Bin-Mix™ uses

• Optimize the selection of Raw Materials given a restricted number of bins.
  

• Evaluate cost benefits of additional bins.
  

• Quickly point out the cost penalties of too few bins.
  

• Establish/eliminate the use of marginally cost effective raw materials.
  

• Provide a strategic planning tool for plant investment.
  

• Anticipate and provide alternative strategies in times of material supply difficulties or rapid change

Multi-Mix™ is a pre-requisite, since the Multi-Mix™ solution is used as a starting point for the Bin-Mix™.  As with Multi-Mix™, Bin-Mix™ uses buying, stock and selling prices for raw materials.  In addition, minimum and maximum tonnage limits may be set for each raw material price.

Example:

A Multi-Mix™ solution uses 30, mostly bulky, ingredients. Among these ingredients 7 can be identified as “optional” ingredients, that is they may be, but need not be, used. There are 5 spare bins available for any 5 of these 7 ingredients. The Bin-Mix™ problem is to identify the lowest cost combination of materials, and identify all other feasible alternative combinations, sorting them by cost.

The 7 “optional” ingredients are Corn Gluten, Rice Bran, Palm Kernel, Sunflower, Wheatfeed, Cereal By-product and Rapeseed.

In this case, Bin-Mix™ reports 19 feasible solutions, but the lowest cost option is that which drops Sunflower and Wheatfeed and uses the other 5. The Bin-Mix™ “Overall Results” screen lists all possible solutions, ranked according to cost, in comparison to the Multi-Mix™ solution which uses all 7 materials –

The lowest cost combination is ranked 1.

As shown above, Bin-Mix™ also gives the usages for each of the selected materials in each solution, again showing the solution's cost and cost difference in comparison to the original Multi-Mix™ solution.