Product Update - September 2020: AIMMS 4.75 and 4.76 highlights, SC Navigator Apps and Training Resources
This post is an archive of the Product Update email sent by AIMMS Product Owner, @Gertjan de Lange.
We have an action-packed Product Update for you this month, with exciting announcements and feature enhancements in AIMMS and AIMMS SC Navigator. Let's dive in!
AIMMS e-Learning Platform Coming Soon
We will soon launch the AIMMS e-Learning Platform. Anyone with an AIMMS license will be able to access it and become a certified AIMMS user! The platform will offer training for beginners and advanced courses for those who are more experienced. Keep an eye on our Online Community, newsletter and social media to get notified when we launch.
Did you know you can suggest feature ideas in our Online Community? Many of our users were looking for options to plot multiple identifiers in lines and bars, using the same Y-axis. We are currently developing a combo Bar-Line chart to address this need. We expect to release a first version of this chart in AIMMS 4.76. We will make visual enhancements and include additional options in future iterations. Check out this discussionfor more information andbookmark this sectionof the Community to share your ideas!
Core Engine Developments
Many of the features we build are visible, but in the back-end our Core Engine team is also working to improve how AIMMS runs your code. These are some of the highlights:
We've done an internal rewrite of the code that saves and reads cases. The new code uses the dependency between identifiers to determine the best order to read them. The format of the cases has not changed, so they are still compatible with previous AIMMS versions. However, we did remove support for cases that were created in AIMMS versions that were more than 15 years old.
We're working on "just-in-time compilation" of procedure bodies. This feature improves the startup time of an app, especially those that are deployed to end users. A procedure will be compiled when it is called for the very first time.
In relation to "just-in-time compilation," we want to add a feature where identifiers created during runtime can be referenced in ordinary procedures (and definitions), from your main project or libraries.
Bill of Materials Modeling Now Available in AIMMS Network Design
Thelatest releaseof AIMMS SC Navigator includes Bill of Materials modeling forNetwork Design. This allows you to configure the Bill of Materials (BOM) and specify production conversions, extending your modeling capability to the end-to-end supply chain (including raw materials and intermediate products). More information will follow this week!
More Features Coming Soon
In our next release, we will include additional functionality to allow you to add custom cost elements to the objective function, such as Taxes, Carbon, Inventory Holding and more. We will also add:
Data validation checks
An improved spreadsheet data template
More control to configure and run scenarios without creating new datasets
Inventory App
Another big highlight coming to SC Navigator is our Inventory App. The App has been designed to complement other Apps in our suite. It allows you to assess the inventory impact of a given network design in our Network Apps. It also calculates inventory targets for use inAIMMS IBP, and can use demand variability and forecast accuracy fromAIMMS Demand Forecastingfor use in the safety stock calculation.
The Inventory App will allow you to:
Instantly calculate minimum, maximum, and average amount of inventory split by:
Safety stock
Cycle stock
In-transit
Work in Progress
Define service level requirements using segmentation, based on the rate of sale and demand variability.
Get detailed insights on inventory health (too much, too little, within target grouped by location and also SKU detail).
Export results to be used as inventory targets in AIMMS IBP or external planning systems.
Integrations for Python, other scripting languages, and Azure Functions
We are close to completing a new version of the HTTP library and accompanying documentation to help you enable third-party (Python or R) scripts and services like Azure functions in your AIMMS applications. We look forward to hearing your thoughts and how you will be using this new feature!
Join Conversations in our Online Community
We are happy to announce that we are opening the product roadmap, all product updates, and product ideation sections to all of our Online Community users. We invite you to join ongoing discussions, start your own, give feedback, and share your AIMMS knowledge with others! If you're looking for a place to start,check out this postby Marcel Roelofs, our Portfolio Architect, and share your feedback on Data Exchange.
