Hi Anand,
Do you want to keep "Shelf Life" constraint as a hard constraint (can't be violated) or soft constraint (can be violated with some penalty) ? Check in the optimizer profile, what options you have selected for modeling the shelf life.
HARD CONSTRAINT : To ensure shelf life is considered as a hard constraint by the optimizer, select the Dispose of Expired Product option in the shelf life section of the optimizer profile Note that the "Use Penalty Costs that are not Prod-Dep".option should not be checked as it would produce unexpected results,
The optimizer uses the procurement cost as the disposal cost when this option is not checked, which produces the optimum results. The optimizer tries to minimize the disposal of the expired product. It would not produce anything that can result in products expiring without being used, as the optimizer would incur disposal costs for disposing of the expired product.
SOFT CONSTRAINT: If you want shelf life restrictions to be able to be violated (i.e.,if an expired product can still be used), then you can model this as a soft constraint in SNP optimizer. Select the Continue Using Expired Product option in the shelf life section of the optimizer profile to allow this to happen. You should select the Use Penalty Costs that are not Prod-Dep. option so that the optimizer uses this cost as a penalty cost for shelf life condition violations instead of the product procurement cost. Therefore, when
shelf life is modelled as a soft constraint, the optimizer might use the expired products (if
required), but would incur the penalty costs maintained in the optimization profile. Due
to the penalty costs, the optimizer would avoid using the expired products. Try to keep this penalty cost as high as possible.
Regards,
Mitesh