Quickstart

Build, solve and question your first model in about fifteen minutes, from a five-sentence description of a small bakery.

Where: New Model

You describe a bakery with one oven and two products, eode builds a model of it, solves the best week, and you ask one what-if. Every number in it can be checked by hand, so you can see that the answer is right, not just that it arrived. You need no spreadsheet and no data file.

The description gives eode the prices, the costs, the oven times and the limits. A description with its own numbers builds straight from them: you sign off the design, and the model solves on your numbers with nothing to load. To bring real numbers from a spreadsheet instead, see Turn a losing week into a plan.

Open New Model

In the rail, click New Model. Step 1 opens on Tell us a bit about your business; click Next. On How do you want to author?, click Basic, then Next.

Name the model

On Name your model, type a name, for example Harbor Point Bakery, and click Next. The model is in your Model Library from this moment, as a draft.

Say what to optimize and what can't break

Describe your problem has three rows. On Describe your goals, click Add, then Add on What to optimize: leave Maximize selected, type weekly profit and click Finish. Click Add on Hard limits, type the oven runs at most 40 hours a week., click Finish, then Finish again.

Describe the business

Click Add on Describe your business and type:

We are a bakery with one oven. We bake sourdough loaves, which sell for $8 and cost $2 in ingredients each, and croissants, which sell for $4 and cost $1 in ingredients each. A loaf takes 0.25 oven hours and a croissant takes 0.1 oven hours. We can sell at most 100 loaves and 300 croissants a week.

Click Finish. Leave Upload or select relevant datasources empty.

Describe your problem with Maximize weekly profit and the bakery description filled in

Let it build

Click Next. The description already gives the prices, the costs, the oven times and the limits, so eode has nothing to ask: it skips the questions and starts the build straight after Reading what you told me. It took under a minute and lands on The design is drafted. A description that leaves something out is asked about it first; see Describe your business for every kind of question.

Check the design

Click Next. Check the design shows your words under DECISION, then SCOPE (the products, the oven, the two baking processes) and RULES, which should read back Goal: highest profit, the two sales ceilings and oven runs at most 40 hours per period. Click Confirm on each section, then Accept the design.

If a section misses something you said, click Needs correcting instead and write what is wrong. Next becomes Rebuild with these notes. See Review the design.

Skip the data step

A few seconds later Step 4 shows This model did not ask you for data: it runs on the numbers your description gave it. Click Next, and Next again on Let us solve it.

Solve the baseline

Your model lists OBJECTIVE weekly profit and BASELINE TBD. Click Solve for your baseline, then Solve in the confirmation. It took under a minute to reach The baseline is solved; click Next.

Check the answer by hand

Your baseline shows $1,140 under weekly profit. An oven hour earns $30 on croissants ($3 margin, 0.1 hours each) and $24 on loaves ($6 margin, 0.25 hours each), so the plan bakes all 300 croissants (30 hours) and spends the last 10 hours on 40 loaves: $900 + $240 = $1,140. The text under the number says the same, and that the oven is full.

Your baseline: weekly profit $1,140 with the explanation, 300 croissants and 40 sourdough loaves, the oven full

Your model, described offers the model as a workbook, a PDF or Markdown. See Build and baseline.

Ask a what-if

Click Go to Model Overview, then Scenarios in the rail. Click + New, name it Oven runs 50 hours, and click Create. In What if…, type What if the oven could run 50 hours a week instead of 40? and click Run scenario.

The run took one to two minutes. After a minute the editor shows Still solving after a while. with Cancel and re-run; leave it, the result is on its way.

Read the what-if

WEEKLY PROFIT reads $1,380 with +$240 vs base: the 10 extra hours bake 40 more loaves at $24 an hour. That is the figure the VALUE OF ONE MORE OVEN HOUR tile already showed for Base.

Click Base in the list to go back to the plan.

New Model: every way to start, and coming back to an unfinished model
Write and run a what-if and Read a scenario's results
Verify: the evidence behind a scenario's number
Turn a losing week into a plan: the same walk with your own numbers from a workbook