Problems Addressed With Operational Research
- Critical path analysis or project planning: identifying those processes in a complex project which affect the overall duration of the project
- Floorplanning: designing the layout of equipment in a factory or components on a computer chip to reduce manufacturing time (therefore reducing cost)
- Network optimization: for instance, setup of telecommunications networks to maintain quality of service during outages
- Allocation problems
- Facility location
- Assignment Problems:
- Assignment problem
- Generalized assignment problem
- Quadratic assignment problem
- Weapon target assignment problem
- Bayesian search theory : looking for a target
- Optimal search
- 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
- Efficient messaging and customer response tactics
- Automation: automating or integrating robotic systems in human-driven operations processes
- Globalization: globalizing operations processes in order to take advantage of cheaper materials, labor, land or other productivity inputs
- Transportation: managing freight transportation and delivery systems (Examples: LTL Shipping, intermodal freight transport)
- Scheduling:
- Personnel staffing
- Manufacturing steps
- Project tasks
- Network data traffic: these are known as queueing models or queueing systems.
- Sports events and their television coverage
- Blending of raw materials in oil refineries
- Determining optimal prices, in many retail and B2B settings, within the disciplines of pricing science
Operational research is also used extensively in government where evidence-based policy is used.
Read more about this topic: Operations Research
Famous quotes containing the words problems, addressed and/or research:
“The three great problems of this century, the degradation of man in the proletariat, the subjection of women through hunger, the atrophy of the child by darkness.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)
“For a novel addressed by a man to men and women of full age; which attempts to deal unaffectedly with the fret and fever, derision and disaster, that may press in the wake of the strongest passion known to humanity; to tell, without a mincing of words, of a deadly war waged between flesh and spirit; and to point the tragedy of unfulfilled aims, I am not aware that there is anything in the handling to which exception can be taken.”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)
“The research on gender and morality shows that women and men looked at the world through very different moral frameworks. Men tend to think in terms of “justice” or absolute “right and wrong,” while women define morality through the filter of how relationships will be affected. Given these basic differences, why would men and women suddenly agree about disciplining children?”
—Ron Taffel (20th century)