PlanLab Beats Competitors on Resource Scheduling Benchmarks

Putting Our Optimizer to the Test

Everyone makes claims about their software - we like to test ours. We benchmarked our optimizer against other commonly used software for scheduling: Oracle P6, Microsoft Project and Spider Project.

To make sure the tests are fair, we used benchmark data from an independent source: the Project Scheduling Problem Library (PSPLIB). This library has resource-loaded schedules ranging from very simple through to ones so complex that there is no known optimal solution - great for putting software to the test.

The Results

PlanLab's optimizer performs really well on these tests: it finds quicker schedules than the other software for every single problem tested.

• Microsoft Project came out the slowest (26% longer schedules vs PlanLab)
• Oracle P6 followed (21% longer schedules)
• Spider Project was closest (9% longer schedules)

If you want to know more about the benchmarks, or download the datasets - just get in touch with us at team@planlab.ai.

Making Optimization Accessible

We want our optimizer to be as accessible as possible. For us this means making it easy to get your data in, and also to target the objectives you want. We're now testing two new features:

• Custom constraints: keep control of your schedule when using resources - input whatever conditions you want, and get back a result that fits (if it's possible!). This can be operational things (e.g. number of workers in an area), or financial (e.g. cash-flow limits).
• Target custom metrics: often you don't really want the quickest schedule - it might be lowest cost, the highest NPV, or something specific to your project. We can support cost and NPV, and are working on letting you customize your own metrics.

As always, we love to test what we build on your problems! If you want to try it out, get in touch at team@planlab.ai.