Operations Research

Operations research (or operational research in British usage), is a discipline that deals with the application of advanced analytical methods to help make better decisions. Operations research is fuzzy field of research with a very broad collection of very different sub-fields of research related with urbanism, supply-chain management, theoretical decision making, among others and try to provide a universal tools and methods to solve all these problems. It is often considered to be a sub-field of mathematics. The terms management science and decision science are sometimes used as synonyms.

Employing techniques from other mathematical sciences, such as mathematical modeling, statistical analysis, and mathematical optimization, operations research arrives at optimal or near-optimal solutions to complex decision-making problems. Because of its emphasis on human-technology interaction and because of its focus on practical applications, operations research has overlap with other disciplines, notably industrial engineering and operations management, and draws on psychology and organization science. Operations research is often concerned with determining the maximum (of profit, performance, or yield) or minimum (of loss, risk, or cost) of some real-world objective. Originating in military efforts before World War II, its techniques have grown to concern problems in a variety of industries.

Most important problems related with Operations Research:

• Critical path analysis or project planning: identifying those processes in a complex project which affect the overall duration of the project.
• Network optimization: for instance, setup of telecommunications networks to maintain quality of service during outages
• Facility location, allocation problems (related with co-location): where is the optimal place to locate a facility regarding transportation costs or another measures considered.
• Assignation problem (related with search theory): optimal assignation between different entities considering a benefit measure.
• Routing: such as determining the routes of buses so that as few buses are needed as possible.
• Supply chain management: managing the flow of raw materials and products based on uncertain demand for the finished products.
• Scheduling: optimal assignation of temporal and workload resources.

See also

Computational intelligence, Mathematical optimization, Machine learning, Artificial Intelligence

Material

• https://www.me.utexas.edu/~jensen/ORMM/instructor.html
• http://home.deib.polimi.it/amaldi/SlidesFOR-14-15.php
• http://textofvideo.nptel.iitm.ac.in/112106134/lec1.pdf

Papers

• Churchman, C. West, Russell L. Ackoff, and E. Leonard Arnoff. Introduction to operations research. (1957).
• Simon, Herbert A., and Allen Newell. Heuristic problem solving: The next advance in operations research. Operations research 6.1 (1958): 1-10.
• Wagner, Harvey M. Principles of operations research: with applications to managerial decisions. Principles of operations research: with applications to managerial decisions. Prentice-Hall, 1969.
• Vidale, M. L., and H. B. Wolfe. An operations-research study of sales response to advertising. Operations research 5.3 (1957): 370-381.

Books

• Bronson, Richard; Naadimuthu, Govindasami (1997). Schaum’s Outline of Operations Research. McGraw-Hill
• Hillier, Frederick S.; Lieberman, Gerald J. (2005). Introduction to Operations Research and Revised CD-ROM 8. 8th Edition, McGraw-Hill
• Taha, Hamdy A. (2006). Operations Research: An Introduction. 8th Edition, Prentice Hall
• Taylor III, Bernard W. (1982). Introduction to Management Science.
• Winston, W. L., & Goldberg, J. B. (2004). Operations research: applications and algorithms. (Vol. 3). Boston: Duxbury press.
• Larson, Richard C., and Amedeo R. Odoni. (1981). Urban operations research (No. Monograph).
• Cachon, Gérard; Terwiesch, Christian (2012). Matching Supply with Demand: An Introduction to Operations Management. Irwin/McGraw-Hill
• Shah, Nita H.; Gor, Ravi M.; Soni, Hardik (2013). Operations Research. PHI Learning Private Limited
• Pinedo, Michael L. (2007). Planning and Scheduling in Manufacturing and Services. Springer
• Pinedo, Michael L. (2008). Scheduling: Theory, Algorithms, and Systems. Springer
• Murty, Katta G. (1994). Operations Research: Deterministic Optimization Models. Pearson