In order to express my excitement about being accepted by the department of Management Sciences at University of Waterloo, I decided to write an article to briefly talk about education in the field of Operations Research / Management Sciences here at UW.
The Engineering District at University of Waterloo (Photo by Mike Seliske)
An interesting article on New York Times talked about a management science professor, Philip M. Parker, who developed computer algorithms that collect a substantial amount of publicly available information on a particular subject and turn the results into books. He has generated more than 200,000 books in this way, making him “the most published author in the history of the planet.”.
… aided by his 60 to 70 computers and six or seven programmers, he turns the results into books in a range of genres, many of them in the range of 150 pages and printed only when a customer buys one.
This year’s G8 summit is going to be held in Japan on July 7–9. G8 (The Group of Eight) is an international forum for the governments of eight countries that together represent about 65% of the world economy. The countries are Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. G8 also represents the majority of global military power (7 of the top 8 positions for military expenditure, and almost all of the world’s active nuclear weapons.). Each year, the eight countries take turn to host the G8 summit meeting.
I recently bumped into an article titled “Live chat: your new online salesperson” on CNNMoney.com. The article briefly talked about the potential of online instant messaging as a new sales tool for companies. More and more companies, especially those who sell their products online, are adding the live chat feature as a way to provide customer support on their websites. Some websites, such as Dell.com, provide online live chat as an option when a customer who needs help navigates to the “Support” section, while some other websites include chat boxes on their front pages and use live chat as both a customer support and a sales tool.
According to an article titled “‘Talent on Demand’: Applying Supply Chain Management to People”, professor Peter Cappelli at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania claims that the principles of supply chain management can be applied to human resource management to help companies find the talents they need, when they need them at lower costs.
Traditional human resource management have typically focused on meeting individuals’ needs by placing people in the positions that best suit their strengths and personal characters. However, this approach isn’t very effective from the perspective of reducing human-capital related costs and having the right people in place to do the necessary jobs. These kinds of questions are precisely what those who study supply chain management have been tackling.
According to a recent article titled “Thomson Holidays automates online pricing adjustments” written by Ian Grant and published on ComputerWeekly.com, a new automated pricing system has been developed and is being used by Thomson Holidays, the UK’s biggest tour operator, to maximize their revenue.
This type of OR system is not new, especially to airline companies. However, according to Alan Sugarman, Thomson Holidays’ general manager of Operations Research, this system is the first one to combine travel (aircraft seats) and sleeping (hotel beds) arrangements.
Andrew Hines posted a new article titled “Key Terms and Players of Operations Research” on Bnet.com. The article is a guide to the major players in data analysis and mathematical engineering applied in solving key business problems. Companies such as Oracle, ILOG and Rockwell are mentioned and key OR terms such as business modeling and analysis are explained. Click here to read the full article.
INFORMS, the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, announced on Feb 7 the six finalists that will compete for the 2008 Franz Edelman Award for Achievement in Operations Research and the Management Sciences in Baltimore on Apr 14.
In his passionate talk, Dr. Hans Rosling tried to debunk the myths about economic and health issues in developing countries using state-of-the-art animation software developed by his foundation - Gapminder. The software, named Trendalyzer, converts boring data such as global income and health distribution into lively animations. Although the topic of his talk was not directly relevant to Operations Research (OR), it delivered a rather important message which sort of defines the values added by all the OR analysts to business organizations. What I learned from his talk is the importance of making arguments after doing thorough data analysis rather than relying only on common sense.
Abundant applications of Operations Research (OR) are found in logistics, the art of managing and controlling the flow of goods from the point where raw materials are collected to the point where finished products are delivered to the end consumers. In the case where a large number of customers reside in a large-scale region, it becomes inefficient to transfer finished products to all of them from a central warehouse. A better idea would be to build local distribution warehouses in the region to reduce transportation time and costs and improve customer service. However, costs associated with the construction, maintenance and operation of the warehouses increase as more warehouses are built. This is why determining the optimal number and locations of the warehouses in the region is important in ensuring that the overall result is a saving. This class of problems are known as location-allocation problems, which involve determining the optimal number and locations of facilities (such as warehouses, retail stores and gas stations) as well as the allocation of the customers to those facilities.