Gurobi Optimization
Optimizing Business Decision-Making with Prescriptive Analytics

From nail-biting plays to thunderous touchdown cheers, National Football League (NFL) broadcasts capture every moment of the nation’s favorite game. Scheduling these games, however, involves choosing from over a trillion possible schedule combinations—a challenge that the planning committee used to tackle by hand.

The NFL’s planning committee would come together for 10 weeks each year, with the goal of scheduling 272 games for the 18-week season—only to come up with a potential calendar. Making changes to the agreed-upon schedule was an additional struggle. They needed a plan that tied in multiple aspects—stadium availability, travel considerations, competitive equity, and away-game limitations. Given all the variables and constraints, the number of possible schedules is astronomical.

The planning committee turned to Gurobi Optimization, a leader in decision intelligence technology that has a track record in helping organizations solve complex business challenges. Its flagship solution, Gurobi Optimizer, enabled the NFL to quickly identify schedules that help them achieve their business goals, given all of the complex details and considerations—resulting in maximized revenue, viewership, and audience experience. With Gurobi, the committee can also easily explore what-if scenarios and make adjustments at any time.

The power of prescriptive analytics worked its magic here.

“Our Gurobi Optimizer functioned as the game-changer for the NFL. A decade ago, the NFL could only look at five feasible schedules. Now, they can quickly generate 10,000 feasible schedules, choose the one they like best, and have the confidence that, if something needs to change mid-season, they can quickly calculate a new schedule,” says Duke Perrucci, CEO of Gurobi Optimization.

The NFL's success marks yet another entry in Gurobi’s annals of excellence. Its pure-play platform helps many Fortune 500 companies—including seven of the Fortune 10—solve complex real-world challenges, with its application spanning various industries, including financial services, supply chain, oil and gas, and power and utilities. Additionally, according to a leading research and advisory company’s 2022 Total Economic Impact Study, Gurobi users achieve an outstanding 518 percent ROI, with payback in under 6 months.

Combining Predictive and Prescriptive Analytics

Gurobi understands that prescriptive analytics doesn’t always get the attention that predictive analytics tools— like machine learning—receive.

Prescriptive analytics has been around for over 50 years, so it doesn’t always have the same media appeal as machine learning. Its business impact, however, has withstood the test of time—and it is widely recognized as an integral part of today’s AI decision-making ecosystem.

Data scientists are beginning to discover the power of prescriptive analytics and are combining it with machine learning’s predictive capabilities. For example, they can use machine learning to generate predictions and then use prescriptive analytics to identify the best way to proceed, given those predictions.

“Gurobi Optimizer is a library of algorithms that can solve highly intricate business challenges at scale. It involves translating your business problem into a mathematical model and then running it through our solver. With this approach, data scientists can identify and recommend optimal business decisions,” says Perrucci.

Users feed the Gurobi Optimizer information about their real-world situation—their business goals, constraints, and decision variables—and the optimizer quickly calculates a detailed action plan for achieving the stated goals, given the constraints.

Unmatched Performance, With Speed as Its Forte

The Gurobi Optimizer outpaces all other commercial-scale solvers with its ability to consistently solve problems— across a wide range of problem types—faster than its competitors. Since version 1.1, Gurobi has achieved a 75x speed-up, and Team Gurobi continues to develop new approaches that push the limits of what’s possible.

Gurobi Optimizer is a library of algorithms that can solve highly intricate business challenges at scale. With this approach, data scientists can identify and recommend optimal business decisions

Gurobi’s superior performance means customers can solve more problems—and more-complex problems—fast enough that they can identify the optimal solution within the allowable time. For example, by switching to Gurobi from another commercial solver, Air France was able to identify new efficiencies that save them around one percent annually in fuel costs, on top of what they already believed was an optimized fuel bill. They were also able to achieve a significant reduction in delay propagation and operating costs.

Built with the Customer in Mind

Gurobi is recognized for its customer-centric approach to both its product and its technical guidance and support. The team regularly meets with their user base for feedback and to understand their needs.

The software is designed to be easy to use, with lightweight and intuitive APIs that minimize the learning curve and maximize productivity. Users can work in the language they like best, including Python, Java, C++, and more.

“Our big focus on culture has helped us tread a more productive path and grow more rapidly”

Team Gurobi also sponsors open-source packages to collaborate with the data science and optimization communities. Recently released packages allow trained machine learning models to be embedded directly into an optimization model and give users the ability to use Pandas—a commonly-wielded Python data analysis library—and Pandas functionality to intuitively build optimization models and streamline data manipulation and analysis.

In addition to its feature-rich solver, Gurobi is working to help data scientists learn and apply prescriptive analytics through its training webinars and hands-on learning experiences. They’re also in the process of building a college-level MOOC curriculum.

Nurturing an Innovative Environment

The brain behind Gurobi’s consistent success is a diverse team of Ph.D. scholars and industry experts with extensive experience in algorithm design, modeling, and software engineering. Their culture is underpinned by customer focus, innovation, integrity, and dedication to building the world’s fastest solver.

“A strong organizational culture is a company's only sustainable competitive advantage. Our big focus on culture has helped us tread a more productive path and grow more rapidly,” says Perrucci.

Gurobi’s roadmap is shaped by its commitment to continuous innovation and improvement. It plans to expand deeper into Australian and Indian markets. Regarding product innovation, the Gurobi team is focused on extending nonlinear algorithms to alleviate some of the pressing business challenges impacting the oil and gas and energy sectors. Gurobi is also gearing up to advance its educational offerings to help the data scientist community benefit from the best of both worlds—predictive and prescriptive analytics. The clearcut roadmap illustrates that Gurobi is on the path to assisting businesses to make not just good, but optimal decisions that have positive impacts.