Advanced Process Combinatorics, Inc. (APC), spun out of Purdue University, specializes in the application of mathematical programming-based optimization for the process industries as well as software tools for advanced planning and scheduling, pharmaceutical pipeline management, project management, capacity analysis, batch process design, and warehouse management for the beverage industry. APC's premier product, VirtECS, was developed through industrial and academic cooperation in conjunction with Purdue University's CIPAC Consortium and several industrial consortium members with the intent of providing industry with the most advanced decision making technology available. VirtECS enables the rapid development of an accurate and detailed virtual process that can be used as a surrogate for the real process to rapidly search many alternatives for process management and process analysis. VirtECS reinforces systematic problem solving methodologies by providing an accurate virtual process that can greatly accelerate the learning cycle. VirtECS induces an in depth understanding of process behavior and provides an elegant means of organizing an enormous amount of process data in a way that can used to directly achieve desired goals.