Algorithm for assortment planning based on the method of changing probabilities

Abstract

Abstract The paper considers the problem that manufacturing enterprises with complex diversified production are faced with a number of specific problems related to the formation of their range of products (goods). For these problems solving such organizations (sales department, marketing department, commercial service) create a certain service that deals with solving a set of tasks, such as studying demand, searching for goods from suppliers, managing selling prices, determining optimal volumes of production or purchasing goods, managing the assortment of an enterprise, coordinating the actions of other services related to the promotion of goods. The solution of local problems (tasks of operational management) at the level of a separate direction, project, contract, a separate batch of goods due to the extreme variety of products under consideration, puts forward some additional informal requirements and criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of solutions, which, due to their diversity and complexity of the strict mathematical description, remain beyond those areas of management theory that operate on formalized data and criteria. Nevertheless, the development of the competitive environment, the tightening requirements for the efficiency of the production use, financial, information assets leads to the impossibility to estimate all possible solutions qualitatively (adequately) and choose a really best alternative (or one of the best solutions). It helps to describe the behaviour of the sales market according to separate goods or product groups taking into account the peculiarities of the consumer’s attitude to a certain set of nomenclature based mainly on objective data reflected in operational records. The paper proposes an algorithm for automating business procedures for preparing draft of decisions on the purchase of batches of goods (пaртий тoвaрoв) in the form of a pseudo-Boolean optimization problem.