Review of Factible Tools, Supply Chain Planning Software Vendor

By Léon Levinas-Ménard

Last updated: November, 2025

Factible Tools is a cloud-hosted supply chain network design and tactical planning platform that grew out of a long-standing Latin American simulation and FlexSim-distribution business. It offers two main SaaS modules—Supply Chain Designer for greenfield and brownfield network design, and Tactical Planner for multi-period tactical planning—both driven primarily by structured Excel templates uploaded into an interactive web UI with maps, dashboards, and scenario comparison tools. The vendor markets AI Copilot and cloud-native optimization capabilities, but provides very little public technical detail on algorithms, technology stack, or data architecture; by all observable evidence the system behaves as a deterministic, scenario-based optimization engine wrapped in a user-friendly interface rather than as an openly documented AI or probabilistic decision platform. The product appears commercially active with consulting-led deployments and a portfolio of major-brand logos, but remains a relatively niche, closed application when contrasted with more programmable, probabilistic platforms such as Lokad.

Factible Tools overview

At its core, Factible Tools is a browser-based SaaS application for strategic network design and tactical, multi-period supply chain planning, delivered by Factible, a Latin American company that historically operated as FlexSim Andina and now positions itself as a simulation, AI and optimization specialist for supply chain, logistics and manufacturing.¹²³⁴ The platform is organized around two main modules. Supply Chain Designer addresses classic network design questions—how many plants and distribution centers to operate, where to locate them, what capacities to assign, and how to route flows from suppliers to markets—using end-to-end models and scenario analysis.⁵⁶⁷ Tactical Planner builds on the same network representation to introduce time-phased planning, capacity and labor allocation, tariffs and duties, fleet sizing, and cost-to-serve analysis over horizons of months or seasons.⁸⁹ Both modules rely heavily on structured Excel templates as the primary data ingestion mechanism: planners populate multi-sheet workbooks with locations, demand, costs, capacities and constraints, then upload them into the cloud, where optimization runs and results are visualized through maps, tables and dashboards.⁵⁸⁶¹⁰

Beyond these core capabilities, Factible markets an AI Copilot layer that promises natural-language interaction, “intelligent” exploration of non-obvious scenarios, and models that “learn from themselves” to rerun scenarios, but does not disclose any concrete information about underlying algorithms, model classes, training data or evaluation methods.¹¹⁴¹² The public evidence—product pages, case studies, webinars and partner materials—consistently depicts Factible Tools as a scenario-based optimization tool operated through projects and consulting engagements rather than an always-on decision engine integrated deeply into transactional systems.⁶¹³¹⁴¹⁵¹⁰ Factible appears to be an established regional player with decades of simulation and training activity, a long-running Business Simulation Congress, and partnerships across Latin America, while Factible Tools itself is a more recent but commercially deployed product with a moderate footprint and a closed, non-programmable architecture.¹²⁴¹⁶¹⁷¹⁸

Factible Tools vs Lokad

Factible Tools and Lokad both address supply chain planning problems but with fundamentally different philosophies, technical architectures and scopes.

Factible Tools is a closed, application-centric SaaS for network design and tactical planning. Its workflows revolve around Excel templates, discrete scenario runs, and visual comparison of alternative network configurations and tactical plans.⁵⁸⁶¹⁰ The optimization logic is not exposed; users do not program models directly but instead configure data and options through the UI. AI is primarily presented at the UX level (AI Copilot, narrative explanations), with no public technical disclosure of probabilistic models, solvers or search algorithms.¹¹¹⁵⁷ Deployments are typically consulting-led, with Factible or partners such as Celogis conducting scoping, data preparation, model building and scenario analysis for clients, especially in Latin America.⁶¹³²¹⁶ The functional focus is narrow but concrete: where to place facilities, how to route flows and allocate capacity over time, and how to compare scenarios in terms of cost and service.

Lokad, by contrast, is a programmatic, platform-centric SaaS for end-to-end predictive optimization across demand forecasting, inventory and supply planning, production scheduling and sometimes pricing.¹⁹²⁰²¹ Its core is Envision, a domain-specific programming language for supply chain, which exposes forecasting, probabilistic modeling and optimization as code that can be written, audited and evolved by “supply chain scientists.”²²²³²⁴ Rather than treating forecasting and planning as separate modules, Lokad’s platform ingests data, builds probabilistic forecasts of demand, lead times and other uncertainties, and then computes optimized decisions (orders, allocations, production plans) that maximize expected economic outcomes.¹⁹²⁵²⁰²⁶ Technically, Lokad is explicit about using probabilistic forecasting, stochastic optimization heuristics, and differentiable programming to jointly learn forecasting models and decision policies, and publishes architectural descriptions of its DSL, distributed execution engine and event-sourced storage.²²²³¹⁹²⁷

From a user’s perspective, Factible Tools prioritizes structured scenarios and ease-of-use: business users fill templates, run scenarios and interpret dashboards, while optimization internals remain opaque.⁵⁸⁶¹⁰ Lokad prioritizes expressiveness and white-box control: decisions are defined in Envision scripts, and every transformation from raw data to ranked decision list is inspectable and modifiable.²²¹⁹²⁰²⁷ Factible’s AI story is largely a conversational copilot on top of deterministic models; Lokad’s AI appears primarily in probabilistic modeling and decision algorithms, with the “copilot” notion referring more to decision automation that planners can override.¹¹¹⁹²⁵²⁷

In terms of supply chain scope, Factible Tools focuses on strategic/tactical design problems (plants, warehouses, flows, multi-period plans) with less emphasis—at least publicly—on detailed SKU-level forecasting, replenishment or execution-level decisions.⁵⁸⁶¹⁰²⁸ Lokad’s emphasis is SKU- and location-level optimization under uncertainty, spanning replenishment, allocation, production and occasionally pricing, with probabilistic forecasting as a first-class component.¹⁹²⁵²⁰²⁶ Finally, integration posture differs: Factible Tools is primarily fed by Excel and used in discrete projects; Lokad is designed for ongoing data pipelines and scheduled runs, with forecasts and decisions recomputed regularly (e.g. daily) and exported to ERPs and WMSs.⁶¹⁶¹⁹²⁰²¹

In short, Factible Tools is best viewed as a specialized, consultant-operated scenario optimization tool for network and tactical planning, whereas Lokad is a programmable quantitative platform aimed at automating a broad class of supply chain decisions under uncertainty.

Company history and structure

Origins and branding

Multiple public sources describe Factible as a long-running simulation and technology company in Latin America that historically operated under the name FlexSim Andina.¹²³⁴ A FindGlocal listing for “Factible, Bogotá” explicitly refers to “Factible (Antes FlexSim Andina)” and characterizes the firm as empowering clients in supply chain, logistics and manufacturing with AI, Industry 4.0, simulation and optimization.² FlexSim’s official contact page lists Factible as the authorized FlexSim distributor for Colombia, Argentina, Peru, Ecuador and Venezuela, confirming its role as a regional simulation specialist.³

Factible’s own websites position the company as providing simulation-based decision support and training (FlexSim, WareFlow, ProdFlow) alongside Factible Tools as its dedicated supply chain planning and optimization SaaS.¹⁵⁸¹⁶¹⁷ The YouTube channel “Factible” (formerly FlexSim Andina) showcases years of FlexSim-based simulation content, webinars and competition material, suggesting a sustained presence in the region’s logistics and industrial simulation ecosystem.⁴¹⁶

Factible Tools appears as a product line under this umbrella, with its own domain factibletools.com and English-language positioning emphasizing cloud-based supply chain planning and optimization.²⁹⁷¹⁸ The product likely emerged in the last few years as the company leveraged its simulation and modeling expertise to build a repeatable SaaS for network design and tactical planning.

Funding and ownership

No evidence of venture rounds or private equity deals involving Factible or Factible Tools emerges from public sources. The absence of entries on mainstream funding trackers, and the lack of press releases about investments, suggests Factible remains a privately held, self-funded software and services company. Job postings for “Profesional customer success factible” list Nadeca S.A.S. as the hiring entity, describing it as an authorized software distributor and training provider for specialized software in Latin America, further supporting the picture of a locally owned firm rather than a VC-backed startup.¹⁴

Acquisition activity

Searches for acquisitions either by Factible/Factible Tools or involving them as a target do not yield relevant results. The only structural evolution clearly visible in public material is the rebranding from FlexSim Andina to Factible, and the progressive emergence of Factible Tools as a product brand.¹²³⁴ There is no evidence of the company having been acquired, nor of it acquiring other software firms.

Product scope and capabilities

Supply Chain Designer (network design)

The Supply Chain Designer module is positioned as a cloud solution for supply chain network design, helping companies determine the optimal number, location and size of plants and distribution centers, and the most efficient flows from suppliers to markets.⁵⁶⁷ Product pages describe capabilities such as:

Modeling multi-echelon networks from suppliers through plants and DCs to customers.⁵⁶
Optimizing facility footprint and capacity to minimize costs while respecting service and operational constraints.⁵
Running scenario analyses (e.g., new facilities, nearshoring, contract changes, demand shifts) and comparing them via financial metrics.⁵¹³¹⁵

Data is ingested through a structured Excel template with multiple worksheets for nodes, arcs, demands, costs and constraints, which is uploaded to the cloud platform for optimization.⁵⁶¹⁰ The results are presented in interactive maps and dashboards, making it possible to visualize networks, flows and cost breakdowns.⁵²⁹¹³⁷

Independent partner Celogis describes its network design services as being delivered “in union with Factible Tools,” emphasizing Excel-based data import, scenario analysis for expansions and nearshoring, and interactive dashboards, which corroborates Factible’s own descriptions.¹³

Tactical Planner (multi-period planning)

The Tactical Planner module extends the same network representation into a multi-period, tactical planning context.⁸⁹ According to Factible’s English and Spanish pages, this module:

Uses the same technology base as Supply Chain Designer but enables planning over monthly or seasonal buckets.⁸⁹
Helps determine optimal sourcing locations while considering cost, lead time and supplier reliability, and allows supplier contracts and obligations to be encoded in the model.⁸⁹
Allocates capacity and labor by plant, line and period, incorporating seasonal production and inventory patterns.⁸⁹
Incorporates tariffs, duties and trade costs, and supports fleet sizing and transport mode choice in logistics planning.⁸⁹
Computes cost-to-serve and profitability by customer, product, and segment.⁸

Again, data preparation relies on Excel templates, with planners uploading multi-period demand, capacity, cost and constraint information into the cloud, running scenarios, and comparing them through dashboards.⁸⁹¹⁰

AI Copilot and analytics layer

Factible’s blog highlights an “AI Copilot in Factible Tools” as an integrated analytical component rather than an add-on.¹¹ The Copilot is described as:

Allowing planners to explore scenarios and trade-offs through natural-language prompts without writing formulas or code.¹¹
Surfacing resilience-oriented scenarios, for example under tariff changes, shipping disruptions or labor constraints, rather than just the single most profitable configuration.¹¹
“Learning from itself” by iteratively rerunning scenarios to refine recommendations.¹¹

Other blog posts emphasize intuitive tools that help planners focus on decision-making rather than wrestling with complex GUIs, and position Factible Tools as a way to simplify planning while coping with shifting conditions and the need for frequent replanning.¹⁵⁷²⁸²⁵

However, Factible does not disclose any technical detail about how AI Copilot is implemented—no model classes, no architecture diagrams, no information about training data, and no benchmarks or case studies that isolate its incremental value.¹¹¹⁵⁷¹⁸ Webinars show Copilot-like features in action (e.g., narrative scenario explanations) but remain at the demo level rather than exposing mechanisms.⁴¹²¹⁵³⁰ From an evidence-based standpoint, Copilot must be treated as a UX layer on top of existing optimization models, not as proof of deep ML integration.

Data ingestion, workflow and deployment

The dairy company case study on Factible’s blog provides the clearest view of how Factible Tools is used in practice.⁶ In this project, a “leading dairy company in Colombia” approached Factible for help renewing a milk supply contract and redesigning part of its network. The reported workflow:

Business scoping to identify relevant constraints, contract structures and objectives.
Data gathering and structuring into an Excel template covering locations, costs, capacities, constraints and demand.⁶¹⁰
Building an “as-is” baseline network model corresponding to the 2024 configuration.⁶
Relaxing expiring contracts to explore short-term profit gains.⁶
Modeling structural changes such as adding a new distribution center.⁶
Comparing scenarios by profit uplift, with claimed gains of ~3.75% from flow optimization and an additional ~2.43% from adding a DC, for a total operating profit gain above 6%.⁶

Although the case is anonymized and single-sourced (the dairy company is not named), it illustrates the typical project-centric deployment: consultants and client jointly build and refine models over a series of workshops, with Excel as the primary integration layer and Factible Tools as the scenario engine and visualization platform.⁶¹³¹⁶ Customer success roles are explicitly tasked with onboarding, training and helping clients use models, reports and flows in Factible Tools, suggesting that post-sales support and education are integral to adoption.¹⁴

Technology stack and transparency

Architecture and likely optimization approach

Factible consistently describes Factible Tools as cloud-based, indicating that all computation happens server-side, with users accessing the platform via web browsers.⁵⁸²⁹⁷ The UX includes:

Web-based maps of the supply chain network.
Dashboards and tables for scenario comparison, cost breakdowns, and cost-to-serve analyses.
A conversational layer (AI Copilot) for interacting with scenarios.⁵⁸¹¹²⁹¹⁵

The underlying optimization is described only in generic terms—“advanced optimization,” “cutting-edge algorithms,” and “proven technology”—with no details on whether commercial solvers, open-source MIP solvers, custom heuristics or other techniques are used.⁵⁸⁷²⁸ Given the nature of the decisions (facility locations, capacities, flows, multi-period allocations), it is reasonable to infer use of linear or mixed-integer programming or closely related mathematical optimization approaches, but this remains an informed inference rather than a documented fact.

There is also no public information on:

Programming languages or frameworks used on the back end.
Database or storage engines.
Cloud provider specifics (though the company’s FlexSim heritage and simulation focus suggest standard cloud infrastructure).
APIs for integration or external automation.
Security architecture beyond generic mentions of cloud and SaaS.

Gaps in technical disclosure

Compared to more technically transparent platforms, Factible Tools’ technical opacity is striking:

No developer documentation or public APIs are advertised.⁵⁸²⁹¹⁸
No whitepapers, architectural blogs or academic collaborations about the internal models or solvers appear in public search.
AI Copilot is marketed in concept-heavy language without technical backing.¹¹¹⁵⁷

This prevents a rigorous external evaluation of scalability (model size limits, runtime behavior), robustness (handling of data quality issues and numerical instability), or extensibility (possibility to embed custom models or integrate via code). For a technically demanding buyer, this lack of transparency is a material risk factor: assessments must rely primarily on observed behavior in pilots and projects, and on trust in the vendor’s claims, rather than on documented architecture.

Clients and commercial maturity

Named and implied clients

Factible Tools’ homepage and marketing material feature logos of well-known companies across manufacturing, food & beverage, mining, chemicals and logistics, such as Harley-Davidson, Whirlpool, PepsiCo, Eramet, Lafarge, Compass Minerals, Praxair, Empresas Polar, Alquería and United States Cold Storage.²⁹⁷¹⁸ These logos indicate that Factible Tools (or its predecessor network design technology) has been used in projects with large, international enterprises.

The Colombian dairy case study—though anonymized—aligns with the presence of a major dairy brand in Factible’s logo list and reinforces the notion that Factible Tools is used for real-world, financially significant decisions.⁶²⁹⁷ A FindGlocal page referencing a webinar on how Empresas Polar integrated Factible Tools into its operations further supports the idea of deployments in large Latin American food and beverage companies, albeit still from vendor-adjacent sources.²

However, independent confirmation is sparse: there are few, if any, co-authored case studies, press releases or third-party articles where these clients themselves discuss Factible Tools in detail.

Sectors, geography and partners

Factible’s public footprint is heavily Latin American, with Spanish-language content, many webinars targeting regional audiences, and events such as the “Concurso Latinoamericano de Simulación” and a Business Simulation Congress.¹²⁴¹⁶¹⁷ Sectors explicitly targeted include:

Food and beverage and consumer goods.
Industrial and mining sectors.
Logistics, including cold storage and distribution.

Partnerships with consulting firms like Celogis show that Factible Tools is also used by third parties as an underlying optimization engine in their supply chain design services, which may help it reach clients beyond Factible’s own direct sales.¹³

Maturity assessment

From a commercial perspective, Factible as an organization appears established: long-standing simulation and training activity, a sizeable YouTube presence, and repeated simulation contests and congresses indicate durability and a stable services business.¹⁴¹⁶¹⁷ Factible Tools, as a distinct SaaS product line, appears more recent but clearly live—with a dedicated website, English and Spanish content, ongoing blog activity and webinars, hiring for customer success roles explicitly mentioning Factible Tools, and a portfolio of impressive logos.⁸²⁹¹⁴⁷¹⁸¹⁹

That said, there is no evidence of analyst coverage (e.g., Gartner quadrants or peer reviews specifically naming Factible Tools), nor of a broad integrator or ISV ecosystem around the product. It is best characterized as commercially active but not yet mainstream.

Assessment of “state-of-the-art” claims

Optimization depth

Factible Tools demonstrably supports non-trivial network design and tactical planning problems, including multi-echelon networks, capacity constraints, tariffs, duties, seasonality and fleet considerations.⁵⁸⁶¹⁰²⁸ This places it squarely in the class of serious network design tools, not in the realm of simplistic spreadsheet add-ons. The functionality aligns with established practices in supply chain network design and tactical planning as described in independent literature and comparable tools.¹³⁷

However, there is no evidence that Factible Tools goes beyond deterministic, scenario-based optimization:

Uncertainty (e.g., demand or lead time variability) is not described as an explicit stochastic input or modeled via probability distributions.
No mention is made of stochastic optimization, multi-stage decision models, or robust optimization approaches.
The tooling is geared towards building a small number of scenarios and comparing them, rather than sampling large distributions of outcomes.

As a result, Factible Tools appears state-of-the-practice for deterministic network design but does not visibly reach the frontier of probabilistic or stochastic optimization that some vendors—including Lokad—claim and document.¹⁹²⁵²⁶

AI/ML claims vs evidence

Factible’s marketing stresses AI—in particular through AI Copilot and references to AI and Industry 4.0 in its broader simulation and consulting business.¹¹¹²¹⁵¹⁸ Yet, from a technical scrutiny perspective:

There is no public description of AI model architectures, training regimes, evaluation methodologies or performance metrics.
No AI-related academic collaborations, patents or technical whitepapers appear linked to Factible Tools.
All visible workflows are consistent with classical mathematical optimization plus UI-level automation, not with deep learning–driven forecasting or reinforcement learning for decision policies.⁵⁸⁶⁴¹²

Given this, the only safe characterization is that AI in Factible Tools is a branding layer on top of opaque optimization models and user assistance features, rather than a demonstrably ML-driven decision engine. This is not to say AI is absent, but simply that claims cannot be substantiated from public evidence and must therefore be treated as marketing assertions rather than verified technical facts.

Data, automation and integration

Factible Tools is built around Excel-centric data ingestion and manual or semi-manual scenario runs.⁵⁸⁶¹⁰ While this is often pragmatic—Excel remains the lingua franca of planning teams—it also constrains the level of automation:

There is no publicly documented API-first integration model to ERPs, WMSs or TMSs.
Decisions (network designs, tactical plans) appear to be analyzed and interpreted by humans, not automatically injected into execution systems.
The cadence is project-like or periodic, not continuous recalculation.

By contrast, platforms like Lokad explicitly describe automated pipelines where data integration, probabilistic modeling and decision optimization run on schedules, producing ranked action lists for operational systems.¹⁹²⁰²¹²⁷ On this dimension, Factible Tools is closer to a consulting + tool model than to an always-on “decision as a service” architecture.

Openness and extensibility

Lastly, Factible Tools is structurally a closed application:

No domain-specific language, scripting or user-extensible model layer is exposed.
Model changes and extensions seem to require vendor or partner involvement.

Lokad, on the other hand, centers its offer on a DSL (Envision) that allows clients and Lokad’s team to implement bespoke models, integrate new data sources and adjust decision logic without waiting for vendor engineering changes.²²²³¹⁹²⁴ From the standpoint of technical openness and extensibility, Factible Tools is significantly less state-of-the-art than platforms that are explicitly programmable and transparent.

Conclusion

Factible Tools delivers a credible, cloud-based network design and tactical planning solution built on decades of simulation and modeling experience within Factible’s Latin American operations. Its strengths are clear: a focused functional scope around strategic and tactical supply chain planning; a workflow and UI that leverage familiar Excel templates, interactive maps and dashboards; and a consulting-led deployment model that helps clients turn data into tangible scenario analyses and financial comparisons. Case evidence—even when anonymized—suggests that the platform has been used to support real, financially significant decisions at sizeable companies, particularly in food and beverage and industrial sectors.

At the same time, a rigorous, evidence-based reading exposes important limitations. The technical stack is opaque: there is no public documentation of optimization formulations, solvers, architecture or AI mechanisms. AI Copilot is weakly substantiated, functioning more as a narrative layer than as a demonstrably ML-driven engine. There is no visible support for probabilistic or stochastic optimization, and the data and integration story remains tied to Excel and project-based scenarios rather than continuous, automated decision pipelines. As a result, Factible Tools appears best described as a solid, deterministic scenario optimization tool with strong consulting support, rather than as a transparently “AI-native” or programmably extensible supply chain optimization platform.

Relative to Lokad, Factible Tools occupies a different niche: it prioritizes ease-of-use and structured scenario analysis for network design and tactical planning, while Lokad emphasizes programmability, probabilistic modeling and broad decision automation across supply chain problems. For organizations seeking a consultant-operated tool for network and tactical planning, especially in Latin America, Factible Tools may be a pragmatic choice. For those seeking a deeply programmable, uncertainty-aware platform for end-to-end decision optimization, Lokad’s DSL-based architecture and published probabilistic techniques point to a different level of technical ambition and transparency.