Hungarian_Optimization_2

Task Assignment Optimization

We have recently upgraded the task assignment AI tool (GWAI-Assignment). It has much more user friendly graphical interface. Here is the trial version for free use: Download

What is assignment problem

The assignment problem is usually a question about how to optimally allocate a company or team's resources to maximize their achievement (e.g., profit, satisfaction). It may has a number of staff/agents and a number of tasks. Each staff/agent has the capacity to perform a number of tasks, incurring a certain amount of cost that may vary depending on the agent-task assignment. It is required that each agent to be assigned one task. The assignment need to be completed in such a way that the total cost of the assignment is minimized.

Example: Minimize the labor cost to complete multiple tasks

A team in a manufacture’s workshop has five staff. Here comes a new order of five products. All the five staff can do the five types of products, but with different costs. The following table listed the cost of the five staff to make the products. The team leader needs to figure out a way to minimize the cost and maximize their profit to complete the order.

	Task A	Task B	Task C	Task D	Task E
Staff 1	120	110	100	90	80
Staff 2	110	95	80	70	50
Staff 3	100	90	70	50	40
Staff 4	95	95	80	55	45
Staff 5	95	90	65	45	45

To find the best assignment solution, a naive approach is to check all the assignments and calculate the cost of each one. This may be feasible for this example, but will be extremely inefficient when the number of staffs and tasks become larger.

Hungarian optimization provides a fast approach to find the best solution which has the minimum cost and maximum profit. The above example has a minimum cost of 370 with the following assignment solution.

What is unique of our task assignment tool?

Sometimes there may be multiple solutions have the same minimum costs, especially when there are large numbers of staff and tasks to be assigned. So far, ours is the only optimization tool can provide all the optimal solutions.
The task assignment problem described above has two more assignment solutions which have the same minimum cost as the one mentioned above. The multiple solutions give the team leaders more flexibility to arrange their staff.

Here is the trial version for free use: Download

We also provide customized assignment optimization applications to accommodate clients’ special requirements. For any detail information, please feel free to contact us.