The Target Table contains a list of all of the accounts that have associated targets. Each account is presented as a row in the table. The columns of the table present account attributes, such as the account name, the current value of the account, and the minimum and maximum target settings, etc.
The target table has temporal indexing: the values for different planning periods may be accessed by selecting the period of interest.
The following lists the attribute values that are in the Target Table:
Table 19. Target Table Attributes
| Attribute | Description |
|---|---|
| TARGET | The unique name of the target that is represented in this row. This field is static and will not change during the simulation. |
| PERIODS | The number of periods in the simulation horizon. This value is static and will not change during the simulation. |
| PERIODWIDTH | The number of years in the current planning period. This may vary by planning period, depending on how the simulation was set up. Period '0' describes conditions prior to the start of the simulation, and is given a period width of '1'. |
| ACTIVE | A boolean value that indicates if the target is being used in the objective function. This value does not vary between planning periods. |
| MINACTIVE | A boolean value that indicates if the minimum target value is active in the objective function. This value does not vary between planning periods. |
| MAXACTIVE | A boolean value that indicates if the maximum target value is active in the objective function. This value does not vary between planning periods. |
| MINIMUM | The minimum target value that is set for the current planning period. |
| MAXIMUM | The maximum target value that is set for the current planning period. |
| MINWEIGHT | The weight value that is applied to the minimum target value for the current planning period. |
| MAXWEIGHT | The weight value that is applied to the maximum target value for the current planning period. |
| DISCOUNT | A discount value that is applied to the weighting values. This value is compounded over each planning period. The resulting weight value for the planning period is the initial weight value times the discounting factor for the planning period. |
| LINEAR | A boolean value that indicates if the target should contribute to the objective function using linear or non-linear scaling. With linear scaling the penalty value for this target is added to the objective function as is. With non-linear scaling the value is squared prior to adding to the objective function. Linear scaling is best suited for use with targets that have fungible values. Non-linear scaling is appropriate when decision makers use a satisficing approach to achieve multiple disparate-valued objectives. |
| PREMULTIPLY | A boolean value to indicate that deviations should be multiplied by weighting values before non-linear scaling. If the value is false, then weights are multiplied after non-linear scaling is applied to deviations. This factor has no effect is linear scaling is being used. |
| CURRENT | The value of the account for the current planning period. |
| CUR_DELTA, CUR_MEAN, CUR_SLOPE | These values show the change in the CURRENT value over a number of iterations. The attributes are experimental and may be removed in a future version of the software. |
| SHORTAGE | The shortage value is the difference between the current value and the closest target (minimum or maximum). If the current value is below the active minimum then the calculation is (current - minimum). If the value is greater than the active maximum then the calculation is (current - maximum). If the current value is greater than the minimum, less than the maximum, or the target is not active then the value will be zero. |
| OBJECTIVE | This value shows the contribute to the objective function for this target for the current planning period. If the target is not active, or the value is above the minimum or below the maximum the value will be zero. Otherwise, the objective value will be calculated using the appropriate methods for the current value, targets, weights, discounts and scaling methods. |
| OBJ_DELTA, OBJ_MEAN, OBJ_SLOPE | These values show the change in the OBJECTIVE value over a number of iterations. The attributes are experimental and may be removed in a future version of the software. |
| MARGINAL | These values show the change in objective value that would occur as a result of adding 1 more unit to the current value. For some sets of targets and weights, small changes to the current value may result in large changes to the contribution to the objective function value. |