[rules-users] Drools Planner for purchasing optimization - good fit for problem?

[Schneider, Bill]

I'm trying to understand whether Drools Planner is a good fit for a purchasing optimization problem.



The problem is something like this: there are X different items, each of which can be purchased from Y different vendors at different prices.  The objective variable/function to minimize is the total amount purchased (sum(qty_i * price_i)).



Some vendor prices are conditional - only valid if you purchase more than some minimum threshold, or if you purchase more than some total quantity from that vendor.  There are some additional constraints like dual-sourcing

- for some item x_i, exactly two vendors must be selected.



I feel like you *could* probably solve this problem in Drools Planner, but I'm not sure if it's the best way, or if a more traditional solver approach would be better.  It feels more like a linear programming problem at its core, and I'm having a hard time figuring out where the boundary is - what kind of constraint would make the problem "non-convex" or "non-smooth" to the point where a local search (tabu, evolutionary etc.) is required?



Thanks for any help you can give.

--Bill
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