R for Industrial Engineers

Operations Research with R — Graphical Method

Exploring the “lpSolve” R package

Image by Kelly Sikkema available at Unsplash

Operations Research

Operations Research is a scientific approach for decision making that seeks for the best design and operation of a system, usually under conditions requiring the allocation of scarce resources. The scientific approach for decision making requires the use of one or more mathematical/optimization models (i.e. representations of the actual situation) to make the optimum decision.

An optimization model seeks to find the values of the decision variables that optimize (maximize or minimize) an objective function among the set of all values for the decision variables that satisfy the given constraints. Its three main components are:

• Objective function: a function to be optimized (maximized or minimized)
• Decision variables: controllable variables that influence the performance of the system
• Constraints: set of restrictions (i.e. linear inequalities or equalities) of decision variables. A non-negativity constraint limits the decision variables to take positive values (e.g. you cannot produce negative number of items x1, x2 and x3).