Language Models for Business Optimisation with a Real World Case Study in Production Scheduling

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Amarasinghe, Pivithuru Thejan, Nguyen, Su, Sun, Yuan, Alahakoon, Damminda
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
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author Amarasinghe, Pivithuru Thejan
Nguyen, Su
Sun, Yuan
Alahakoon, Damminda
author_facet Amarasinghe, Pivithuru Thejan
Nguyen, Su
Sun, Yuan
Alahakoon, Damminda
contents Business optimisation has been used extensively to determine optimal solutions for challenging business operations. Problem formulation is an important part of business optimisation as it influences both the validity of solutions and the efficiency of the optimisation process. While different optimisation modelling languages have been developed, problem formulation is still not a trivial task and usually requires optimisation expertise and problem-domain knowledge. Recently, Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated outstanding performance across different language-related tasks. Since problem formulation can be viewed as a translation task, there is a potential to leverage LLMs to automate problem formulation. However, developing an LLM for problem formulation is challenging, due to limited training data, and the complexity of real-world optimisation problems. Several prompt engineering methods have been proposed in the literature to automate problem formulation with LLMs. While the initial results are encouraging, the accuracy of formulations generated by these methods can still be significantly improved. In this paper, we present an LLM-based framework for automating problem formulation in business optimization. Our approach introduces a method for fine-tuning cost-efficient LLMs specifically tailored to specialized business optimization challenges. The experiment results demonstrate that our framework can generate accurate formulations for conventional and real-world business optimisation problems in production scheduling. Extensive analyses show the effectiveness and the convergence of the proposed fine-tuning method. The proposed method also shows very competitive performance when compared with the state-of-the-art prompt engineering methods in the literature when tested on general linear programming problems.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2309_13218
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Language Models for Business Optimisation with a Real World Case Study in Production Scheduling
Amarasinghe, Pivithuru Thejan
Nguyen, Su
Sun, Yuan
Alahakoon, Damminda
Artificial Intelligence
Business optimisation has been used extensively to determine optimal solutions for challenging business operations. Problem formulation is an important part of business optimisation as it influences both the validity of solutions and the efficiency of the optimisation process. While different optimisation modelling languages have been developed, problem formulation is still not a trivial task and usually requires optimisation expertise and problem-domain knowledge. Recently, Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated outstanding performance across different language-related tasks. Since problem formulation can be viewed as a translation task, there is a potential to leverage LLMs to automate problem formulation. However, developing an LLM for problem formulation is challenging, due to limited training data, and the complexity of real-world optimisation problems. Several prompt engineering methods have been proposed in the literature to automate problem formulation with LLMs. While the initial results are encouraging, the accuracy of formulations generated by these methods can still be significantly improved. In this paper, we present an LLM-based framework for automating problem formulation in business optimization. Our approach introduces a method for fine-tuning cost-efficient LLMs specifically tailored to specialized business optimization challenges. The experiment results demonstrate that our framework can generate accurate formulations for conventional and real-world business optimisation problems in production scheduling. Extensive analyses show the effectiveness and the convergence of the proposed fine-tuning method. The proposed method also shows very competitive performance when compared with the state-of-the-art prompt engineering methods in the literature when tested on general linear programming problems.
title Language Models for Business Optimisation with a Real World Case Study in Production Scheduling
topic Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.13218