Chapter 1. Business Resource Planner Introduction

1.1. What is Business Resource Planner

Business Resource Planner is a lightweight, embeddable planning engine that optimizes planning problems. It helps normal Java TM programmers solve planning problems efficiently, and it combines optimization heuristics and metaheuristics with very efficient score calculations.
Business Resource Planner helps solve various use cases like the following:
  • Employee/Patient Rosters. It helps create timetables for nurses and keeps track of patient bed management.
  • Educational Timetables. It helps schedule lessons, courses, exams, and conference presentations.
  • Shop Schedules: It tracks car assembly lines, machine queue planning, and workforce task planning.
  • Cutting Stock: It minimizes waste by reducing the consumption of resources such as paper and steel.
Every organization faces planning problems; that is, they provide products and services with a limited set of constrained resources (employees, assets, time, and money).

Figure 1.1.  Use Case Overview

Use Case Overview
Business Resource Planner is open source software under the Apache Software License 2.0. It is 100% pure Java TM and runs on any Java virtual machine.