:  Determine which plants should be opened or closed
Investments
  • Portfolio Optimization - Markowitz Model:  Allocate funds to stocks to minimize risk for a target rate of return - with known or computed variances and covariances
  • Stock Portfolio Management:  Uses a VBA macro to optimize several scenarios for minimum risk at different target rates of return, then draws a graph of the efficient frontier
  • Portfolio Optimization - Sharpe Model (CAPM):  Uses Excel's regression functions to calculate alphas and betas for stocks relative to a market index, then uses these to find an efficient portfolio
  • Bond Portfolio Management:  Allocate funds to bonds to maximize return while ensuring that the portfolio duration equals the investment horizon for maturity - with known or computed durations
  • Bond Portfolio Exact Matching:  Allocate funds to bonds to maximize portfolio return while ensuring that periodic liabilities are met - with or without reinvestment
Production
  • Product Mix:  Determine how many products of each type to assemble from certain parts to maximize profits while not exceeding available parts inventory
  • Machine Allocation:  Allocate production of a product to different machines, with different capacities, startup cost and operating cost, to meet production target at minimum cost
  • Blending:  Determine which raw materials from different sources to blend to produce a substance with certain desired qualities at minimum cost
  • Process Selection - Decide which of several processes (with different speeds, costs, etc.) should be used to make a desired quantity of product in a certain amount of time, at minimum cost
  • Cutting Stock:  Determine how to cut larger pieces of wood, steel, etc. into smaller pieces of desired sizes, each needed in certain quantities, to minimize waste
Distribution
  • Transportation Model:  Determine how many products to ship from each factory to each warehouse, or from each factory to each warehouse and direct to each end customer, to minimize shipping cost while meeting warehouse demands and not exceeding factory supplies
  • Multi-Level, Multi-Commodity Transportation Model:  Determine how many products of several different types to ship from each factory to each warehouse and each customer, to minimize total shipping cost while meeting demands and not exceeding capacities and supplies
  • Partial Loading - Decide which sizes or types of products to load into a vehicle, given its size limits, to best meet demand or to minimize wasted space
  • Facility Location:  Determine which (if any) plants to close to minimize total costs, including fixed operating costs and shipping costs between facilities
  • Production / Transportation Model:  Determine how many products to produce in each factory and ship to warehouses and customers, to minimize overall costs while meeting demands, warehouse capacities and factory supplies
Purchasing
  • Contract Awards - Award contracts to suppliers who have bid certain prices to supply products to facilities in several states - allow for bids specifying a minimum size for each state
  • Inventory Stocking/Reordering:  Compare inventory stocking and reordering policies with the EOQ (Economic Order Quantity) model
  • Media Planning - Decide how much advertising to purchase in different media to minimize total cost while achieving a target level of reach or frequency
  • Purchasing / Transportation Model:  Determine how much to purchase from different suppliers at specified prices, to be shipped from their locations to various plants, to minimize total costs including purchase and shipping costs
Human Resources
  • Crew Scheduling:  Assign crews to different airline flight segments to minimize total cost while ensuring that a crew "rotation" begins and ends in the same city
  • Office Assignment:  Assign employees to available offices to maximize satisfaction of employee preferences
  • Employee Scheduling:  Schedule park employees for weekly "shifts" (five works days plus two consecutive days off) to minimize payroll costs while meeting varying demand for each day of the week, optionally taking into account employee seniority and preferences
  • Workforce Composition: Decide how many employees to retrain, hire and fire to meet changing workforce composition requirements while minimizing costs or employee turnover
  • Workforce Movement:  Decide how many troops to move from several camps to several other bases, to minimize movement time or total cost
Examples by Industry
Airlines and Trucking
  • Crew Scheduling:  Given a flight schedule, aircraft assignments, and restrictions on duty periods, allocate crews most effectively to flights
  • Fleet Routing and Assignment:  Determine which aircraft to fly on each route, and the sequence of segments flown by each aircraft
  • Revenue Management:  For different classes of tickets, determine how many seats to sell or hold back as flight date approaches
Oil and Gas
  • Gasoline Blending: From hydrocarbons with specific octane ratings, vapor pressure, volatility and cost, determine how much of each should be blended together to produce regular, midgrade, and premium gasoline
  • Gas Contract Purchase:  With forecasted but uncertain demand for gas, determine which contracts to buy, and how much gas to store at different times
  • Pipeline Capacity Auction:  Determine which bids, at different prices, should be awarded to maximize sales revenue while not exceeding daily pipeline capacity
Lumber, Paper and Steel
  • Cutting Stock Problems:  Given large wood / paper sheets or steel slabs / bars, and demand for units of smaller lengths/widths, determine the cutting pattern of large into small pieces that meets demand while minimizing waste
Agriculture
  • Crop Planning:  Given forecasted crop prices and growing conditions, determine how much of each crop to plant
  • Feed Blending:  Given the nutritional requirements for feed animals and the price of available feeds, find the blend of feed ingredients that will minimize total cost
Electric Power
  • Generator Commitment:  Given forecasted demand by period and operating cost for each generator, determine which generators should be run in each time interval
  • Electricity Trading:  Maximize the value of electricity sales in an ongoing auction environment
Financial Services
  • Efficient Portfolios:  Given forecasts of stock, bond or asset class returns, variances and covariances, allocate funds to investments to minimize portfolio risk for a given rate of return
  • Index Fund Management:  Solve a portfolio optimization problem that minimizes "tracking error" for a fund mirroring an index composed of thousands of securities
  • Asset/Liability Management:  Allocate funds to various investments to maximize portfolio return while ensuring that periodic liabilities are fully funded
Using Existing Solver Models with Frontline's Premium Solvers
Build Your First Optimization Model
Explore Your Options Through Optimization
Used at Leading Companies Around the World...
The top companies of virtually every major industry have used Frontline Solvers either inside Excel or in an application outside Excel using our SDK:
A sample of companies which have used Frontline Solvers
Along with more than 5,000 other successful smaller companies.
The number one choice to teach around the world...
More top educational organization teach optimization and simulation with, and more students learn with, Frontline Solvers than any other competing alternative including:
A sample of educational programs which have used Frontline Solvers
Plus hundreds of other programs around the world. No one else comes close.
Users Love Frontline's Solvers...
Here are just a few stories from our over 5,000 corporate and university users.
Our first project uncovered nearly $1MM in savings.
“The Premium Solver Platform with Xpress Solver engine has been a huge asset to us.  We have been able to utilize the solver’s capability to run extremely complex models of our distribution network uncovering large savings; our first project uncovered nearly $1MM in savings.”
Michael Mazzanti, Kraft Foods, Inc. USA
The package seemed to go way beyond my wildest dreams.
“...Then I discovered Solver and all the stuff I had done before after months of programming and sweat was there at my fingertips. The packages seemed to go way beyond my wildest dreams. And all the other little extra bits were there as well at the click of a button - non-negative and integer coefficients, constraints, and some other bits I have yet to use. And the thing just works! ...
So now in my daily work I might propose a model for the change of the dry matter or the color of firmness of kiwifruit over time and use Solver to fit it to a large data set. The models typically involve 10 to 20 parameters many of which are the same for all sets of fruit but some are set-specific. For example the time of reaching maturity may vary from orchard to orchard of course so that one may need to have a different value for each orchard. But with the tools of Excel available that is easy. ... So do I use Solver? Absolutely! Do I like it? I Love it! Could I do my job without it? No way! Indirectly the New Zealand kiwifruit industry has benefited immensely form Solver. So have I!”
Bob Jordan, Senior Scientist, Plant and Food Research Co, New Zealand
The number of variables and constraints became so large that a standard solver would not suffice – no problem, however, for the Premium Solver.
“Having learned to use Premium Solver during my MBA back in 2003 on a more theoretical level, I was a little disappointed of not having real-life opportunities in my job initially after the MBA. It was in 2010 when I started to work at the Institute of Green Technology & Rural Development [i.green]. In my very first project, Premium Solver was the central tool to do research.
The project analyzes the shifts of income in the agricultural sector of the state of North-Rhine Westphalia through the implementation of the Renewable Energies Sources Act. We set up a typical farm model with resources and constraints, namely arable land, animal population, crop cultivation, work force availability, market prices for feed and farming products etc. and included the regulatory framework of the Renewable Energies Sources Act. The number of variables and constraints became so large that a standard solver would not suffice – no problem, however, for the Premium Solver. We could calculate which direction of production a farmer would choose given the current regulatory framework, and, more importantly, which parameters influenced his decisions the most.
The results will be used to assist policy makers to amend the mentioned law, as this planned on a regulatory 3-year basis, to avoid false developments on the way towards a 100% renewable energy supply In Germany.”
Wolfgang Strauss, Institute of Green Technology and Rural Development, Germany
It was also very easy to integrate with Excel.
“The Frontline Premium Solver was very helpful in solving a large water reuse optimization problem for one of our manufacturing plant. It was also very easy to integrate with Excel.”
Mohammed Qayyumi, Aditya Birla Science and Technology, India (a US$29B Indian conglomerate)
This would have cost me double the time if I would have done it in the classical way.
“What I very much like about your Solver product is that, without being an expert on Solver, even worse, while only being a beginner, I can apply it so many times in my daily life (I am a professor of Chemical Engineering), that it saves me a significant amount of time. For example, last weekend I solved eight problems on Chemical Reaction Engineering and for six of them I used Solver. This would have cost me double the time if I would have done it in the classical way. I use Solver mainly for curve fitting (any type of model), roots finding for simultaneous equations, maximizing functions.”
John Hopmans, Professor, Batangas State University, Philippines
The result is a truly impressive product.
“Risk Solver has innovative 'simulation optimization' capability that richly integrates simulation with Frontline’s optimization capability. The result is a truly impressive product.”
Thomas Grossman, Spreadsheet O.R. Comes of Age
Premium Solver Pro is Frontline Systems' basic upgrade for the standard Excel Solver.  It's 100% upwardly compatible from the standard Solver -- which Frontline developed for Microsoft -- with the capacity to solve much larger problems -- up to 2,000 variables -- at speeds anywhere from three to 100 times faster than the standard Solver.  And it's upgradeable to Premium Solver Platform and Risk Solver Platform. 
Premium Solver Pro offers an all-new user interface that uses Excel's Ribbon and Task Pane for easier, faster model definition, plus the classic Solver Parameters dialog; new model diagnosis features and Guided Mode; new charting features to visualize linear and nonlinear functions; and new features to easily solve multiple, parameterized optimizations.
Evaluation Versions.  If you want to "try before you buy," simply contact us at sales@unitedaddins.com, and we will arrange that you download and run the Risk Solver Platform Setup program (which contains Premium Solver Pro).  You'll be able to use a full featured, full capacity, full speed version of the software for 15 days, free of charge.
What's Included.  Premium Solver Pro supports Excel 2010 (32-bit and 64-bit), Excel 2007, and Excel 2003 on Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2008.  It comes with a comprehensive User Guide and extensive online Help.
Annual Support.  Annual Support for Premium Solver Pro is required for the first year, and at all times in order to obtain software upgrades and technical support beyond basic installation assistance.  Annual Support includes:
  • limited warranty for the functionality and performance of the software product
  • All software upgrades for the product released during the contract term
  • Ability to trade in this product for an even more powerful Excel Solver product
  • Technical support by phone and email during normal business hours
  • Up to 15 minutes of consulting assistance arising during the contract term
Please contact us at sales@unitedaddins.com to get a quote.