Jobs for Operation Research

[StevenWang]

I am wondering what typical jobs are for operation research? What parts of an corporation's operation are involved or required a background of operation research? Thanks.

 

[Jose T]

I've always wondered this myself. I worked in corporate operations for some years and I have never known of anyone in one of the companies I worked for or even heard of anyone elsewhere who used the concepts that are taught in academic operations research courses.

Believe it or not, when I left General Electric last year, the methodology for improving efficiency / reducing costs was still (Lean) Six Sigma (this is loosely related to statistics and operations research I guess but not really ; it's much more cultural).

I assume there are people working in the actual field of OR (as opposed to being in a department called Operations, as I was) ; I'd be curious if anyone in the know could opine.

 

[Ken Abbott]

The most OR-oriented jobs I can imagine involving queueing and scheduling. Airlines, for example have many variables involved in their objective functions. Power companies have even more and work to similar standards (i.e. very, very low failure rates). Read about locational marginal pricing in the electricity market if you want to get a feeling for the complexity of it. It's mind-boggling.

 

[TraderJoe]

Queueing, scheduling, resource allocation, inventory management, supply chain management, combinatorial optimization, decision making under risk and uncertainty, multi-criteria decision making, etc. etc.

 

[StevenWang]

I've always wondered this myself. I worked in corporate operations for some years and I have never known of anyone in one of the companies I worked for or even heard of anyone elsewhere who used the concepts that are taught in academic operations research courses.

Believe it or not, when I left General Electric last year, the methodology for improving efficiency / reducing costs was still (Lean) Six Sigma (this is loosely related to statistics and operations research I guess but not really ; it's much more cultural).

I assume there are people working in the actual field of OR (as opposed to being in a department called Operations, as I was) ; I'd be curious if anyone in the know could opine.

Thank you for sharing your experience and opinions.

 

[StevenWang]

The most OR-oriented jobs I can imagine involving queueing and scheduling. Airlines, for example have many variables involved in their objective functions. Power companies have even more and work to similar standards (i.e. very, very low failure rates). Read about locational marginal pricing in the electricity market if you want to get a feeling for the complexity of it. It's mind-boggling.

Thanks a lot.

 

[StevenWang]

Queueing, scheduling, resource allocation, inventory management, supply chain management, combinatorial optimization, decision making under risk and uncertainty, multi-criteria decision making, etc. etc.

Thanks.