Illustrative example (not a client engagement)
Which orders to take when capacity, skills and margin are all tight
With more work on offer than people to do it, a business keeps choosing which orders to take, at what price and start date, with margin and penalties at stake.
What we did
The model picks the orders with the best expected margin, after taking off for the risk of a big loss, for unreliable delivery and for depending too much on one client. It never books more people or skills than you have.
Optimisation under uncertainty · Downside-risk limits (CVaR) · Capacity and skill constraints · Scenarios
Result
On synthetic data it kept more margin for the same risk of loss than a simple first-come, highest-price rule.
Backtested
This is an example on synthetic data. It isn’t a client project.
The decision
Say you run a project firm or a factory with more orders than people. Each order needs certain skills, has a price and a start date, and may have a penalty if it is late. If you take the wrong one, a busy quarter can lose money, because its cost spreads across the whole delivery team.
What the owner gets
You get a short list of plans. One earns more, another has less risk. No plan books more people or skills than you have, and you choose. In a real project we first test the method against how you decide today.
