Submission Guidelines

Join ORB: Topics in Operations Research

Linear programming, Integer programming, Dynamic programming, Game theory, Simulation, Heuristics, Artificial Intelligence, Optimization and Business Planning. An interdisciplinary science applied in industries, including manufacturing, healthcare, and transportation.

ORB, Operations Research Bit

Published in

Operations Research Bit

7 min readAug 21, 2023

Operations Research: Math, Engineering, Physics, Finance

A list of topics for readers and writers. Readers will gain the knowledge and skills they need to solve complex problems in a variety of fields.

medium.com

The Science of Making Better Decisions

Mathematics, Computer Science, and Statistics. The goal of OR is to develop mathematical models of real-world problems and then use these models to find optimal solutions. Mathematical models are often used to:

inform decisions
improve productivity
maximize profits

OR concepts solve complex problems using mathematical models, statistical analysis, economics and management to make decisions in business situations where there is not enough information to be certain about the outcome.

Origins

Engineering, Logistics, and Finance. Scientists and engineers began to apply mathematical methods to military problems in the early 20th century. During World War II, OR was used to solve a variety of problems, including the optimal allocation of resources, the design of weapons systems, and the planning of logistics.

After the war, OR began to be used in other fields, such as business and government. In the 1950s, OR saw a rapid growth in popularity, and a number of new OR techniques were developed.

Modern Techniques and Perspectives

Industries, including transportation, manufacturing and healthcare use mathematical techniques to solve problems:

Business: production planning, inventory management, and transportation scheduling.
Governments: emergency planning, policy, crime, and pollution.
Transportation and Logistics: transportation networks, facility location and layout, route planning, scheduling, and fleet management.
Finance and Banking: portfolio optimization, risk management, credit scoring, fraud detection, trading strategies and pricing.
Energy and Utilities: resource allocation, load balancing, renewable energy integration, maintenance scheduling and pricing.
Telecommunications: network design, capacity planning, and routing.
Military: weapons design, logistics, and battle planning.
Healthcare: scheduling, delivery and quality improvement.

The Future is Bright

Operations Research is a powerful tool that can be used to solve a wide variety of problems. OR techniques are becoming more accessible to businesses and governments, thanks to the development of powerful software tools. These techniques are used in a variety of fields, and OR is constantly growing and evolving.

Your Chance to Make a Difference

Want to publish your stories with ORB? Leave a comment to be added as a writer and be a part of the next generation of problem-solvers. You can also submit your article offsite here. Highlight your experience with these methods in the comments or submit your story.

🌟New! ORB’s OptiSage AI Teaching Assistant.

OptiSage is your trusty digital companion here to guide you toward captivating topics and engaging narratives. Try OptiSage to for inspiration for your next OR writing endeavor. 🌟

Writers are expected to follow the Medium rules, curation guidelines, use a subheader, a high quality feature image and are encouraged to use the Listen feature for their story before publishing. Authors can use their images or their GenerativeAI images citing source as “Image by [Author Name or pseudonym, hyperlink if available] with [AI Model Name].” Authors can use superscript for numbering any references and list them at the bottom in the style:

Author(s). Year. Title. Journal/Website Title. [updated month/year; accessed month/year]; volume(issue): pages. DOI if available.

Writers can submit 1 - 3 articles per week. ORG and Sustainable Cities do not have a limit. After submitting your story, Editors may correct formatting, spelling, grammar and remove link lists and uncited images. You can make slight revisions after publication staying within the style guidelines.

For Sustainable Cities use Kickers to cite cities in the format City, Country or Country if the story does not have one city.

Operations Excellence page has ORB’s featured articles.

Thank you to our Editors,

About ORB Editors

Igor Tarasenko

, experienced iOS developer skilled in ML integration. Values health, family, and adventure. Committed to community and helping others. Mastering AI Problem-Solving

Lalin Laudis

, I am a futurist. I think of future technologies. I’m working on evolving ‘Predictive Science’ through which I agog to predict Various Diseases. Predictive Science: The Science of Future

Varun Tyagi

is a seasoned pro in LLM, ML, mathematics, innovative pricing strategies, and data engineering with a knack for leadership. Passionate about leveraging futuristic tech to tackle business challenges. Simplifying Logistics with Python: A Practical Guide to Bundling Moves

My name is Michael David Kemble also known as

Eye Of Unity

. My blog covers everything from cryptocurrency and NFTs to technology and science with expert insight and thought-provoking content. How AI Is Transforming Decision-Making Processes

I am

The Angineer

, an aspiring engineer with an inquisitive mind and passion for engineering physics. My articles particularly ponder on renewable energy and informing readers about sustainability. Pumped Hydro — The Veteran in need of support

Packages for Analysis

Pyomo: A modeling language and solver interface for mathematical optimization. It is a powerful and flexible tool that can be used to solve a wide variety of optimization problems.
Gurobi is a commercial optimization solver that is known for its speed and accuracy. It is a good choice for solving large-scale OR problems.
CVXOPT: A free software package for convex optimization. It is a fast and efficient solver for a variety of convex optimization problems.
PuLP: A linear programming modeling language and solver interface. It is a user-friendly tool that can be used to solve linear programming problems.
PySCIPOpt: A Python interface to the SCIP Optimization Suite. SCIP is a powerful open-source solver for a variety of optimization problems.
pyOpt: A package for formulating and solving nonlinear constrained optimization problems. It is a versatile tool that can be used to solve a wide variety of nonlinear optimization problems.

Commonly used:

NumPy: A library for scientific computing. It provides a variety of mathematical functions and data structures that are useful for operations research.
SciPy: A library for scientific computing. It builds on NumPy and provides additional functionality for operations research, such as optimization solvers and statistical functions.
Pandas: A library for data analysis. It provides a variety of tools for manipulating and analyzing data, which can be useful for operations research problems.
Matplotlib is a plotting library that can be used to visualize the results of OR models.