A first reception unit 81 receives, as an input, a graph including: a plurality of nodes representing experimental operations; a plurality of nodes representing results of the operations; and edges representing cause-and-effect relationships between the experimental operations and the operation results. A second reception unit 82 receives, as an input, either information indicating the degree of cause-and-effect relationship between each experimental operation and each operation result or past experimental results from which the strength of each cause-and-effect relationship can be estimated. On the basis of the input received by the first reception unit 81 and the information received by the second reception unit 82, an output unit 83 outputs the order in which a plurality of experimental operations are to be performed.