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Lecture 2 - History of or

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14 views

Lecture 2 - History of or

Uploaded by

ahmadwehbi200
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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A Brief History of OR

World War II led to the birth of modern OR

 Scientists and engineers used mathematical tools to deploy, manage, and analyze
military operations

 One of the problems solved using OR reduced the number of anti-aircraft


artillery rounds needed to shoot down an enemy aircraft from an average of
over 20,000 at the start of the Battle of Britain to 4,000 in 1941

 On land, the operational research sections of the Army Operational Research


Group, analyzed among others the effectiveness of artillery, aerial bombing
and anti-tank shooting

 At the close of the war, OR was no longer limited to only operational, but was
extended to encompass equipment procurement, training, logistics and
infrastructure
A Brief History (contd.)
After the War:
 Industrial boom led to rapid increase in size of corporations –
growing need for systematic decision-making tools
 Managers began to realize both, the modeling power of LPs and
OR tools, and their potency in improving efficiency even under
existing technology; applications of OR increased manifold
 Great advances were made in computational technology, which
allowed one to solve problems of ever-increasing size via OR
tools
A Brief History of OR (contd.)
Perhaps the single most
important catalyst in the
advancement of OR

 Many important developments took place in this period.


Most notably George Dantzig invented the simplex
method for solving linear programs (LPs) in 1947

– One of the first applications was the diet problem:


given foods with varying nutrient amounts, plan a diet that
satisfies the desired nutrient requirements + the food-
amount constraints, and minimizes cost
Where is OR Today?
 Immense computing power is available now and is fairly
cheap
 A half-century of research in OR has led to:
 very good theoretical understanding
 various software packages, e.g., CPLEX, LINDO, XPRESS-
MP, being available that can be used “off-the shelf”
 OR is everywhere – from booking an airline ticket, to
checking into your hotel
 By the end of this course, you will be able to solve real-
world problems on your PC using these OR tools!
OR in action:
Optimizing Harbor Operations
Picture of container
terminal Altenwerder in
Hamburg
One of the most modern
terminals: handles ~ 2.4
million containers yearly
All internal traffic and
storage cranes are
automated.
Harbor Operations (contd.)

 Many problems can be modeled and solved using OR

 One such problem is to compute AGV routes in real time


that are free of conflicts and jams while maximizing
container throughput
Harbor Operations (contd.)

OR Problem:
Containers are transported between vessels and storage area
via automated guided vehicles (AGVs)
 Overall objective: minimize vessel waiting time

 Variables: AGV routes

 Constraints:

 Routes have to be computed in real-time


 Routes should be free of conflicts and jams

Moehring et al. 2004 gives a fast algorithm based on shortest-


path computations that works much better than previous
adhoc methods
Some other success stories
 Continental Airlines saves ~ $40 million by using OR tools to
near-optimally reassign crews after disruptions

 Texas Children’s Hospital used nonlinear optimization to


monitor healthcare contract negotiations

 Athens Olympic Organizing Committee used logistics,


optimization tools to manage its resources and plan the 2004
Olympics; estimated savings: $70 million

 Philips Semiconductors saves ~ $5 million by using stochastic


multiperiod inventory theory to handle demand uncertainty
OR Applications
 Optimization has been used in a
number of serious applications yielding
huge benefits

 A good place to find information about


these applications is the Interfaces
journal
Applications from Interfaces
 Recovering from major airline disruptions
 Reducing travel costs and player fatigue in
NBA
 Assigning managers to construction projects
 Managing Consumer Credit Delinquency
 Manufacturing of beer cans
 Scheduling Prototype Vehicle Testing at Ford
 Portfolio construction
Assignment #1
Select one of the 2 options to do

Option 1:

The Interfaces Journal is a publication of INFORMS where you can find articles on some
actual award-winning applications of OR in various engineering fields. Abstracts and full
papers of selected articles of Interfaces can be found at http://pubsonline.informs.org/main

Select an article that falls in an area of interest to you and answer the following for this
article:

• What optimization problem is addressed in this article?


• What is the objective of the study?
• What are the constraints?
• What kind of optimization model was used to model the problem?
• What kind of OR techniques used for solving the problem?
• Comment/Analyze the results/benefits achieved and the usefulness of the study
conducted.

Option 2

Do the following problems from your textbook by Hillier and Lieberman by


downloading the articles referred to in these problems from
http://pubsonline.informs.org/main:

2.1.1 and 2.1.2

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