Guide
Scope & Limits
SSPLAX models a system as a flow network and finds the best plan it can run under its limits. That approach fits a wide range of operational decisions, but not every problem. This page covers what's in scope, and what falls outside it.
Where SSPLAX fits
A problem fits when you can describe it as flow through a network: material, work, or money moving through connected stages, under limits, toward an objective. Production lines, supply routes, capacity allocation across teams, and sourcing decisions all share that shape. The decision is how much should move along each path, and the limits are the capacities, budgets, and delivery requirements that bound it.
What doesn't fit
Some problems look like optimization but can't be expressed as a flow network. SSPLAX won't model these:
Deciding which nurse covers which shift, or the order jobs run on a machine, is an assignment-and-sequencing problem rather than a flow. Vehicle routing, container packing, and timetabling fall in the same category: they optimize order and assignment, which the network model can't represent.
Costs and yields are modeled as straight lines, or as breakpoints you define. Effects that genuinely curve — economies of scale beyond your breakpoints, congestion that grows with load, learning curves — aren't captured natively. The solver treats everything between your breakpoints as linear.
SSPLAX optimizes the model you give it; it doesn't forecast demand or learn rates from history. If a capacity or yield is wrong, the recommended plan is wrong with it. The arithmetic is exact, but the assumptions are yours.
If your problem fits, Build a Model walks through turning it into a network.